In this video we make a blob of gallium "beat" like some weird alien heart attack.
To do it, add 2g of gallium to a 10mL solution of 6M sulfuric acid and warm it up on a hot plate to 50 Celsius. It'll pull together to form a sphere of gallium. Now carefully touch the gallium with an Iron nail or iron wire. What's happening is first the gallium is reacting the sulfuric to form gallium sulfate that sticks to the surface and increases the surface tension to the point that it pulls itself together into a sphere. Then when an iron nail touches it the iron transfers electrons to the gallium (while being oxidized itself and thus dissolving slightly) and this causes the gallium sulfate to reduce back to gallium. The surface tension drops and the gallium drops away, If the iron is held just right, the gallium will drop away from the iron. The gallium then react with the sulfuric acid again and create gallium sulfate and pull itself back into a sphere. The cycle will repeat.
LINK REMOVED - I am not affiliated with the supplier at this time. Cheaper sources of gallium can be found on ebay and amazon.com ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Tc-5pUbH8
Make Potassium Nitrate from Instant Cold Packs and Potassium Hydroxide
Warning: This reaction will produce large quantities of toxic ammonia gas. Perform the reaction outside or in a fume hood. Potassium hydroxide is highly corrosive; wear gloves when working with it.
Also note that this video is for those interested in the chemistry, it's not cheaper/better/easier than buying it.
Some instant cold packs contain ammonium nitrate as their active ingredient and when mixed with potassium hydroxide will produce potassium nitrate and ammonia gas.
Get an instant cold pack that clearly says it contains ammonium nitrate, cut it open, and pour the contents into a container. If its unused there will be a water pouch that you can discard. The rest of the pack is ammonium nitrate. Usually its coated in an anti-caking agent so it'll be off-color.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iMeBxNcZf0
In this video we make a tinning solution for printed circuit boards.
Tinning solutions coat copper metal with a thin layer of tin. This is used to protect them from oxidation as well as make them somewhat easier to solder.
To make the solution we first get 1g of lead-free tin solder containing 95% or more of tin metal. Check the MSDS to be sure. Now to the solder we add 10mL of 30% hydrochloric acid. What we're making is tin chloride. The solution will bubble hydrogen as the tin dissolves. Leave it overnight and pour off the clear supernatant into 100mL of commercial metal polish that contains thiourea. I used "Tarn-X" brand for my experiments. You can also buy thiourea directly and use 5g per 100mL of water directly along with 1g of sulfuric acid. Anyway, however you obtain your thiourea solution, the added tin chloride will make it into a tinning solution.
Now just add in copper metal like that of a PCB and a thin layer of tin will coat it.
What's happening is that normally Tin chloride does not displace copper metal so you can't make tinning solution from just tin chloride. One perspective is that Tin has a lower redox potential than copper so it would actually consume energy to displace copper.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsw3lOnHaas
In this video we make sodium metal from menthol, sodium hydroxide, magnesium, baby oil, and a some lithium if necessary.
First, we get a flask and add in 14g of magnesium metal, this can be obtained from fire starters. Then we add in 20g of sodium hydroxide which is acquired from drain opener. Now the key catalyst is 1-2g of menthol crystals, these can easily be bought online. A magnetic stir bar should be added at this point. On top we add in 125mL of mineral oil, i recommend hypoallergenic baby oil. Finally, 3g of sodium metal is added to jump start the reaction and serve as a drying agent. If this cannot be obtained then the lithium hacked out of an AA energizer battery can be used.
The reaction mixture is connected to a gas bubbler and a thermometer is inserted. Magnetic stirring is applied and the contents kept suspended to prevent hot spots.
The mixture is heated to 120-130 celsius for 2 hours or until bubbling stops, whichever comes first. What's happening is the sodium or lithium metal jump start is reacting with any moisture present and destroying it. This is necessary to prevent damage to the glassware from the highly caustic reaction mixture at higher temperatures. If this damage is acceptable then the jump starter metal may be ignored.
