Cookies are for everyone. But everyone has cookie preferences. When you slide that cookie tray into the oven, you’re setting off a series of chemical reactions that transform one substance — dough — into another — cookies! The better you understand cookie chemistry, the better equipped you will be to create the cookies you crave. Here are 5 cookie pro tips from TED-Ed (and science):

1. Lots goes on in that oven, but one of science’s tastiest reactions occurs at 310º F. Maillard reactions result when proteins and sugars breakdown and rearrange themselves into ring like structures which reflect light in a way that gives foods their distinctive, rich brown color. As this reaction occurs, it produces a range of flavor and aroma compounds, which also react with each other, forming even more complex tastes and smells.

2. The final reaction to take place inside your cookie is caramelization and it occurs at 356º F. Caramelization is what happens when sugar molecules break down under high heat, forming the sweet, nutty and slightly bitter flavor compounds that define…caramel! So if your recipe calls for a 350º F oven — caramelization will never happen.

3. If your ideal cookie is barely browned – 310º F will do. But if you want a tanned, caramelized cookie, crank up the heat! Caramelization continues up to 390º degrees.

4. No need to check that oven like a fiend. You don’t even really need a kitchen timer — when you smell the nutty, toasty aromas of the Maillard reaction and caramelization, your cookies are ready!

5. Baking is chemistry, friends! That’s right — PURE. SCIENCE. So check carefully before altering those recipes — chances are, some of those ingredients and quantities are there for a reason.

Curious what else happens in that oven? Check out the TED-Ed Lesson: The chemistry of cookies. Curious about everything? Subscribe to the TED-Ed newsletter here.

Image credit: Featured image + animation by Augenblick Studios/TED-Ed

Science teachers, rejoice: Four new chemical elements have just been formally added to the Periodic Table of the Elements, completing the 7th row.

The elements were discovered by teams of scientists in Russia, America and Japan. Their permanent names will be chosen by their discoverers. New elements can be named “after a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, a property or a scientist,” notes the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). “Element 113 will be the first element to be named in Asia,” notes The Guardian.

For now, the four new elements carry these placeholder names: ununtrium, (Uut or element 113), ununpentium (Uup, element 115), ununseptium (Uus, element 117), and ununoctium (Uuo, element 118). For a short video and chemistry lesson about all of the elements (including these new ones!), explore TED-Ed’s interactive periodic table:

There are about 20 species of fuzzy moles (the kind that crawl around on the ground), and one kind of mole that might appear on your face, but today is a day for celebrating a different kind of mole. Today’s mole is a unit — one invented by a man named Avogadro.

Really, a mole is just a group of objects. You can think of “a mole” the same way you think of “a dozen.” You’re probably familiar with a dozen eggs, or chickens or planets. Moles are no different. You can have a mole of molecules or people or cheeseburgers. But there are a lot more than twelve things in a mole — there are 6.02 x 10²³. That’s 602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 things. Because the mole contains so many units, they’re most often used in chemistry is a way of measuring really really small things like atoms or molecules.

So a mole of water is 6.02 x 10²³ molecules of water, which works out to be about 18 grams, or 18 mL. A mole of aluminum is about 26 grams. But to really appreciate how many molecules are in a mole it helps to think about things we can see. To do that, let’s try these comparisons from Daniel Dulek’s lesson about how big a mole is.

A way to think about the relative size of a mole?

If you had a mole of doughnuts, they would cover the entire Earth in a doughnut-layer five miles deep.

If you had a mole of basketballs, you could create a new planet the size of the Earth!

If you received a mole of pennies on the day you were born, and spent a million dollars a second until you died at 100, you’d still have over 99.99% of your money in the bank.

One mole of red blood cells is more red blood cells than exist in every human on earth right now.  A mole of cereal boxes stacked end to end would reach from the Sun to Pluto 7.5 million times. A mole of turkeys could form sixteen earths.

Okay, so now that we know why a mole has 6.02 x 10²³ things in it, what can we do with that information? Moles in chemistry are far more useful than moles in the ground, or on your face. They factor into all kinds of equations and important concepts in chemistry. Chemists think of moles or atoms like you and I think of a dozen eggs – we add them to recipes, order them from the store and calculate what we need based on how many we have.

What would a mole of fuzzy moles look like? Well, the pile of animals would weigh a little over half of the mass of our moon. Thankfully, there’s no chemistry equation in the world that calls for that many mammals. But if there was, you’d now know just how many mammals that would be.