1st video pitch: Hell. “Inferno– Dante Condemns Materialism and Alchemy”

We represent features of the Hell of particular interest to chemists. The sixth circle contains the Heretics, including Epicureans. Epicurus taught that the soul ends at death and it is made up of atoms like the rest of the body. Dante condemns Epicurus because of his hedonistic philosophy, and, according to Dante's law of “contrappasso”, the Heretics' punishment consists in spending eternity in the flaming tombs shown in the video with stunning effects.

The video reveals the principal neurotransmitters, made of atoms: they are the material base of the cognitive function and emotion; hence, neurochemistry repeats Epicurus’s view of the soul, even if any further question about the self is beyond the Science realm.

Dante’s aversion against those who were interested in matter transformation continues in the tenth and final chasm of the eighth circle, where he meets weeping alchemists, who were metal falsifiers.

Capocchio, Dante's friend in his school days, burned for alchemy, was among them. In the video pitch, we pretend, as alchemists did, to change base metals into silver and gold! Actually, you can observe the zinc deposition over a copper coin and brass development from their mixture at high temperatures! We acknowledge the importance of alchemy as a pre-scientific form of chemistry since curiosity about matter was crucial to observe new phenomena and observation is the first stage of any scientific rationalization.

2nd video pitch: Purgatory. “Purgatorio – Soul Purification and Chemical Purification”

The video pitch is a parallel between the climb of Dante up the Mount of Purgatory and chromatography, that is the major chemical purification strategy: we show a “chemical purgatory” that is an “ascendant” chromatography.

The name actually means color (chroma) and writing (graphy) because Tsvet, a Russian botanist, used this strategy for the very first time in 1905 to separate vegetal pigments.

The stunning separation you can observe is based on the different affinities of mixed individual chemical species for two immiscible phases: the paper stationary phase and the alcoholic mobile phase.

Mixed molecules, set in motion by the mobile phase, climb the conical stationary phase, as souls climb the Mount of Purgatory during their purification.

Tremendous instrumental improvements translated paper chromatography into our sophisticated chromatographic equipment (shown in the video pitch): we are able to simultaneously purify, separate, and quantify countless substances, with a sensitivity in the lower part-per-billion range

3rd video pith: Paradise. “Paradiso – Chemical show of the Trinity mystery”

In the Empyrean, Dante fixes his gaze into the mind of God and sees the unity of the Universe, the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. We represent the Dantesque description of the Trinity by three concentric circles of different colors corresponding to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from both as a flame, burning an ethanolic solution of common metal salts.

As chemists, we see in these flames the harmonious dance of the atoms: they are excited by the heat of the flame, then they release the acquired energy via a radiative de-excitation.

The chemical phenomenon of light emission is exploited every day in myriads of chemical laboratories to study the heavy metals pollution thanks to the specificity of the frequency and intensity of the light emitted by each metal. Each type of atom emits lights of a specific color based on its identity and gives a more intense light the greater its quantity: in this way chemists can analyze disparate samples!

Dante is thunderstruck, we are satisfied because we had the chance to show you how aesthetically fascinating our useful chemistry can be.