After 2 hours or when the bubbling stops, heating is increased to 200 Celsius. Sodium metal is produced here as the magnesium reacts with sodium hydroxide to produce sodium, magnesium oxide, and hydrogen. Menthol serves as the catalyst, allowing this reaction to proceed in a controlled fashion at 200 Celsius. Other catalysts like tertiary alcohols or borneol may also be used.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsNoiFj3wlw
We show how to purify aluminum nitrate and strontium nitrate by recrystallization. This is important because those two substances must be extremely pure for our upcoming video on making glow in the dark powder.
First make aluminum nitrate from our previous video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4Ha1SJrazY
Dissolve the dry aluminum nitrate in water and filter off any insoluble materials. We could not filter it off before it dried in the previous video because the particles at that stage are much too small. It needs crystallize once to aggregate into particles large that can be filtered.
After filtering, dry off the aluminum nitrate. The desiccator bag might be useful here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJFfS_YbbYI
After drying, carefully weigh out the crystals. Then take that mass and add in 20% mass of water. So if you have 50g like me, you add 10g of water (or 10mL since density is 1g/mL).
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVA0rK_VITY
In this video we create a glow stick that pulses light.
To this we first dissolve 37mg of copper sulfate in 100mL water. In a separate container we dissolve 3.6g potassium thiocyanate, 1g sodium hydroxide and 0.2g luminol in 200mL of water. This solution is stirred until completely dissolved. Then the two solution are mixed and water is added until the total volume is 1L.
The solution may be heated to 50 celsius for improved effect.
30mL of 30% hydrogen peroxide is added with stirring and the lights are switched off. There would be a faint glow that pulses brightly every 30 seconds. I got 6 pulses before the reaction stopped.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo-7mhKXfoA
In this video we're going to demonstrate fluorescence thermochromism.
Simply dissolve a small amount of copper iodide into pyridine to form a clear yellow solution of trispyridine copper iodide.
Normally this does not fluoresce but if cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures it will fluoresce a strong yellow color.
To understand why this happens one must first understand a little about fluorescence. The ultraviolet light is absorbed by the molecule and excites electrons in it to higher energy levels. Normally the molecule bumps into other molecules and looses this energy, dropping the electrons back into their ground levels. In fluorescent materials though, the electrons release their energy first as fluorescent light before they loose their energy through collisions. In trispyridine copper iodide, the molecules vibrate and collide too much at room temperature and thus destroy any chance of fluorescence, so the substance looks non-fluorescent. But if cooled low enough, the molecules vibrate less and thus the electrons have more opportunity to emit light before a collision.
Now moving on, if a few drops of the trispyrdine copper iodide solution is put on a sheet of filter paper and allowed to dry. it looses a pyridine molecule to become bispyridine copper iodide. This substance is more stable and will fluoresce at room temperature. But cooling will not improve the fluorescence noticeably since the substance is already stable enough to resist collisional deactivation.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jDFx7yeBvw
In this video we fail at making pyrimethamine using a 2-step route.
Related videos:
Pyrimethamine playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLU79801KtVAUnKYktg8sXJUaEbHKxX5xx
Grignard reactions: https://youtu.be/EFQWD7-DCPI
Dean stark apparatus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxgpLp279Yc
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RlhPtx38fw
In this video we show how to make sodium metal without electrolysis using domestically available chemicals.
First 40g of sodium hydroxide and 30g of magnesium are place in a steel container with a fuse or sparkler and lit. A heavy lid is quickly placed over the mixture and allowed to burn. The mixture then allowed to cool and the resulting aggregate of sodium metal and magnesium oxide is chiseled out. The aggregate is then ground in a blender until the consistency of coarse sand. It is then poured into a flask and covered with 2x-4x the volume in dioxane. A stir bar is added and a distillation apparatus is outfitted on the mixture. It is then distilled with vigorous stirring. When the sodium is clearly visible on the surface of the liquid the stirring is reduced. When the height of the liquid is less than the diameter of the sodium globules the stirring is stopped completely. Distillation continues until dryness.
Once dry the heating is stopped and the sodium allowed to solidify. It can then be dislodged from the slag and stored under mineral oil. The sodium may additionally be cleaned by heating until molten under mineral to which a few drops of alcohol has been added. Light agitation may be applied to dislodge any residual slag.
Related videos:
How to make dioxane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zzrn-61XAY
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCrFFVVcPUI