Smelly Chemistry, Beautiful Chemistry, and a new Magic Format

1) Possibly the smelliest chemical in the world is thioacetate. It's the kind of chemical which causes coworkers in a building 200 yards away to complain about if it's accidentally left uncapped. An accidental release of the stuff was responsible for forcing an evacuation of the town of Friedberg, Germany because the scent was making residents ill.

2) How to make bismuth crystals in your kitchen! Basically, you a) melt some relatively high-grade bismuth in a steel (or, less optimally, aluminum) cup on medium-high heat, b) pour the liquid bismuth into a second steel cup, leaving behind any impurities that scum to the surface, c) let the second cup of bismuth cool slowly, then d) once the second cup starts to solidify, pour off some of the liquid bismuth back into the first cup. The remaining bismuth will be crystallized. If they aren't satisfactory, melt it down and try again. If you don't know what bismuth looks like, I recommend checking it out (it's my favorite crystal!)

3) How you cross Dominion with Magic the Gathering. Lady Ŀady Jade Beacham and I playtested some Dominion Magic until we got a balance that worked pretty well. The rules, as succinctly as possible:
-- Open two booster packs, lay them face up. This, plus an infinite number of each basic land type, is the draft pool.
-- Each player starts with a deck of two of each basic land.
-- Players draw 3 cards each draw step (except on the first and second players' first turns, where they draw 2 and 4 cards instead, respectively). If you would draw a card with no cards in your library, you shuffle your graveyard into your library first.
-- At sorcery speed, players may discard any number of lands to draft a card from the draft pool if the lands could produce the mana cost of the card (for instance, discarding two islands and a plains could draft a cancel or an oblivion ring). Drafted cards go to the graveyard.
-- You may cast nonland cards without paying their mana costs.
-- You may play one land per turn (as per usual magic) which you can use to pay for activated abilities.
-- Maximum hand size is equal to the largest converted mana cost of any card in the draft pool (this is to avoid degenerate strategies where you hold all of the lands in your deck in your hand).

This format worked really well with two Return to Ravnica booster packs, and decently well with a pair of Dragons of Tarkir boosters. The RtR packs, in particular, were fun enough to play several games with before we really cracked the format.