MAKING CONNECTIONS IS A FEATURE OF HOW SCIENCE WORKS

Once in awhile our bathroom sink doesn’t drain properly.  In the past I would pour some scouring powder into the slowly draining sink and that usually improved the flow of drainage.  But recently that didn’t work so I used a plunger and after a few pumping efforts, some flaky black gunk emerged.  My initial response was disgust, as it drained away and I soaped the sink and cleaned it, the flow now normal.  Then a thought came to me.  What turned the food and toothpaste that went into the drain and converted it to this black material?  Is this what goes on in soil turning it into humus (often black) or into peat (dark brown or black) or coal?  Is the initial process carried out by bacteria?  If so, why does carbon form from the food particles?  Why doesn’t it disappear through oxidation to form carbon dioxide?  Perhaps in the trap and the pipes there isn’t much oxygen from the air to do this.  I looked up articles on coal formation and most of those describe how in the long run (millions of years) the peat is converted into “soft” coal and finally into anthracite coal.  Anthracite coal is about 95% pure carbon.  Thus former swamps and forests that got turned into coal required a lot of compression as runoffs kept adding more soil on top of the decomposing lower layers with the pressure and higher temperatures degrading the lowest organic material leaving only the carbon and some trace elements behind.  That takes millions of years.  A similar process takes place when an insect drowns and gets covered by mud and over millions of years it becomes an impression fossil.  Often that moth or fly consists of a film of carbon exposed when the rock is cracked and opens up into two fragments.   If I pressed a moth between two pieces of polished marble, how long would it take before it carbonized?   If it takes centuries or millennia, it’s not likely such experiments can be done.  Who would remember it being set up thousands of years from now? But I do know that something transforms the washings of teeth into black flaky material in a matter or two or three years.  Sometimes the association between one event (the material the plunger released from a sink trap) and another event (the formation of coal) may have a common explanation.  Sometimes it may be a coincidence that the flaky material is as black as coal (perhaps it is not carbon but a chemical product from the lining of the drain pipes).  Science tries to solve such relations by doing experiments.  The flakes could be chemically analyzed.  If they are mostly carbon, then my initial interpretation would be more likely. I would also have to see what type of bacteria are changing the food particles into carbon, assuming that my interpretation is correct. Science often involves a series of tests to find answers.  Sometimes it takes decades or centuries to work out an interpretation that answers the alternative ways a finding is interpreted.