Congratulations Neil. Technicians are largely ignored but we keep stuff working and carry out much of the work required by Scientists and Engineers to push things forward.
It seems all the most important jobs are VASTLY under appreciated, like garbage collectors or teachers or ANY blue collar job for that matter. If you don't have a fancy title and a fancy suit you must not do anything important, right? So sad...
@@roberttelarket4934 I don't know if he's a professor but definitely a chemist. It's just a different career path. Loosely speaking a professor is employed to lead research in a particular department and teach, etc. Technicians at universities are more part of the infrastructure and work behind the scenes, they know how it all works, how to fix it, how to not break it and so on. When I was doing chemistry I would always find myself learning a lot more from the techs. Great bunch.
I fondly remember Neil from my time at Nottingham University as a PhD student in the 1980s. At one time, I was doing some experiments with quite large quantities of metallic sodium. I remember disposing of the sodium using isopropyl alcohol in a fume cupboard. I think it was the very same fume cupboard as in the Periodic Videos. Congratulations to Neil for the Royal Society Award.
Such a lovely demonstration of scientific communication, too: someone writes in with an improved design for the reaction, they test the improved design, and then they discuss how the improvements work and why.
This takes me back to 1959, in the garage with my father, when he asked, "Do you want to see something amazing?" Then he lit a tiny strip of magnesium and produced the brightest fire I'd ever seen and gave me another brilliant childhood memory. Thanks for reminding me.👍
The basic experiment - burning magnesium in nitrogen was cool and stuff. But the idea to add a candle, to proof the oxygen burns first, was brilliant! Congratulations to Neil! Well deserved recognition.
I love Brady's Videos! the comments section are one of the few places left on the net where people are still decent and civil with each other and there are little to no trolls
Very cool experiment and huge congratulations to Neil for his well-deserved recognition. Neil, and folks like him who make all this work, do not get enough praise.
As the O2 and N2 are consumed, more air is drawn in through the spout on the beaker. To get clearer N2 combustion, you could pour some LN2 onto the benchtop to ensure that the makeup air is actually N2.
The experiment with the candle also consumed O2 leaving less for the magnesium, which may have given it more opportunity to react with N2, resulting in the nicer yield of Magnesium Nitride. Would have been nice to see the reaction with an active source of N2 gas!
Yes it would be interesting to see if the magnesium would react to completion with an excess of N2. I also wonder if external heating while in the N2, without first burning in oxygen, would work.
@@robertroy8803 I agree. A resistive heating element should be able to reach and survive at the 850C or so this reaction apparently takes. Then of course it brings me to wonder if you could use a magnesium ribbon as the resistive heating element itself in the pure N2 atmosphere. That would be fun to try out.
This is so cool. I wonder if you can get ahold of other alkali/alkali earth metals to see if you can get nitrogen to react with them and see how easy it is?
I reacted magnesium with nitrogen in a spectacular experiment in high school (Sweden, STEM focused program). We used fine magnesium powder in a ceramic crucible with a perforated lid. First we ignited the powder, and let it burn openly for 3-5 seconds, while stering the burning powder with a metal spatula. We were then supposed to put on the lid, but for many of the groups, the magnesium actually reacted with nitrogen from the open air, no lid necessary. We performed this experiment in groups of three, so I got to actually steer the burning magnesium powder myself! For a 16 year old high-schooler, this intensely green and sparkling fire was exciting indeed, and was part of what made me decide on wanting to become a chemist!
I failed chemistry and have never had that much of an interest in it, only found this channel when I was curious if pianos actually explode, but Neil comes across as such an intelligent and knowledgable man and has the ability to keep you watching to learn even more. Congratulations on your award Neil - reading the other comments I can tell how much you mean to others and how much people appreciate your work. Great video.
I’ve been watching the prof for years and love every time I get updated about a new video. This video is no exception. Keep up the great work at the university yall!
Seeing this simple type of experiment really demonstrate why we as humans thought that alchemy was so possible. We now understand most of that "magic" that grabbed our curiosity long ago. Watching you recreate them brings some of that magic back and it's enjoyable to watch.
This video made me remember my chemistry teacher demonstrating the same reaction but with a much larger amount of magnesium. The "mountain" was about 11 cm wide by 7 cm high and the reaction was quite spectactular :D Now, about 25 years later, having studied chemistry and working in product safety, I cannot believe he did that in the class room outside of a dedicated fume hood :O Edit: added missing word
Back in the Dark Ages of the early 1960's, a year before my college course in Inorganic Chemistry, a professor had a serious accident with burning metal powder in the classroom. That demonstration involved pouring liquid Air onto a pile of Aluminum powder. The powder was placed on a slab of aluminum, about 1/2 inch thick, set over a lab sink. The same demo had been performed for years, without incident. *This* time, it detonated rather than deflagrating (normal burning)! The professor was thrown back against the wall, many windows were blown out, and much of the class was temporarily deafened. The aluminum slab, kept as a warning for the future, had a dent over an inch deep, from a completely unconfined explosion of maybe 20 grams of Al powder. The irony of the situation was that on the prof's office desk was the current issue of a chemistry teachers' journal, warning about the dangers of this very experiment; no one had read it yet...
Always a happy day for me when a new chemical demonstration from Sir Martyn and his colleagues appears. Starting over 60 years ago with a chemistry set in my youth, I have always been fascinated by chemical reactions and the characteristics of the elements, and I always enjoy learning something new from these delightful demonstrations!!
I used to watch your videos years ago, and then I forgot the channel name after I cancelled my Internet for a while. I'm subscribed now, and I just want to mention how much I like your interesting, intelligent and fun videos. Thank you.
My father used to end up with unused scraps of magnesium and demonstrate how they burn to us as kids every once in a year or so. He would say "Don't be afraid it's okay! Smoke is fine too! You shouldn't need magnesium for a year. Just don't breathe it too close and don't touch it!" then he would explain how it was weaponized and caused horrible burns and pain. He was a crazy chemist.
@@Muonium1 That's a ridiculous claim to make for either magnesium or phosphorus. Magnesium oxide has properties similar to quicklime (aka calcium oxide), so if you breathe in magnesium oxide smoke, it will rapidly react with the moisture in your mouth, nose, throat and lungs to make magnesium hydroxide. This is mostly insoluble, so the inside of your lungs would get coated with a layer of it - if that happened enough and a thick enough layer formed, it could suffocate you by blocking your lungs ability to absorb oxygen. Phosphorus oxide smoke is orders of magnitude worse - it also reacts with the moisture in your mouth, nose, throat and lungs, but this time the product of that reaction is phosphoric acid. This is water soluble and is a fairly strong acid, and will pull fluid from your lung tissue and blood by osmosis, filling your lungs with acid solution from within, drowning you in your own bodily fluids. This is a horrible way to die, and is why phosphorus munitions are classed as chemical weapons if used against people, which is listed as a war crime by the United Nations. So in both case, hardly benign. More like the complete opposite.
@@lloydevans2900 maybe actually touch grass once in your lifetime instead of incessantly making a fool of yourself on the internet? just a suggestion. I've been in classrooms literally countless times where both of these experiments are done, breathed the oxides of both, and like literally everyone else in the room suffered ZERO ill effects - shocker, I know. There are hundreds of videos on youtube alone of the 'philosopher's stone' phosphorous burning experiment being done in lecture halls and classrooms outside of a hood with the room filled with the resultant smoke. no one died. Presumably you've also never read the label on a bottle of Coke before either. Amazing.
4:15 I think another thing that's a contributing factor is how the magnesium is burning in what form. Professor's magnesium is in a strip which doesn't have good surface area to burn well and create plenty of heat and nitrogen gas quickly (I'm assuming the shape and size). Karsten's magnesium is in granules which has plenty of surface area comparatively to burn well and way more can be burned in the same time. The best comparison I can think of is how gunpowder is made in different forms like long rods of British Cordite (Professor may have seen it), flakes, ball, fine-ground, etc. I'm guessing that I'm in getting into engineering with this, but just my opinion
besides surface area the problem seems to me also more one of thermal mass and inertia. a magnesium ribbon is so thin and the burning portion so small, that when it transitions to the nitrogen atmosphere there is simply an insufficient amount of total heat present to push the reacting portion over the 'hill' of activation energy to get the nitrogen reaction going and it simply goes out. the pile of granules is large enough such that a sufficient amount of heat IS present to dissociate a large enough quantity of N2 at once that the reaction goes.
