I see
They have the obligatory mad shock haired scientist and his trusty sidekicks...
A group of boffins from Nottingham Uni is about to launch an entertaining short video guide to the periodic table - apparently designed to give them the chance to chuck sodium into water with unrestrained glee: The chap with the exemplary boffin's barnet is professor Martyn Poliakoff, who told El Reg that the site should be …
At least this will remove the need for any school kids to do anything exciting^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdangerous like chucking sodium into water themselves.
Perhaps the idea is that kids will see that if the study science they'll get to be "on the telly" and thus famous.
... wonder if they'll do the "slosh the mercury over the lab table" trick that my prep-school science master did :-)
If I hadn't read the background behind the site on here first I would have assumed it was a clip form a new comedy/science show, "Dom Jolly does chemistry"
I just wonder how long it will be before all those involved are arrested and detained for 42 days for aiding terrorists by showing how chemicals can go bang.
An urban legend (unverified, '50s, '60s) from Amsterdam goes as follows:
Over the year the chemistry faculty lab of the University of Amsterdam used to collect the sodium left-overs from practice in a big jar with petroleum. At the end of a fourth semester two students were (as usual) dispatched with the jar and two long tweezers to the moat running along the lab building. Their job was to dump the sodium scraps into the water one at the time, and let nature reclaim the element.
At first this was fun of course, watching the sodium perform all kinds of different stunts on the water, depending on scrap size. But after some time the students started to realise that they were going to be there for the best part of the day, dumping sodium at the rate they were instructed to maintain. By that time the thrill was gone and they decided to turn over the jar and dump its contents into the moat in one go.
Allegedly a blast resulted that took out a few parked cars and a lot of chemistry lab windows. The story doesn't recount the students' fate......
I got this story from my brother-in-law, who studied chemistry at that faculty in the '60s, though it happened before his time.
Well that site went into the bookmarks - sampled a few of the videos and, okay, the camera work is a bit "OU" naff, but apart from that these are quite interesting. Don't suppose they could get some sponsorship to fill that five minute slot after the Channel 4 news during the week? And I'd give a "well done" to whomever thought the idea of the website up.
@ghd(AC): nope, don't agree with you about Lady Boron being scary - thought she was kinda cute actually, and it's nice to see such enthusiasm.
Coat icon, because mine is the spill-stained, acid burned one on the door.... ;)
The dandelion-haired professor somehow got a doctorate in chemistry yet he only *thinks* hydrogen is a major component of water? It must be, he states, because the formula for water is H2O.
Uh, I think you have cause and effect reversed, Einstein. The formula is H2O *because* it contains hydrogen.
No wonder the yoofs in Blighty are falling behind in science education...
-Chris
Absolutely classic experiments. What happens if you burn sodium in fluorine? Well, we all know it should be spectacular - so let's do it! But the best one was the demonstration that diamonds are not forever, illustrated by heating one up and dropping it in liquid oxygen. Brilliant.
Oh, and the Braniac thing with the Caesium was faked. Ouch.
"The melting point of Sodium is around 96 degrees". And? Kelvin, Celsius, or Fahrenheit? (Yes, I know it's Celsius, but that's not the point.)
This video reminds me of a story I was told about the sodium store at Nottingham Uni. I was told it in the early 1990s but don't know when the alleged incident happened. The sodium store was underground, and it got flooded. All the doddery old chemistry profs were in a right flap, apparently. I bet it was a sight to see!
I'm going back over 30 years but I recall our Physics teacher standing in for the Chemistry guy, due to the latters illness. Back then, the stand in didn't 'teach' bugger all about the subject, it was just a time filler until the bell sounded.
Anyway, to pass the time, Physics Teach brought out a jar of Potassium and went on to explain it's volatility, why it was kept in a glass jar full of oil, etc. . . . Us all being wide-eyed and curious, not to mention said Phys bod was fond of telling a tale or two, we talked him round to giving us a demo. Outside into the 'playground' we went.
To set the scene, it had been raining that morning and there were quite a few large puddles. So Phys opens the jar and cuts a piece of K off the size of a match head and chucks it into the puddle we had all gathered round . . . Phut-phut-fizz-fizz!!
GREAT-WOW-COR were the general expressions, do a bigger piece Phys!! And so he did.
The piece he chucked in was 3" long x half inch wide x quarter inch deep.
What happened?
Let's just say there was no more puddle as the resultant EXPLOSION blew it all over everyone watching, made us all deaf for the rest of the day and pretty much woke the dead!!
Ahh, schooldays . . . Don't you miss them??
PS I learnt the periodic table off by heart and still remember it to this day . . . Here's the first 20 . . .
H, He, Li, Be, B, C, N, O, F, Ne, Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, S, Cl, Ar, K, Ca and so on!!
And NO!!! I didn't Google or Wiki it . . . I truly do remember!!
@ Chris Hydrogen
"Uh, I think you have cause and effect reversed, Einstein. The formula is H2O *because* it contains hydrogen".
No, Wittgenstein, I believe you have cause and effect confused with logical argument.
Yes, the formula for water is H2O because that is its structure.
However, if all I know about water is its formula, then I can deduce Hydrogen is a major component.
the yoofs in Blighty may well be falling behind in science education, but you have not provided a logical argument for this..
anonymous Chris
The dandelion-haired professor somehow got a doctorate in chemistry yet he only *thinks* hydrogen is a major component of water? It must be, he states, because the formula for water is H2O.
Uh, I think you have cause and effect reversed, Einstein. The formula is H2O *because* it contains hydrogen.
No wonder the yoofs in Blighty are falling behind in science education...
-Chris
I remember a mate telling me about an incident at a large and well-known chemical company. A lab tech was tasking with clearing out the old sample jars. One of these was labelled "miscellaneous plastic sample" and had a lump of plasticky looking stuff in some oily stuff in it. He poured the contents down the sink.
Apparently, the noise made by a sizeable chunk of Potassium hitting the water in the U bend when all the pipework's made of heavy duty Stainless Steel and there's a SS sink on one end as a megaphone gives Krakatoa a run for its money.
A personal recollection from my school days is of the Chem. master attempting to pare a small amount of Potassium off a stick of same into a water bath behind a screen. The expression on his face as he soiled himself in the split-second between the stick of Potassium slipping from the tongs he was holding it with and him hitting the deck behind the bench has stayed with me to this day.
Yeah I remember seeing that one in physics one day, the nice big pyrex dish kinda just broke in to bits. Never got to play with any mercury although mate did tell me about banging mercury nails into things with a rubber hammer - gotta love liquid nitrogen...
Diamond (C) + heat + (liquid)O2, I'll bet that was fun... boom + CO2 formed probably.
Work it right and you could almost make glucose C6H12O6 mind you I don't think you could the mass explosion would be funny though.
Remember distilling Crude Oil, some liquid spilt wiped it up and well went too close to the bunsen.... yeah I know the fuel / air ratio was right , I just hope no-one put anything remotely smoldering in that bin...
I'll watch the video later - darn work network..
When we found out about this in school... Cue nicking large amounts of sodium over time, making small holes in a model boat, filling said model with said nicked sodium, covering the holes with filter paper, then sailing the model out on to a nearby lake filled with un-knowing folk on pedal boats...
Oh, how we laughed that day. :)