History Main / TechnicolorScience

* There are plenty of green glowing things at the nuclear power plant in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', including Mr. Burns. In "E-I-E-I(Annoyed Grunt)" Plutonium is shown to be a glowing green instead of the real silver color, as well as a fluid instead of a solid (note that most plutonium used in the real world is in a liquid-like powdered form). A Carbon rod used to hold a door on a shuttle closed and seen in the opening is shown as a pale lime-green instead of the real-life black.
** Carbon rods are black, so black that carbon is sometimes used to as a pigment. However, it is also brittle. Unless the full length needs to be exposed, the rods are covered in a protective coating, with only a small amount at the end exposed.

* When pure, sulfur is one of the most recognisable non-metals for its distinctive lemon-yellow crystals. When burned, it melts into a red liquid and gives off a bright blue flame.

* Transition metal compounds are a good example: some familiar examples are potassium dichromate (orange), potassium permanganate (deep purple) and hydrated copper sulfate (blue). Nanoparticle solutions often glow brightly or at least have an interesting color (gold nanoparticle solution is bright pink!); aqua regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid) is clear when made but turns orange in a few seconds.

* Spoofed repeatedly on ''{{Series/Dinosaurs}}''. In ''[[Recap/DinosaursS02E15PowerErupts Power Erupts]]'', a science fair project is a set of multicolored flasks labeled "red", "blue", "purple" and so on. In ''[[Recap/DinosaursS03E06GermWarfare Germ Warfare]]'' a doctor prescribes "blue medicine" for baby Sinclair; when it doesn't work, he switches to orange medicine, "the newest and most powerful color known to science".

* ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' plays this straight with the lightning and some effects around the [=DeLorean=], along with showing the plutonium as being bright red.[[note]]So what color ''is'' plutonium? The metal itself looks like metal, but if its reasonably pure it will probably be glowing orange for much the same reason that an electric stove's heating element does... because it's ''hot''.[[/note]]

* Colorful chemicals seen in [[http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/The_KAMics/4920837/ this page]] of ''Webcomic/TheKamics''

* Done infamously in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'': In her world, driftwood fires are blue. Supposedly because of the salt. In Real Life, the most common salt in seawater ... sodium chloride ... produces yellowish-orange flames, or in other words just about the color you'd expect a wood fire's flames to have anyway. There ''are'' salts that can produce blue flames, one example being caesium salts, but sodium is ''much'' more common in seawater than caesium is.

* Burning salts will give different colors depending on the compound. Table salt burns yellow, copper salt burns blue, and potassium salt burns purple. This is also how they make those nifty little pods that turn campfires weird colours.

* Neon lights come in multiple colors, though only neon gas itself produces a bright orange glow when introduced to an electric charge. The other colors are made with Helium (pink), Argon (blue), Krypton (white), and Xenon (violet). Hydrogen and oxygen both have a lavender glow, though hydrogen is brighter. Mercury vapor is used in ultraviolet black lights, and sodium vapor is used for the bright yellow color of street lights.
* Fireworks also come in multiple colors, with each color coming from burning a different metal, namely strontium carbonate for red, calcium chloride for orange, sodium nitrate for yellow, barium chloride for green, copper chloride for blue, a mix of strontium and copper chloride for purple, and pure barium for white.
* This can be invoked when news sources want colored solutions for science labs (in one instance, toxicology for Purdey's Proof - Dispatches) in order to make the lab look more 'correct'. This is sadly standard practice for TV around the world - if you're in biology or chemistry, even serious news channels demand beakers full of colored liquids in the background during interviews.

* So common is this portrayal of science (especially chemistry) in the media that ''actual'' labs [[TheCoconutEffect will often be decorated]] with some flasks and beakers containing brightly colored liquids, especially if anyone is filming a documentary or propaganda or any kind of educational video in them. One of Kent Hovind's creationist videos, for instance, features some guy in a [[LabcoatOfScienceAndMedicine white lab coat]] standing around holding a glass of bright purple liquid with some dry ice fog coming out of it.

