In this cool science experiment we make a thunderstorm in a test tube using alcohol, sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate.
WARNING:This experiment is extremely dangerous as it involves corrosive acids and flammable liquids with a small, but not negligible, chance of a damaging explosion. Face shields, goggles, fire extinguishers and fire safety protocols must be present. This should only be attempted by an experienced chemist.
Just get a test tube of 95% alcohol and carefully pipette a layer in a bottom of sulfuric acid. Then drop in some potassium permanganate crystals.
The reaction of the permanganate and the sulfuric acid produce manganese heptoxide that explodes on contact with organic matter like the alcohol. This also works with acetone. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyzlt-dVgWQ
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We show how to make glow sticks and go through all the chemicals needed as well as how to make different colors. We also talk about the chemistry and scientifically research a proposed mechanism.
To make the glow stick mix together the following:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tItOOpyJP5k
In a variation of luminol chemiluminescence, we make a coin appear to glow with ghostly trails.
Get 10mg of luminol and dissolve it in 10mL of 10% ammonia solution, the exact concentration isn't critical. Then add 1mL of 3% hydrogen peroxide and dilute the whole solution into 100mL of distilled water.
Get a piece of copper metal, a penny will do, and drop it in with the lights out.
The penny will start to glow as the surface dissolves to form a copper amine complex. The complex catalyzes the reaction of hydrogen peroxide on luminol and causes the solution near the coin to glow. Bright trails can be seen if the copper is moved.
Eventually the concentration of copper in solution rises to the point that all of solution glows and masks the glow near the coin. The reaction will quickly extinguish as the luminol is used up.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ4145kogvY
We show the chemistry of photography using silver chloride that we make ourselves from table salt and silver nitrate.
Silver chloride has the interesting property that it reacts to light. This photosensitive chemical will decompose into dark silver powder and chlorine.
To make it, just mix one gram of silver nitrate made in our previous video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6hPgGV_qAg ) and half a gram of salt in separate quantities of water. Then mix the two solutions with shaking, this forms silver chloride. Then let it stand for five minutes. This will cause the silver chloride to settle to the bottom. After five minutes pour off the extra liquid. Spread out the silver in a layer onto a piece of paper. Let it dry in darkness as you don't want the light to expose it before you're ready. Once it is dry, place a stencil or template of something you want "photographed" over the silver chloride. You might want to weigh it down with a piece of glass.
When you're ready, shine a strong light onto it for ten minutes or so. The silver chloride will darken in the areas that are exposed to light. Remove the glass and template and you will have a negative photo of what you placed over it.
The image won't keep forever, eventually the whole thing will darken.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e0-AbwBDYM
I stick my hand (momentarily) directly into liquid nitrogen but don't suffer any injuries due to the Leidenfrost effect.
The Leidenfrost effect is the formation of a gas barrier between a hot surface and a boiling liquid if the temperature difference is great enough. This gas barrier greatly slows the heat transfer between the two and allows the liquid to last longer and consequently the hot surface to remain hot longer. This effect can be seen in a frying pan as it's being heated. At first the water quickly boils as it's dropped in but at a hot enough temperature the Leidenfrost effect takes over and makes the water skate around the surface lasting a very long time.
Liquid nitrogen vs. a room temperature object will also exhibit the effect preventing it from instantly freezing the object... such as my hand.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjsMV1MglA4
Some lab notes for the month of august 2020
I was exploring more nitric acid and wanted to see if calcium nitrate and sodium bisulfate would be viable. The rationale is that the reaction of calcium nitrate and sulfuric acid is well-known but almost never done directly since it produces insoluble calcium sulphate that solidifies into a rock in the flask. It has to be drilled out and risks break the flask. The traditional way to use calcium nitrate is the "wet process" where we first mix it with water and then add sulfuric acid. The calcium sulfate precipitates out and the dilute nitric acid is filtered and purified by distillation. This is slow and laborious so i was wondering if sodium bisulfate could be advantageous in producing a residue that didn't need to be drilled. This would save time and less risk of breaking glassware.