It is true that gunpowder comes in many different grain sizes, from fine powder used in small arms, all the way up to large granules for cannons - this is still made today for use in fireworks, since it is ideal as the lifting charge for large mortar tubes or shells. However, cordite is NOT gunpowder - it is a smokeless (at least compared to gunpowder) propellant composed of 65% nitrocellulose (aka guncotton), 30% nitroglycerin and 5% petroleum jelly (aka vaseline). Cordite is made into the spaghetti-like "cords" by partially dissolving the mixture in acetone to form a more malleable paste, which is then extruded through a nozzle in a process not entirely unlike industrial scale pasta-making. The majority of the acetone is allowed to evaporate afterwards, though the finished cordite will still contain a small amount, up to 1% depending on age. Bundles of cordite were used as the main propellant charge in most artillery shells. For small shells this was incorporated into the cartridge, for larger shells (battleship main guns) the cordite was in separate cotton or linen bags, several of which would be pushed into the gun breech behind the shell. Interesting side-story: During both WW1 and WW2, there was a difficulty in producing enough acetone for cordite manufacture in the UK. At the time, acetone was made by thermal decomposition of calcium acetate, which itself was made by neutralising acetic acid (vinegar) with either calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide. The latter were not a problem, since they can be made from chalk or limestone. But making enough acetic acid was a problem, since the starting material for that was ethanol - the same alcohol we drink, most of which was produced by fermentation. There was a public campaign at the time for collecting chestnuts and acorns, since these contain high levels of fermentable starches. Liquor brewed with these had a revolting taste, so people would not be tempted to drink it unless absolutely desperate, but it would make ethanol almost as effectively as brewing with grains, so this was actually used as a feedstock for making ethanol and subsequently acetic acid and finally acetone for the cordite factories.
Brady, it's gonna be perfect if you write down on professor Poliakoff's explaination at 5:00 like what you did at 1:40 This is a very cool experiment and explaination. Like watching scientist doing observation and thought process on a real time. Thank you
Wonderful! I'm going to see whether I have some magnesium granules in my prep room- this will make an excellent demo for my students and will trigger lots of discussion!
When I was in school for engineering I did pretty well but one of my bigger demerits was that I very nearly failed basic intro to chem. I found this channel from @deepskyvideos and watched every episode since the start. I kinda get chemistry a little now, and I think this episode may be my favorite! Congrats Neil!
We did this in freshman chemistry, oh these many years ago. Ended up writing my dissertation on polymerization catalysis, and then had a nice career in industry.
This was a great episode. I think this doubled my knowledge about magnesium and nitrogen. The experiment itself makes me think it would be an easy layman demonstration.
Love these videos and love love love Martyn! Been watching for so many years, his voice gives me such nostalgia. He looks as young as the day I first saw him ❤
For such an advanced chemist, the prof tends to be regularly shocked when increasing the surface area of his ingredients makes his reaction work better.
What I found fascinating is the absolutely laminar flow (1:44 for example, again at 4:54 and again at 5:33) of the "volcano" plume before breaking down to turbulent flow around 1:51, 5:03 and 5:41 respectively. Great experiment on so many levels.
I did that experiment with magnesium turnings as a freshman chem student. Not because I’m super-smart or anything but because the text we were using said to use them. What I remember was the odor of the nitride: similar to the odor one gets after an electrical discharge across metal contacts, or when a tungsten filament light bulb breaks while in service.
I have done this experiment quite some time ago with magnesium powder and you can get a big pile of pure greenish magnesium nitride even without the beaker. It's very fascinating!
Profesor has been trying to do this for so long and finally succeeded. Maybe it will be similar with Coca-Cola - one day he will successfully drink it for the first time;-) I'm happy to see the reaction!!
I had once left an iron cylinder full of magnesium powder inside of my furnace. I hoped that without oxygen (as it was burned by coal) it wouldn't react and it would melt. But instead I got this weird yellow thing that after a while it's color changed to either white or black. And I think it also smeled a bit badly. Thanks to your video I finally know what it was.
could another factor in the difference of success between granulated and ribbon magnesium be that of surface area for the reaction to occur? surely the granules have a greater surfact area to interact with the nitrogen though temperature is also likily quite relavant.
Yess please I love this channel my hands down favorite Brady thank you so much with blessing us with such amazing beautiful minds sir Martin is my favorite professor as I’m sure he’s many others please keep up the great work thanks again Brady
Thank you for sharing these demonstrations. I have always loved chemistry but ran out of brainpower for it before university - balancing redox equations was a bit much for me, let alone remembering which catalysts one uses for organics reactions. Seeing these performed and explained so clearly is the next best thing.
Interesting. I think Magnesuim is probably only second to Sodium in the schoolboys book of "interesting elements". When I was at school we used magnesium ribbon to set off the Zinc and Sulphur rocket fuel we made. The recipe for which we discovered in a book called Amateur Rocketry that someone had donated to the school library. Our Chemistry teacher appeared unfamiliar with the reaction between zinc and sulphur and allowed us to experim4ent with it unsupervised at the Wednesday lunchtime chemistry club! Sadly we wernt able to launch our rockets but we did succeed in producing 4 foot long flames that made a satisfying wooshhh and filled the top half of the lab with white smoke. It all came to an end when one of our number managed to set off a mortise and pestle full of fuel while holding it. Big flash and he lost his eyebrows. Happy days.
