Many of us have probably had a few close calls with a bunsen burner in high school chemistry, and today Google is celebrating the 200th birthday of Robert Bunsen, co-creator of the device.

Many of us have probably had a few close calls with a Bunsen burner in high school chemistry, and today Google is celebrating the 200th birthday of Robert Bunsen, co-creator of the device.

The moving image features a Bunsen burner and various beakers filled with bubbling liquids. Keep watching and the flame will change colors, while the beakers will drain and refill themselves.

While the burner is named after Bunsen, he did not actually invent the device; it was designed by Peter Desaga, a technician at the University of Heidelburg. Instead, Bunsen improved the burner's design to aid his endeavors in spectroscopy, according to an article posted on the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Web site.

"Ironically, Bunsen will be remembered by generations of chemistry students for a mere improvement in a burner design, when his other contributions to the field of chemistry are vastly more significant and diverse, covering such areas as organic chemistry, arsenic compounds, gas measurements and analysis, the galvanic battery, elemental spectroscopy and geology," the article said.

Robert Wilhelm Bunsen was born on March 31, 1811 in Germany. After earning a doctorate at age 19 and traveling extensively throughout Europe, he returned to Germany to teach at the university in Gottingen. It was there that he discovered that iron oxide hydrate could be used as a precipitating agent, a solution that is still considered to be the best antidote for arsenic poisoning.

Later, Bunsen worked with Gustav Kirchhoff to develop a spectroscope they then used to discover two alkali metals - cesium and rubidium - which ushered in a new way to discover elements, according to the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

Google has made headlines for its recent doodles, including an in honor of author Jules Verne's 183rd birthday and that were live for two days in December.

Recently, it was revealed that for its popular homepage doodles, covering "systems and methods for enticing users to access a Web site."

For more on Google's doodles, see the slideshow below.