All the pH regulation with ammonia and fondling with gelatin done in the paper is only done to get particles with very specific properties (hence the publication). For your needs just throw together ascorbic acid and copper sulfate. It will work just fine. Actually, a lower pH helps the reaction. Even the temperature control is not needed, warm just means faster. Next time just use a surplus of the acid --> done.
My dads dad was a hoarder and when we cleaned out his house after death we found close to 10 pounds of mercury from thermometers spread across multiple jars. I think that's what killed him. Rest in piss
I know that you are well versed and well practiced when it comes to safety in Chemistry...but please don't ever let us...your audience...talk you into making a dumb decision, my friend. You're one of the best...and funniest....chemistry TH-camrs out there.....we'd like to keep you around awhile :):):) .Peace.
After literally three decades of scrounging, recycling, and waste disposal... I have just shy of 30kg of mercury. 9/10ths of it would have been chucked in a landfill, which astounds me! In any case, although I've made many Ag/Au/Hg amalgams, I've never even seen Cu-Hg amalgam. Fascinating stuff! I might have to make a sample, I even have some copper sponge already.
Gotta explain further. Like what contains the most amount and ease of accessibility. Kinda hard to find anything with mercury that hasn't been replaced with some safer liquid.
@@highlandlab1924I guess they grabbed it from older products. I had a '93 Chevy truck that had a Mercury switch for the under hood light. Also houses built earlier than 95 tend to have a few mercury switches or thermometers in them. So though they become more scarce over time, it's plausible to still acquire some of you know where to look.
At least here in the USA, an enormous amount of switches, relays, thermostats, and similar were mercury based in the past. Since the 1990s, a large portion have been ripped out/replaced during renovations. Those are mostly what I saved from being thrown into regular garbage.
@amateur chemistry a mercury experiment i still havent seen is the conductivity and electrical properties of mercury gold amalgams specifically still in a liquid state.
Mercury is just crazy stuff man. Earlier I was reading about Humphrey Davy isolated calcium by electrolysing a mercuric oxide/calcium oxide amalgam and then distilling the mercury off.
If the copper was fine and pure enough is possible no oxide layer was present between the individual copper crystals during the dehumidification, thus allowing it to cold-fuse, creating a weird, microscopic copper sponge. Pretty cool!
In Cody's Lab's initial video, it was possible to obtain copper powder by adding ascorbic acid to copper sulfate. you chose a more challenging approach.
Apologies to the writer of the paper, i initially thought you said something wu to avoid saying the name wrong, i learned a lot, thank you. Would be great to see if this happens with gallium or something for a "safe" at home alternative
It's exciting to see your channel grow. Shows that everyone loves what you're doing. :) Mercury is so fascinating. Seems like something built into humans to find Liquid Metal so intriguing and tempting. Sad it's so toxic. :(
To make getting the copper powder easier, just add hydrochloric acid to copper metal (add some h202 to speed things up) and then add aluminum foil similar to what you did and filter off the copper metal. This way also makes really nice blue flames from the copper chloride ions.
Its not hard to distil mercury. Just add some tungsten and iron powder. Use air cooling of the condensor and pull a good vacuum on it so it distills over at a reasonable temperature. Also turn the lights off as its distilling and you will see blue sparks as the drops slide down the condensor. ❤
The copper reaction was done by Robert Murray Smith on yt some time ago. He has an easy description for nano particles for use in inks and other stuff.
The abundance of copper is necessary. When you added more mercury, you changed the abundance ratio and this leads to a fluidic amalgam. Also, using a dilute nitric instead of hydrochloric would be better at creating a clean copper surface. Also can try making a finer copper powder, with an ice bath during precipitation reaction with a more dilute copper sulfate solution.
Ascorbic acid has a poor shelf life and even with antioxidant preservatives tends to only last a few months to a year. Much of your bulk product was probably already oxidized to bicylic Dehydro-AA. Heating would almost certainly convert any remaining unoxidized AA and further break much of that down into L-threonic acid, oxalate, and 2-3 diketo L-gulonic acid along with other products. Those still have some reducing properties. However you might have better results by avoiding heating AA and using very cold water, then dissolving the gelatine separately into the ammonia solution then adding both to the copper sulfate. Thus the described reaction you give the copper reduction isn't going to be accurate, but it proceeds through a different reducing compound. So I feel that aspect of the video is a bit misleading. For the same reason cooked, canned fruits and vegetables won't help scurvy and pickled ones lose efficacy after a few months. The dehydro-AA in living things needs to be constantly regenerated by glutathione but some of it escapes and gets slowly destroyed by Reactive oxygen species.
Very cool. Now I know something to do with the mercury and copper sulfate that have been lying around here for years waiting for a worthy project. I've grown some beautiful blue crystals and done a lot of experiments with mercury, but I never thought of combining them by making an amalgam. Brilliant! Thanks for a great video!
Making the copper powder like that was cool. Now I'm wondering if other metal powders could be made like that from other metal sulphates and also wondering what else ascorbic acid could reduce.