Only just last week on the 22nd August, the BBC released an episode of Mark Steel's In Town which was all about Mark's humorous take on his visit to Nottingham, but I was very disappointed that two of the town's most famous personalities, Professor Martyn Poliakoff, & Neil Barnes, were never mentioned! Will definitely have to write to the BBC & Mark Steel, insisting that Nottingham be revisited so that the omission can be rectified!
When I was a chemistry teacher we did an experiment where the students oxidized (burned) magnesium in a ceramic crucible. We made a small amount of Mg3N2, which I didn’t think would happen because N2 gas is usually considered inert. I think I was more excited than my students were!
wow this is definitely the first time I hear a chemist describe phenolphtaleins colour as "blood red".... i'd say that looks more like some beautiful variation of pink
Thank you, as always, for the amazing and interesting video. Every time I see P.V. put out a video I know it's gonna be a great day :) Cheers and stay safe!
When I was a teenager, I tried to extinguish a magnesium fire with a cup full of pond-water, and a yellow cloud of ammonia rose up into my face! For decades, I wondered why. (I thought maybe it was some nitrogenous impurities in the water, but now, I have my answer!) Thanks Professor! (And Neil!)
One video that I would find very interesting is how disinfectants came to be a staple in the medical field, and the chemistry involved in that. I just finished reading „The Butchering Art“ by Lindsey Fitzharris where he describes how Phenol (or „Carbolic Acid“ if you prefer the old fashioned name) became the go-to substance of the early 19th century for disinfecting everything. I think there is quite a bit of interesting chemistry around Phenol that might be worth exploring a little bit.
Congratulations Neil. Technicians are largely ignored but we keep stuff working and carry out much of the work required by Scientists and Engineers to push things forward.
Technicians are just as important and none of you should feel lesser ❤
Love technicians, wanted to be one but wasn't hard enough! Now I'm a cook, though, so similar scenario. Great channel innit
It seems all the most important jobs are VASTLY under appreciated, like garbage collectors or teachers or ANY blue collar job for that matter.
If you don't have a fancy title and a fancy suit you must not do anything important, right? So sad...
Why isn’t Neil a chemist(i.e not pharmacist) or Professor of Chemistry?
@@roberttelarket4934 I don't know if he's a professor but definitely a chemist. It's just a different career path. Loosely speaking a professor is employed to lead research in a particular department and teach, etc. Technicians at universities are more part of the infrastructure and work behind the scenes, they know how it all works, how to fix it, how to not break it and so on. When I was doing chemistry I would always find myself learning a lot more from the techs. Great bunch.
I fondly remember Neil from my time at Nottingham University as a PhD student in the 1980s. At one time, I was doing some experiments with quite large quantities of metallic sodium. I remember disposing of the sodium using isopropyl alcohol in a fume cupboard. I think it was the very same fume cupboard as in the Periodic Videos. Congratulations to Neil for the Royal Society Award.
Nice to see Neil getting honored. He's one of the main faces of this channel and deserves recognition for his part.
He does! Listen how the narrator is talking about Neil doing everything! Look how I don't know the guy's name but I know Neil's name :)
Yes ! I fully agree.
Please do more things that keep Neil satisfied!
I like the implication that Neil is some dangerous force that has to be satiated with fun chemistry. It seems pretty believable really
Feed him some villagers from time to time
Such as reacting boron trioxide (B2O3) or boric acid (H3BO3) with Magnesium nitride to create an ultra hard cubic Boron nitride. ;)
@@koenth2359 You can't satisfy a dragon with just a few villagers. He needs more!
Such a lovely demonstration of scientific communication, too: someone writes in with an improved design for the reaction, they test the improved design, and then they discuss how the improvements work and why.
As always, When Prof., Neil, & Brady combine, they cause a reaction that never fails to make our minds glow brighter.
Well said !
This takes me back to 1959, in the garage with my father, when he asked, "Do you want to see something amazing?" Then he lit a tiny strip of magnesium and produced the brightest fire I'd ever seen and gave me another brilliant childhood memory. Thanks for reminding me.👍
The basic experiment - burning magnesium in nitrogen was cool and stuff. But the idea to add a candle, to proof the oxygen burns first, was brilliant!
Congratulations to Neil! Well deserved recognition.
Very nice experiment and congratulations to Neil, the Hucksbee Award is more than deserved!!!
I love Brady's Videos! the comments section are one of the few places left on the net where people are still decent and civil with each other and there are little to no trolls
Very cool experiment and huge congratulations to Neil for his well-deserved recognition. Neil, and folks like him who make all this work, do not get enough praise.
