October 08, 2016 at 04:24AM

Today I Learned: 1) You know the lemonade machines that some restaurants have, where you can see the lemonade swirling around in a tank? It turns out that, at least in many cases, that lemonade is not what you get in your drink. It's just there for show. Your drink is actually mixed from a contraption underneath the counter. This deceptive device actually lies at the center of an interesting turn in patent law, which basically says that you can get a patent even if the device you patent is immoral or deceptive (or, as it turns out, even illegal). A few more details here: http://ift.tt/2dTHa90 2) There are salts that are liquid at room temperature. I only know about one, and I only sort of know its structure -- it's a somewhat complex organic, much bigger than the usual salts you hear about in a chemistry class. 3) There are attempts right now being made to chemically sequester CO2 from the air, potentially converting it into methanol or other useful fuels. Unfortunately, the process isn't efficient at atmospheric levels of CO2 (even though we're now well above 400 ppm...), so it's really planned for use in CO2-emitting plants as a kind of air scrubbing technique. It's also really, really hard, and we don't have a good way to do it yet.