Nice work! I am yfraid your copper nanoparticles are not so nano as the Chinese article promises as copper nanoparticles are black. If not they are just micro but not nano. You will have better success by using NaBH4 alone or in combination with ascorbic acid and some common anti-clumping agent. Mercury rules!
@Amateur.Chemistry yeah it's a pretty unusual phenomenon and a fun experiment. You probably know nile red did it. I have this short of sped up footage of when I tried it... th-cam.com/users/shortsLTFhd8QTKg8?si=q-9DntYFQZBNRd-Q
It's interesting that Mercury is always called "the only liquid metal" but it's only true at the usual temperature on our planets surface. Even in our planet's core the iron is liquid
Have you considered copper foil or copper leafing for this amalgam? I think they might work if the thickness is fine enough and, having had oxides removed.
It's technically not at the official "standardised" room temperature but when it's even slightly inpure it tends to be a liquid I think 🤔 I'm being pedantic and technically you're still correct. Alloys and impure metals don't count
To my experience reducing Cu2+ with ascorbic acid to elemental copper doesn't work very well (in contrast to the reduction of Ag+ to silver metal). In an acidic environment the reaction doesn't go to completion, so the yield is quite small. In an neutral or alkaline environment you will only get copper-I-oxide instead of copper.
During the making of PCBs at home copper is etched (dissolved) away with Ferric Chloride, eventually the etch stops because it can't take any more copper and you are left with a brown sludge ! this must be fine copper powder I think ! do you think so please ? :)
Could you make a harder amalgam and use that to make mercury sheet metal? Could it withstand sulfuric acid at 900℉? If not, do you have any ideas for what could?
Everytime i see mercury i wonder something. What would happen if we made an nickel or cobalt amalgam and bring a magnet close to it. Would the ferromagnetic metals seperate? Or would it act like a ferro fluid
I think replacing the gelatin with EDTA would prevent the foaming. Not sure why you used gelatin instead. Unless EDTA requires a permit or something in your country of course. I know you've mentioned some of the silly rules before.
Ibe seen rhe copper rain experiment, and tried it myself. It doent work well for me (domt know why), but when successful it didnt seem very efficient. Instead if i need copper powder, i just resice it from copper acetate, or copper oxide and carbon.
"I need to take many safety precautions"
Codys lab: look at me spitting mercury from my mouth
But in this situation safety doesn't bans you from putting mercury (LIQUID) in your mouth
But Cody is dead because of that
@@Kawka1122 He is very much still alive and well.
@@Kawka1122 Liquid mercury IS SAFE TO EAT
Bizarrely enough, elemental mercury *should* be biologically inert, or near to it. Mercury compounds, however, are often horrifyingly toxic.
“this is amateur chemistry not amateur shopping” nicely said
that’s why this channel is fun to watch
using the CuSO4 Aluminum method actually would work, you just need to grind it down and wash with diluted HCl, followed by some more water washings
..but actually, why not both? vid about the best and worst amateur chemistry suppliers/shops? ';I
Hell yea our crazy polish chemist is baaaaaack
All the pH regulation with ammonia and fondling with gelatin done in the paper is only done to get particles with very specific properties (hence the publication). For your needs just throw together ascorbic acid and copper sulfate. It will work just fine. Actually, a lower pH helps the reaction.
Even the temperature control is not needed, warm just means faster.
Next time just use a surplus of the acid --> done.
I still remember how I broke my thermometer when measuring the temperature of my soup and how I eat all that soup to avoid my parent from knowing
Bruh
Based on your grammar, no harm done.
One time a thermometer broke and i played for hours until the next day i got really sick and got into ICU 😂
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeesh
My dads dad was a hoarder and when we cleaned out his house after death we found close to 10 pounds of mercury from thermometers spread across multiple jars. I think that's what killed him. Rest in piss
I gotta say my friend i am absolutely loving your content it's amazing.
Thanks!
"I spent a week to chemistry some chemicals to be able to fondle some mercury"
This awesome video requires a lot more of views for sure!
I am glad you like it :)
I know that you are well versed and well practiced when it comes to safety in Chemistry...but please don't ever let us...your audience...talk you into making a dumb decision, my friend. You're one of the best...and funniest....chemistry TH-camrs out there.....we'd like to keep you around awhile :):):) .Peace.
It's good knowing a chemist from the same country, cause we have the same restrictions!
Making that find cooper powder was a great way to do it. Good job
After literally three decades of scrounging, recycling, and waste disposal... I have just shy of 30kg of mercury. 9/10ths of it would have been chucked in a landfill, which astounds me!
In any case, although I've made many Ag/Au/Hg amalgams, I've never even seen Cu-Hg amalgam. Fascinating stuff! I might have to make a sample, I even have some copper sponge already.
Gotta explain further. Like what contains the most amount and ease of accessibility. Kinda hard to find anything with mercury that hasn't been replaced with some safer liquid.
@@highlandlab1924probably diodes?
@@highlandlab1924I guess they grabbed it from older products. I had a '93 Chevy truck that had a Mercury switch for the under hood light. Also houses built earlier than 95 tend to have a few mercury switches or thermometers in them. So though they become more scarce over time, it's plausible to still acquire some of you know where to look.