Hamiltons dad rules
As the O2 and N2 are consumed, more air is drawn in through the spout on the beaker. To get clearer N2 combustion, you could pour some LN2 onto the benchtop to ensure that the makeup air is actually N2.
this bothered me so much lol
It is always of the utmost importance that Neil be satisfied. He’s a treasure and I appreciate his contribution to your videos.
Old man learning something new. This is why I love this channel!
At 80-plus, I quite agree !!🙂😉
The experiment with the candle also consumed O2 leaving less for the magnesium, which may have given it more opportunity to react with N2, resulting in the nicer yield of Magnesium Nitride. Would have been nice to see the reaction with an active source of N2 gas!
Yes it would be interesting to see if the magnesium would react to completion with an excess of N2. I also wonder if external heating while in the N2, without first burning in oxygen, would work.
@@robertroy8803 I agree. A resistive heating element should be able to reach and survive at the 850C or so this reaction apparently takes. Then of course it brings me to wonder if you could use a magnesium ribbon as the resistive heating element itself in the pure N2 atmosphere. That would be fun to try out.
Yeah similar thoughts, tungsten wire inside to heat the magnesium and flush the whole container with N2 before starting. Would be interesting.
@@robertroy8803 Ignition by laser might work when lowered in the N2 vapour? This is more a question because I'm no expert.
This was the basic idea of putting a candle in.
This is so cool. I wonder if you can get ahold of other alkali/alkali earth metals to see if you can get nitrogen to react with them and see how easy it is?
alkali metal nitrogen compounds tend to be a bit excitable.
or what if other gases, like helium or xenon is in the beaker, instead of air
@@Paonporteur thanks for the info. That would be cool though 😁
I reacted magnesium with nitrogen in a spectacular experiment in high school (Sweden, STEM focused program).
We used fine magnesium powder in a ceramic crucible with a perforated lid.
First we ignited the powder, and let it burn openly for 3-5 seconds, while stering the burning powder with a metal spatula. We were then supposed to put on the lid, but for many of the groups, the magnesium actually reacted with nitrogen from the open air, no lid necessary.
We performed this experiment in groups of three, so I got to actually steer the burning magnesium powder myself! For a 16 year old high-schooler, this intensely green and sparkling fire was exciting indeed, and was part of what made me decide on wanting to become a chemist!
I failed chemistry and have never had that much of an interest in it, only found this channel when I was curious if pianos actually explode, but Neil comes across as such an intelligent and knowledgable man and has the ability to keep you watching to learn even more. Congratulations on your award Neil - reading the other comments I can tell how much you mean to others and how much people appreciate your work. Great video.
Of all the things I've never considered - whether a piano can explode has never been one of them. What is the answer please?
I’ve been watching the prof for years and love every time I get updated about a new video. This video is no exception. Keep up the great work at the university yall!
Seeing this simple type of experiment really demonstrate why we as humans thought that alchemy was so possible. We now understand most of that "magic" that grabbed our curiosity long ago. Watching you recreate them brings some of that magic back and it's enjoyable to watch.
This video made me remember my chemistry teacher demonstrating the same reaction but with a much larger amount of magnesium. The "mountain" was about 11 cm wide by 7 cm high and the reaction was quite spectactular :D
Now, about 25 years later, having studied chemistry and working in product safety, I cannot believe he did that in the class room outside of a dedicated fume hood :O
Edit: added missing word
Yes - Health and Safety, less fun but Chemists live longer.
Back in the Dark Ages of the early 1960's, a year before my college course in Inorganic Chemistry, a professor had a serious accident with burning metal powder in the classroom.
That demonstration involved pouring liquid Air onto a pile of Aluminum powder. The powder was placed on a slab of aluminum, about 1/2 inch thick, set over a lab sink. The same demo had been performed for years, without incident. *This* time, it detonated rather than deflagrating (normal burning)! The professor was thrown back against the wall, many windows were blown out, and much of the class was temporarily deafened. The aluminum slab, kept as a warning for the future, had a dent over an inch deep, from a completely unconfined explosion of maybe 20 grams of Al powder.
The irony of the situation was that on the prof's office desk was the current issue of a chemistry teachers' journal, warning about the dangers of this very experiment; no one had read it yet...
What a cool experiment!! One of my favourites from this channel.
And, congratulations to Neil...very well deserved!!
Always a happy day for me when a new chemical demonstration from Sir Martyn and his colleagues appears. Starting over 60 years ago with a chemistry set in my youth, I have always been fascinated by chemical reactions and the characteristics of the elements, and I always enjoy learning something new from these delightful demonstrations!!
Beautiful to watch burning
This channel is a home away from home for me.