So i mixed 49g of calcium ammonium nitrate decahydrate with 150g of sodium bisulfate monohydrate and heated it directly in the "dry process" of making nitric acid. Nitric acid was distilled over and the yield was 85%. But more importantly the solid residue of sodium sulfate, sodium bisulfate and calcium sulfate was soluble. Upon addition of water it dissolved into a slurry that could easily be poured out. So i think the process is superior to using sulfuric acid as there is overall less labor involved.
For thoroughness i also tried the wet process by first dissolving the calcium nitrate in 50mL of water and adding sodium bisulfate. After distillation the yield was 95% but with 50mL of extra water diluting it. Personally i prefer higher concentration acid and don't mind the lower yields of the dry process.
Anyway. I was going to do additional nitric acid experiments but my hotplate failed.
Turns out the temperature sensor failed open and the safety limit of the hotplate refused to turn it on. It was a simple matter of finding the broken sensor and replacing it. The interesting note is that the hotplate uses a PT1000 RTD and it seemed the original was spot welded in. I didn't have spot welding capability so i used copper foil to crimp the connection.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa2OMNaHn_Y
More lab notes on making sulfur trioxide and oleum. This time i was able to get up to 20%-25% yield with improved heating with better insulation. Also found out that precise temperature control is important and that the polymerization of the sulfur trioxide phases can be easily initiated by smearing it with a pipette on air.
Previous videos:
Purification of Sulfuric Acid by Distillation Revisited: https://youtu.be/0Gb9rM9BJ8I
Lab notes - Making Oleum - Success (part 1): https://youtu.be/wB2zzm8VP9Y
Lab notes - Making Oleum - 20% yield improvement: This Video
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUyJ6CibhSg
NurdRage Presents: 4 ways to make fire without matches or lighters using chemistry.
Warning: These experiments are for educational purposes only and are not meant to be repeated.
First, a small mount of potassium permanganate is mixed with glycerin. The reaction might be too slow to do anything so we added a few drops of water to get things going.
Second, a mixture of ammonium nitrate and zinc is place ontop of a paper towel. The finer the ingredients are the better this will work. To activate it a few drops of hydrochloric acid are added. (We are well aware that addition of chloride from salt or ammonium chloride will produce a water-activated mixture. But we specifically choose not to demonstrate this for safety reasons, as that particular composition can spontaneously ignite during handling causing severe injury).
Third, a piece of tissue is soaked in acetone to make it more flammable. Then a drop of sulfuric acid is drawn into a pipette and the pipette is dipped in potassium permanganate to pick up some crystals. Then the sulfuric acid is squeezed out causing it to mix with permanganate and form manganese heptoxide that instantly sets the tissue on fire.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgh76gPSg3M
In this video we use a nafion membrane cell to make sodium hydroxide by electrolysis of sodium bicarbonate and separating and isolating the ions.
If you electrolyze water you generate hydroxide ions at the cathode, and hydronium ions at the anode. If you could some how split sodium bicarbonate, then mix the sodium ions with the hydroxide ions, you could make sodium hydroxide.
Of course "just" splitting ions completely glosses over the nuances and complexities of chemistry. But interestingly enough, a cationic exchange membrane like nafion essentially allows us to that by allowing cations to transfer through, but blocks anions.
To do this, all we do is get the nafion divided membrane cell we built in a previous video and insert it into a larger container of water and sodium bicarbonate. Using a titanium cathode and a cobalt oxide anode (although you can use nickel, platinum, or carbon), we make the sodium bicarbaonte solution the anolyte and use deionized water as the catholyte. Applying an electric current we separate the ions in sodium bicarbonate and pass the sodium through the membrane into the cathode side where they meet up with the hydroxide produced and create sodium hydroxide.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcoTp2IUWMc