Videos - Creating Chemistry
Exciting topics from the world of chemistry, interestingly presented and easily understood: This is what BASF’s video podcast series called “Creating Chemistry” offers.
Modern vegetable production and tradition: The farmers of Ortosole - Their story
Carrots, melons, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage and many other vegetables are for many people a normal part of their daily diet – for others they are a luxury. Feeding the world with sufficient and healthy food using limited resources is a challenge today and it will become even more challenging in the future.
A vegetable producer in Italy shows how sustainable farming can look like, and how actions of today can prepare the way for long-term, sufficient and resource efficient food production. Ortosole, as the farm is called, is located near Rome. It is managed passionately by the Tiozzo family for generations.
Ortosole is part of the Farm Network, a partnership initiated by BASF. The family exchanges knowledge, tests and evaluates ideas with experts of agriculture and nature conservation who are also part of this network. Together they have developed and improved a biodegradable mulch film to keep competing weeds and water management under control.
Ortosole shows that high yield agriculture and a thriving environment can go together hand in hand.
Biodiversity - Making it work on a Modern Farm
Nutritious, healthy and affordable food is what every man, woman and child deserves. It is already a challenge today – in a world with just above 7 billion people. The challenge will become greater – feeding more people with limited resources. And what about nature? How can farmers satisfy the basic demand of every human being and at the same time protect water resources, bees and birds?
The Farm Network, a partnership initiated by BASF, works on answers. Farmers, experts for agriculture and for nature conservation in seven European countries join their knowhow, create measures that increase sustainable farming and test them. The results demonstrate that high yield agriculture and a thriving environment can go together.
See one example: The Farm Network cooperation on the Grange, UK.
Water solution: Ultrafiltration for sea water desalination
Drinking water is a scarce commodity in Cyprus. Intensive agriculture and a growing tourist industry are adding to the strain on water resources. Water scarcity causes significant hardship to the island's population. It defines their daily lives. The hope is that ultrafiltration will help secure the island's water supply in future.
New running experience through small beads
The world is on the move. To keep physically fit, more and more people jog for miles, across fields and along roadways. Even people who only go jogging occasionally now look for running shoes with lightweight and stable soles that provide optimal shock absorption. Using BASF’s new foam InfinergyTM, adidas has now developed the Energy Boost, a thoroughly new running shoe: About 2,500 foam beads in the midsole are not only particularly effective in absorbing the shock impact, but also as soon as the compressive impulse subsides, the foam returns to its original shape at lightning speed. The energy expended in a footfall is thus largely returned to the athlete.
Renewable energies in practice: Perpetual motion on the skyline
Modern wind energy plants are an essential part of the future energy mix – but not unless they are economic. For that reason, they have to function about 20 years. Winds with top speeds and weather factors such as snow, rain, heat and UV radiation take consistently their toll of the wind power plants. Without innovative solutions of the chemistry industry, an effective utility of wind energy is scarcely conceivable. But how much intelligent chemistry is necessary in order to use wind energy economically? The Videocast “Perpetual motion on the skyline” explains how this works.
iGloss: less scratches - brilliant Gloss
Every day automotive finishes come in for a lot of punishment – with doors being slammed, on hot days in the summer or in ice and hail in the winter or even when the automobile is being washed. What properties does an automotive finish need to stand up to all of this? We explain how chemistry helps to protect the automobile from scratches so that it shines as long as possible.