Giving Neil that award is not only well-deserved but clever; you know his acceptance speech will be the shortest they've ever heard!
I used to watch your videos years ago, and then I forgot the channel name after I cancelled my Internet for a while. I'm subscribed now, and I just want to mention how much I like your interesting, intelligent and fun videos. Thank you.
Glad you’re back
Dr. Brady, I see we are tapping into our roots across channels.
Great to see!
My father used to end up with unused scraps of magnesium and demonstrate how they burn to us as kids every once in a year or so. He would say "Don't be afraid it's okay! Smoke is fine too! You shouldn't need magnesium for a year. Just don't breathe it too close and don't touch it!" then he would explain how it was weaponized and caused horrible burns and pain.
He was a crazy chemist.
sounds more like phosphorous than Mg, though smoke from both is fairly benign.
@@Muonium1 Magnesium is used instead of phosphorus in Geneva-compliant incendiary munitions as well as in tracer burners, i believe.
@@Muonium1 That's a ridiculous claim to make for either magnesium or phosphorus. Magnesium oxide has properties similar to quicklime (aka calcium oxide), so if you breathe in magnesium oxide smoke, it will rapidly react with the moisture in your mouth, nose, throat and lungs to make magnesium hydroxide. This is mostly insoluble, so the inside of your lungs would get coated with a layer of it - if that happened enough and a thick enough layer formed, it could suffocate you by blocking your lungs ability to absorb oxygen.
Phosphorus oxide smoke is orders of magnitude worse - it also reacts with the moisture in your mouth, nose, throat and lungs, but this time the product of that reaction is phosphoric acid. This is water soluble and is a fairly strong acid, and will pull fluid from your lung tissue and blood by osmosis, filling your lungs with acid solution from within, drowning you in your own bodily fluids. This is a horrible way to die, and is why phosphorus munitions are classed as chemical weapons if used against people, which is listed as a war crime by the United Nations.
So in both case, hardly benign. More like the complete opposite.
@@lloydevans2900 maybe actually touch grass once in your lifetime instead of incessantly making a fool of yourself on the internet? just a suggestion. I've been in classrooms literally countless times where both of these experiments are done, breathed the oxides of both, and like literally everyone else in the room suffered ZERO ill effects - shocker, I know. There are hundreds of videos on youtube alone of the 'philosopher's stone' phosphorous burning experiment being done in lecture halls and classrooms outside of a hood with the room filled with the resultant smoke. no one died. Presumably you've also never read the label on a bottle of Coke before either. Amazing.
These videos have kept me well interested in Chemistry, long after my schooling years. Thank you.
WOW! That is a beautiful reaction! This is fantastic footage, thank you!
Wow, great collaboration to get the experiment to work successfully. And congrats, Neil!
Forgot to add, I love watching your videos because I learn so much and become more curious about this wonderful universe.
4:15 I think another thing that's a contributing factor is how the magnesium is burning in what form. Professor's magnesium is in a strip which doesn't have good surface area to burn well and create plenty of heat and nitrogen gas quickly (I'm assuming the shape and size). Karsten's magnesium is in granules which has plenty of surface area comparatively to burn well and way more can be burned in the same time.
The best comparison I can think of is how gunpowder is made in different forms like long rods of British Cordite (Professor may have seen it), flakes, ball, fine-ground, etc. I'm guessing that I'm in getting into engineering with this, but just my opinion
besides surface area the problem seems to me also more one of thermal mass and inertia. a magnesium ribbon is so thin and the burning portion so small, that when it transitions to the nitrogen atmosphere there is simply an insufficient amount of total heat present to push the reacting portion over the 'hill' of activation energy to get the nitrogen reaction going and it simply goes out. the pile of granules is large enough such that a sufficient amount of heat IS present to dissociate a large enough quantity of N2 at once that the reaction goes.
It is true that gunpowder comes in many different grain sizes, from fine powder used in small arms, all the way up to large granules for cannons - this is still made today for use in fireworks, since it is ideal as the lifting charge for large mortar tubes or shells. However, cordite is NOT gunpowder - it is a smokeless (at least compared to gunpowder) propellant composed of 65% nitrocellulose (aka guncotton), 30% nitroglycerin and 5% petroleum jelly (aka vaseline).
Cordite is made into the spaghetti-like "cords" by partially dissolving the mixture in acetone to form a more malleable paste, which is then extruded through a nozzle in a process not entirely unlike industrial scale pasta-making. The majority of the acetone is allowed to evaporate afterwards, though the finished cordite will still contain a small amount, up to 1% depending on age. Bundles of cordite were used as the main propellant charge in most artillery shells. For small shells this was incorporated into the cartridge, for larger shells (battleship main guns) the cordite was in separate cotton or linen bags, several of which would be pushed into the gun breech behind the shell.