[[folder:Live-Action Film]]

* Comes up in ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} 4'', where the map icon for uranium is a bunch of green rocks. [[JustifiedTrope Of course]], they did have to distinguish it from the silver, iron, and aluminum.
** Uranium is among the most interesting elements, with a variety of exotic compounds including the bright-yellow, highly corrosive and highly poisonous Uranium Hexafluoride, which meets all the criteria of Technicolor Hollywood science. It's the stuff that the "Bad Guys" want to obtain in RealLife.
*** Also, while uranium ores are mostly black or yellow, they ''could'' be bright green, if some additional impurities are present -- usually gold, which is quite frequent in such ore bodies.
*** TruthInTelevision the minor uranium ore mineral [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autunite autunite]] actually is that color. What's more, it [[SicklyGreenGlow glows green]] under UV light. Also, near what is left of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uravan,_Colorado Uravan]], the abandoned uranium mines can be easily spotted by the clear contrast of the green tailings against the red rock in the area.
** ''Civilization 5'' avoids 4's use by making the icon the radioactivity sign, but now the ''terrain'' graphic is green.

* One of R.A. Salvatore's ''Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt'' novels prominently featured a ''giant green glowing pool of acid'' sitting in a cave for no reason. Walking above it was perfectly safe, but fall in and you instantly dissolved.
** Salvatore, it should be mentioned, wasn't making this up. Such pools of acid, along with [[ConvectionShmonvection oddly retiring lava]], were staples of the ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' Underdark campaign setting he'd been commissioned to write for.

* The [[https://youtu.be/3241N1stDNA?t=335 opening credits]] for short-lived 1989 series ''Series/FreeSpirit'' (featuring a witch named Winnie helping out a mortal family, including a pre-''Buffy'' Creator/AlysonHannigan) show Winnie using her magic to help the younger son with a chemistry experiment, which involves an elaborate setup with lots of [[GratuitousLaboratoryFlasks flasks and beakers]] full of brightly colored liquids.

* One easy example of this trope is the "[[http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/pickle.html Electric Pickle]]" experiment, where a current passed through a pickle actually gets the pickle to glow. Though useless, it is fun to watch. The pickle's been featured in ''Series/{{CSI}}'' and ''Series/BeakmansWorld'', to name a few instances.

--->'''Batgirl''': Why is it that deadly chemicals are always green? Why can't they ever be pink?
* The boiling vat of green acid turns up almost too many times to count in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' and several times in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' (see also NoOSHACompliance).

* The ''VideoGame/{{Tamagotchi}}'' virtual pets and their adaptations feature a character named Professor Flask who teaches science class at Tamagotchi School. He has a big beaker of green liquid on his head and two more smaller beakers of red and blue liquid for hands.

* There are plenty of green glowing things at the nuclear power plant in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', including Mr. Burns. In "E-I-E-I(Annoyed Grunt)" Plutonium is shown to be a glowing green instead of the real silver color, as well as a fluid instead of a solid (note that most plutonium used in the real world is in a liquid-like powdered form). A Carbon rod used to hold a door on a shuttle closed and seen in the opening is shown as a pale lime-green instead of the real-life black.
** Carbon rods are black, so black that carbon is sometimes used to as a pigment. However, it is also brittle. Unless the full length needs to be exposed, the rods are covered in a protective coating, with only a small amount at the end exposed.
* The boiling vat of green acid turns up almost too many times to count in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' and several times in ''WesternAnimation/TeenTitans'' (see also NoOSHACompliance).

* Comes up in ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}} 4'', where the map icon for uranium is a bunch of green rocks. [[JustifiedTrope Of course]], they did have to distinguish it from the silver, iron, and aluminum (yes, I know aluminum and iron wouldn't look like that anyway - y'know what, it's [[MST3KMantra just a game]]).