History Main / TechnicolorScience

* Chlorine is quite a colorful element. In its common state it's a pale yellowish-green gas, but when cooled and under pressure it becomes a liquid not dissimilar in color to Mountain Dew.

* 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 colors.

*** 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 Urivan Colorado, the abandoned Uranium mines can be easily spotted by the clear contrast of the green tailings against the red rock in the area.

** The Dalek apparatus in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks "Evolution of the Daleks"]] has both multi-coloured liquids in all sort of containers and similar a "crawling blue fire" effect for the lightning.

** The Dalek apparatus in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks "Evolution of the Daleks"]] has both multi-colored liquids in all sort of containers and similar a "crawling blue fire" effect for the lightning.

** The Dalek apparatus in [[Recap/DcotorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks "Evolution of the Daleks"]] has both multi-colored liquids in all sort of containers and similar a "crawling blue fire" effect for the lightning.

[[folder:Comics]]
* The University of Leicester once synthesized a krypton compound named "kryptonite" for a lark. It was a colorless crystal with a green light under it, but at least it's fairly harmful (it's a powerful oxidizer), unstable, and contained some ''radioactive'' krypton.
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[[folder:Film]]
* In ''Film/TheRock'' terrorists threaten San Francisco with VX nerve gas, portrayed as ominous green goo inside glass balls.
* The TropeMaker here would likely be Creator/FritzLang's ''Film/{{Metropolis}}''. The description of the MadScientist's lab in the script stated the laboratory is "as much a place for alchemy as science, a magician's lair."
** Of course, the 'color' part isn't so visible, with the movie being black and white.
** Metropolis also featured the Jacob's Ladder electrical demonstrator, that later became famous as the "science-y" thing in the 1931 Frankenstein.

* Played straight in ''Film/TheNuttyProfessor''. Of course, it ''was'' [[RuleOfFunny a comedy.]]
* Lampshaded in Creator/AkiraKurosawa's ''Dreams''. One character notes in "Mount Fuji in Red" that the clouds of radiation were colored by scientists to act as identifiers for certain elements; instead, people just associated them with hideous radiation and refer to them as "Death's Calling Card."

* In ''Film/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow'', Frank N Furter's lab features a tank that he fills with rainbow-colored chemicals to bring Rocky to life.
* [[AvertedTrope Averted]] in the movie adaptation of Creator/StephenKing's ''Film/{{Thinner}}'', where a gypsy is threatened with a glass of acid that is actually clear.
* ''Film/MadameCurie'': [[UsefulNotes/MarieCurie Marie]] and Pierre Curie realize that the stain on their bowl is actually the radium they were trying to isolate, when they come back to the lab at night and find it glowing in the dark.

* "Film/AllTheTroublesOfTheWorld": The [[{{Montage}} various computer parts]] shown during the opening and closing credits include flashing lights and strange dials. The colours are mostly red, green, and beige.
* In ''Film/TheNeanderthalMan'', Professor Groves's workroom contains vials full of different-colored liquid, one of which is bubbling and steaming.

* Averted and lampshaded in Creator/TerryPratchett's ''Discworld/FeetOfClay''. Vimes is very surprised to find out that arsenic is not green, since that is how he imagined a deadly poison.
** A dwarf who succumbs to poison in ''Thud!'' does salivate green, however.

* One of R.A. Salvatore's [[Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt Drizzt]] 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.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'', "Age of Steel": The Cybermen's electric shocks fit the "crawling blue fire" description, both when the Cybermen use them as an attack and when they malfunction.
** The Dalek apparatus in "Evolution Of The Daleks" has both multi-colored liquids in all sort of containers and similar a "crawling blue fire" effect for the lightning.
* In an episode of ''Series/JustShootMe'', Maya gets covered in ToxicWaste while in the sewers and is later found to glow green in the dark. The chemicals are specifically described as "phosphates," none of which have this property in real life.
** The element phosphorus, on the other hand, does at least in its white form. It is also highly toxic and can (and does, though its use is controversial) serve as an incredibly lethal firebomb.
** This property is where the name "phosphorus" comes from, after all.
*** And it does so because it's just slowly ''burns'' in the air.
* The third season premiere of ''Series/{{Heroes}}'', almost in the same breath as NinetyPercentOfYourBrain.
* Also avoided, oddly -- and inaccurately -- enough, in the recent TV film ''Einstein and Eddington''. Scientists are shown testing the 'new' poison gas chlorine on a number of doves. The gas is colorless. In real life, chlorine actually ''is'' green. That's why it's ''called'' "chlorine." However, at normal atmospheric temperatures and pressures it's a fairly ''pale'' green, so unless you're looking at a considerable thickness of it in front of a very white background the color could easily be missed.
* [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] [[Film/SyfyChannelOriginalMovie original movie]] ''Megashark vs. Giant Octopus'' featured this trope in the We're Doing Science! portions. The scientists are trying to find a solution to the problem posed by, well, look at the title. This seems to involve large amounts of pouring liquids from test tubes into larger test tubes. All of these liquids are colored. What are they pouring? Why are they pouring it? Something sciency, I'm sure! Later they come up with the idea of making pheromones, so it's back to the lab! More colored chemicals are poured! Finally, success is achieved. How do they know? Because they pour two chemicals together and they change color to glowing green! Obviously, this means they have achieved shark and squid pheromones. Right?