Interesting side-story: During both WW1 and WW2, there was a difficulty in producing enough acetone for cordite manufacture in the UK. At the time, acetone was made by thermal decomposition of calcium acetate, which itself was made by neutralising acetic acid (vinegar) with either calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide. The latter were not a problem, since they can be made from chalk or limestone. But making enough acetic acid was a problem, since the starting material for that was ethanol - the same alcohol we drink, most of which was produced by fermentation. There was a public campaign at the time for collecting chestnuts and acorns, since these contain high levels of fermentable starches. Liquor brewed with these had a revolting taste, so people would not be tempted to drink it unless absolutely desperate, but it would make ethanol almost as effectively as brewing with grains, so this was actually used as a feedstock for making ethanol and subsequently acetic acid and finally acetone for the cordite factories.
Congrats Neil! I always enjoy listening to the Prof., but Neil brings all those words and ideas to life.
The point about small atomic sizes and high charges was really fulfilling to learn. It's one of those simple ideas that explains a whole lot.
A very well deserved award to Neil, congratulations!
Brady, it's gonna be perfect if you write down on professor Poliakoff's explaination at 5:00 like what you did at 1:40
This is a very cool experiment and explaination. Like watching scientist doing observation and thought process on a real time. Thank you
So happy to wake up and be greeted with a new video from the professor.
Although I'm certainly not a chemist, I always enjoy the videos on this channel. Very interesting content.
I love that plume. This is one of my favorite reactions I’ve seen.
Wonderful! I'm going to see whether I have some magnesium granules in my prep room- this will make an excellent demo for my students and will trigger lots of discussion!
We quite like it when Neil is satisfied. Excellent and very interesting experiment.
When I was in school for engineering I did pretty well but one of my bigger demerits was that I very nearly failed basic intro to chem. I found this channel from @deepskyvideos and watched every episode since the start. I kinda get chemistry a little now, and I think this episode may be my favorite! Congrats Neil!
This is my favourite kind of reaction content on TH-cam.
Wow awesome Brady!
Thanks to all who make the channel possible.
We did this in freshman chemistry, oh these many years ago. Ended up writing my dissertation on polymerization catalysis, and then had a nice career in industry.
This was a great episode. I think this doubled my knowledge about magnesium and nitrogen.
The experiment itself makes me think it would be an easy layman demonstration.
Professor, Brady, Neil, James -- Very nicely done! Thank you, and best wishes to all. VH
I love your stories.Yes man,show them!!!!!
I love the shot @0:39. Neil with The Professor behind him, pointing out the new detail that will solve the mystery. :D
Love these videos and love love love Martyn! Been watching for so many years, his voice gives me such nostalgia. He looks as young as the day I first saw him ❤
For such an advanced chemist, the prof tends to be regularly shocked when increasing the surface area of his ingredients makes his reaction work better.
What I found fascinating is the absolutely laminar flow (1:44 for example, again at 4:54 and again at 5:33) of the "volcano" plume before breaking down to turbulent flow around 1:51, 5:03 and 5:41 respectively. Great experiment on so many levels.
I did that experiment with magnesium turnings as a freshman chem student. Not because I’m super-smart or anything but because the text we were using said to use them. What I remember was the odor of the nitride: similar to the odor one gets after an electrical discharge across metal contacts, or when a tungsten filament light bulb breaks while in service.
Sometimes i check up on the prof and sometimes i wanna learn.. either way im glad i get both in each video.
I have done this experiment quite some time ago with magnesium powder and you can get a big pile of pure greenish magnesium nitride even without the beaker. It's very fascinating!
I don't understand chemistry, but the chemical reactions are exciting to watch.
Profesor has been trying to do this for so long and finally succeeded. Maybe it will be similar with Coca-Cola - one day he will successfully drink it for the first time;-)
I'm happy to see the reaction!!
That was a really interesting experiment. I'm glad you were finally able to experience it.
Wonderful reaction, and very clear explanation by the Professor.
How? So many I don't knows and maybes. The guy repeated the same experiment for 25 years expecting a different result. Fire him basically.
Always good to see you Professor :)
Congratulations on the award, Neil.
I am glad you finally got to do it successfully!
This was a very satisfying video to watch.
I had once left an iron cylinder full of magnesium powder inside of my furnace. I hoped that without oxygen (as it was burned by coal) it wouldn't react and it would melt. But instead I got this weird yellow thing that after a while it's color changed to either white or black. And I think it also smeled a bit badly. Thanks to your video I finally know what it was.
great video as always!
beautiful reaction; Congratulations Neil!
