A team of chemists from the University of Hawaii has changed their white coats for bathing suits and has launched into the Pacific on some original surfboards that incorporate test tubes .
The goal of Robert Liu and his colleagues is to study the photochemical transformations that vitamin A undergoes when it is exposed to sunlight. But why do it on a wave instead of sitting comfortably on the sand, for example? Simply because the excess heat produced by this reaction is easily and effortlessly dissipated if the test tube in which the reaction occurs is submerged in seawater . This saves energy, since the devices used in the laboratory usually need a cold water circuit circulating continuously to lower the temperature.
Also, as Liu himself admits, doing an experiment while surfing has been really fun. Details of his work are published in the journal Green Chemistry .
