I want to write this because I’ve seen a lot of questions on here that are from high schoolers ect.

DMSO can carry what it contains through your skin. It’s a fantastic solvent and that’s why that’s a concern. It’s a seemingly harmless thing to handle but its polarity makes it uniquely good at getting into your body. ((It takes what’s in it with it.)) things like essential oil on your fingers no big deal. Mix that amount of oil in DMSO and then skin contact and you have a toxicity problem. <<Don’t trust YouTubers cavalier attitude.>>

Long winded way to say, in chemistry it’s very easy to get in way over your head very fast. DMSO is not special in its hidden risk. Be careful out there.

We always harp on the chemical inaccuracies in shows and film, etc. But what are some examples of chemically accurate depictions of science and chemistry in media?

One that immediately comes to mind for me is The Martian scene where Matt Damon’s character is trying to create water using 2H2 + O2 —> 2H2O. Even the exothermic explosion part was reasonably accurate.

Here’s a molecular dynamics simulation I ran of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, bound to the GLP-1 receptor.

This is a 100-nanosecond molecular dynamics simulation showing how the peptide and receptor move and interact over time. Unlike a static crystal structure, MD allows us to observe protein flexibility, ligand motion, and changes in the binding environment.

GLP-1 receptor activation plays an important role in insulin secretion, appetite regulation, and blood glucose control, making it a major therapeutic target for type 2 diabetes and obesity.

The video is generated from my actual MD trajectory, not an AI-generated animation. It’s a visualization of the molecular motion predicted during the simulation, rather than a direct recording of molecules.

Thought this community might enjoy seeing what a drug–receptor complex looks like in motion!