Magnesium burns in Nitrogen? I can't wait to tell the Mrs.
could another factor in the difference of success between granulated and ribbon magnesium be that of surface area for the reaction to occur? surely the granules have a greater surfact area to interact with the nitrogen though temperature is also likily quite relavant.
That was really cool to see it relight and get even hotter!
Yess please I love this channel my hands down favorite Brady thank you so much with blessing us with such amazing beautiful minds sir Martin is my favorite professor as I’m sure he’s many others please keep up the great work thanks again Brady
Isn’t it down to surface area. The ribbon of magnesium has much less whereas the granules have a large surface area
I love these videos so much!
very cool experiment n congratulations neil❤🎉
Thank you for sharing these demonstrations. I have always loved chemistry but ran out of brainpower for it before university - balancing redox equations was a bit much for me, let alone remembering which catalysts one uses for organics reactions. Seeing these performed and explained so clearly is the next best thing.
From time to time I think about this reaction after it was mentioned before. So awesome to see this finally happen
Congratulations to Neil! 🎊🎈🎆👏
I feel like Neil should get his own show.
Time to let Neil make a periodic video with nothing but his outrageous and also clever experiments
i love the color of the magnesium burning under the beaker. Thats so cool
Interesting. I think Magnesuim is probably only second to Sodium in the schoolboys book of "interesting elements". When I was at school we used magnesium ribbon to set off the Zinc and Sulphur rocket fuel we made. The recipe for which we discovered in a book called Amateur Rocketry that someone had donated to the school library. Our Chemistry teacher appeared unfamiliar with the reaction between zinc and sulphur and allowed us to experim4ent with it unsupervised at the Wednesday lunchtime chemistry club! Sadly we wernt able to launch our rockets but we did succeed in producing 4 foot long flames that made a satisfying wooshhh and filled the top half of the lab with white smoke. It all came to an end when one of our number managed to set off a mortise and pestle full of fuel while holding it. Big flash and he lost his eyebrows. Happy days.
When 'surviving school' actually meant something.......
Only just last week on the 22nd August, the BBC released an episode of Mark Steel's In Town which was all about Mark's humorous take on his visit to Nottingham, but I was very disappointed that two of the town's most famous personalities, Professor Martyn Poliakoff, & Neil Barnes, were never mentioned!
Will definitely have to write to the BBC & Mark Steel, insisting that Nottingham be revisited so that the omission can be rectified!
When I was a chemistry teacher we did an experiment where the students oxidized (burned) magnesium in a ceramic crucible. We made a small amount of Mg3N2, which I didn’t think would happen because N2 gas is usually considered inert. I think I was more excited than my students were!
The candle is a very nice touch to this experiment
wow this is definitely the first time I hear a chemist describe phenolphtaleins colour as "blood red".... i'd say that looks more like some beautiful variation of pink
Awesome! One of your better experiments.
Great video, as usual 👨🔬
A new video from Periodic Videos is a celebration. 🎈🎈
So cool watching something considered completely unreactive doing a reaction with so much energy being released. Super cool!!!
Unreactive? Many of the most explosive things are based on nitrogen. Anfo. Nityroglycerin. TNT. C4.
You know, Sir Poliakov, I watch you videos periodically....
This is rather interesting. I vividly remember a chemistry experiment I did on an exam where we proved that burning a candle produced water.
Prof.The Best! Cheers Martin !!!Your Serbian fan.
Lmao I totally forgot our atmosphere is like 70% nitrogen, I was waiting for them to pull out a tube feeding in nitrogen gas lol
5:26 What is the effect that causes the mirroring or is there actually this floating disk above the main mass?
What would it look like to burn solid nitrogen in magnesium vapor?
If you can get those two elements to exist in those two phases in the same place at the same time, you'll be the first to know.
Thank you, as always, for the amazing and interesting video. Every time I see P.V. put out a video I know it's gonna be a great day :) Cheers and stay safe!
Beautiful and fascinating.
When I was a teenager, I tried to extinguish a magnesium fire with a cup full of pond-water, and a yellow cloud of ammonia rose up into my face! For decades, I wondered why. (I thought maybe it was some nitrogenous impurities in the water, but now, I have my answer!) Thanks Professor! (And Neil!)
One video that I would find very interesting is how disinfectants came to be a staple in the medical field, and the chemistry involved in that. I just finished reading „The Butchering Art“ by Lindsey Fitzharris where he describes how Phenol (or „Carbolic Acid“ if you prefer the old fashioned name) became the go-to substance of the early 19th century for disinfecting everything. I think there is quite a bit of interesting chemistry around Phenol that might be worth exploring a little bit.