* In ''Series/TheITCrowd'', Richmond looks after the machines in what is presumably the server room, except he has no idea what the machines do, nor what the flashing lights mean.

* ''Series/{{Batman}}'' usually follows this trope, especially with endless colorful variations of KnockoutGas.
* In the old Grenada ''SherlockHolmes'' series Jeremy Brett's Holmes usually had a bunch of these scattered around his desk. Usually they didn't do anything but bubble in the background, but sometimes they were used as a setpiece for solving a crime, or a bit of comic relief.
* Lampshaded in ''Series/{{Arrow}}'', when they open a briefcase containing glowing blue vials.
-->'''Felicity:''' Why does every secret formula have to be a color? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned clear?
* The police station in ''Series/{{Lucifer}}'' has a lab with lots of beakers full of colourful liquids.

* Also avoided, oddly -- and inaccurately -- enough, in the recent TV film ''Einstein and Eddington''. Scientists are shown testing the 'new' poison gas chlorine on a number of doves. The gas is colorless. In real life, chlorine actually ''is'' green. That's why it's ''called'' "chlorine."

* Subverted subtly in ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' when Leonard walks into the kitchen to find Sheldon working with beakers full of colored liquid. Turns out he was using flavored Jell-o to make growth media for bacteria.

* In ''Series/BreakingBad'' the meth starts out as the colorless crystal it is, but later in the series Walt changes how he cooks and gets Blue Meth. Presumably this trope is at least part of the reason for the change.

* Done infamously in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'': In her world, driftwood fires are blue. Supposedly because of the salt. Salt, for those who don't know, turns fire ''yellow''. At least, it does in RealLife.

* The various [[MadScientistLaboratory Mad Scientist Laboratories]] in ''Webcomic/GirlGenius'' have generally got at least a couple if not many more bottles or/and vials of glowing and brightly colored fluids, often a SicklyGreenGlow as in [[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20090828 this Castle Heterodyne lab]] but they show up in other colors as well.

** Salvatore, it should be mentioned, wasn't making this up. Such pools of acid, along with [[ConvectionShmonvection oddly retiring lava]], were staples of the ForgottenRealms Underdark campaign setting he'd been commissioned to write for.

* The police station in ''Series/{{Lucifer}}' has a lab with lots of beakers full of colourful liquids.

* "Electrons are blue" is a common joke explanation for a phenoenon: things with free electrons whizzing about tend to be bright blue.

* The first ''Film/CatsAndDogs'' movie features a home laboratory filled with various glass vessels of brightly colored fluids for a guy who's trying to develop medicine to cure people of their allergies to dogs.

* In ''Film/CatsAndDogs'', Professor Brody's basement laboratory is wall-to-wall with glass beakers of brightly-colored fluids.

GratuitousLaboratoryFlasks are the standard container for Technicolor Science in its liquid form. See also TechnicolorToxin and ScienceCocktail.

* If different lines on plots in serious science are distinguished by colours, these are often loud colours. More subdued ones are harder to distinguish.
* In a creationist movie by Kent Hovind, one scene shows the pseudoscientist standing in a lab holding a glass of bright purple liquid with dry ice fog coming out of it.

* In the ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlertSeries'' series, radioactive areas are recognizable by the green glow.
** It is important to note that the red alert series doesn't take itself seriously in the slightest.

See also TechnicolorToxin and ScienceCocktail.