At least here in the USA, an enormous amount of switches, relays, thermostats, and similar were mercury based in the past. Since the 1990s, a large portion have been ripped out/replaced during renovations.
Those are mostly what I saved from being thrown into regular garbage.
@amateur chemistry a mercury experiment i still havent seen is the conductivity and electrical properties of mercury gold amalgams specifically still in a liquid state.
looking forward for ur next video , i really love your videos please dont stop uploading video 😄❤
Just some PPE stuff, you can get dedicated filters for mask/respirator specially made for filtering Mercury vapor.
It's such a great feeling to find a paper which just... works :)
Yeah, Songping Wu really carried this project :)
Mercury is just crazy stuff man. Earlier I was reading about Humphrey Davy isolated calcium by electrolysing a mercuric oxide/calcium oxide amalgam and then distilling the mercury off.
Yeah, it's got some really unusual chemistry and played a surprisingly big part in our history
If the copper was fine and pure enough is possible no oxide layer was present between the individual copper crystals during the dehumidification, thus allowing it to cold-fuse, creating a weird, microscopic copper sponge. Pretty cool!
A kilo of Mercury in Kubuś bottle, is there something more polish that could happend in any chemistry chanel (besides Trash Can Cannon, of course)?
Babe, wake up, our favorite European crack shed chemist just uploaded ❤
This guy is putting his safety at risk for our entertainment. That's dedication.
In Cody's Lab's initial video, it was possible to obtain copper powder by adding ascorbic acid to copper sulfate. you chose a more challenging approach.
22:35 uhh i tink il pass, am fine with lead
Method with electrolysis with mercury cathode actually would be very interesting!
Apologies to the writer of the paper, i initially thought you said something wu to avoid saying the name wrong, i learned a lot, thank you. Would be great to see if this happens with gallium or something for a "safe" at home alternative
You performed an extraordinary experiment - the film is fascinating !!!
Chinese Alchemists coming in clutch since 300 BC
It's exciting to see your channel grow. Shows that everyone loves what you're doing. :)
Mercury is so fascinating. Seems like something built into humans to find Liquid Metal so intriguing and tempting. Sad it's so toxic. :(
My favourite ambiguous European chemist 😊
To make getting the copper powder easier, just add hydrochloric acid to copper metal (add some h202 to speed things up) and then add aluminum foil similar to what you did and filter off the copper metal. This way also makes really nice blue flames from the copper chloride ions.
The hydrochloric acid will also dissolve any stray aluminium
@@user-pr6ed3ri2k Yeah
Its not hard to distil mercury. Just add some tungsten and iron powder. Use air cooling of the condensor and pull a good vacuum on it so it distills over at a reasonable temperature. Also turn the lights off as its distilling and you will see blue sparks as the drops slide down the condensor. ❤
Thanks for all you do, can you make a video on theophylline synthesis?
A shame the end product contained too little copper. I hope to see a more balanced ratio at some point in the future.
I love Mercury.
Prove it, eat it
@@DruggiePlays i have some but i wont eat it.
@@Dlab_s kitten 🐈
Ya it tastes really good
I could listen to this for about 15 seconds then I became sick 😂
13:53 Forbidden Chocolate Pudding 🤤
I think if you use a large excess of copper sulfate all the aluminium foil would react so you are left with only copper powder.
Yeah, but with my method I can be 100% sure of my powder's purity :)
I know it's not really chemistry related but i'd love to see you make one of those cool spinning mercury telescopes
And please provide a walkthrough for making galistan. Please please please!!
Keep well bud!
@@lank_asif Galinstan is easy - just buy gallium, indium, and tin (Amazon has all 3) and combine them in a 68.5/21.5/10 ratio by weight.
@LikeGG That's a really cool idea! I will write it down on my to-do list :)
Great work, that is some weird amalgam there!
Silver snowball fight when?
Very interesting -> subscribed ✌️
It tastes better than regular playdough!
I too used the ascorbic acid method (found the same paper haha) in synthesising some neat tetrazoles, it’s quite convenient huh
beautiful lab my guy
Thanks, building it was a pain but it was well worth it :)
The copper reaction was done by Robert Murray Smith on yt some time ago.
He has an easy description for nano particles for use in inks and other stuff.
The abundance of copper is necessary. When you added more mercury, you changed the abundance ratio and this leads to a fluidic amalgam. Also, using a dilute nitric instead of hydrochloric would be better at creating a clean copper surface. Also can try making a finer copper powder, with an ice bath during precipitation reaction with a more dilute copper sulfate solution.
Looks really cool
Another fantastic video. Thank you!
You can dope paper with Copper nitrate, and when you burn it it reduces into copper powder
Perfect .
Beautiful lab. Pozdro Ziom :)
Ascorbic acid has a poor shelf life and even with antioxidant preservatives tends to only last a few months to a year. Much of your bulk product was probably already oxidized to bicylic Dehydro-AA. Heating would almost certainly convert any remaining unoxidized AA and further break much of that down into L-threonic acid, oxalate, and 2-3 diketo L-gulonic acid along with other products. Those still have some reducing properties. However you might have better results by avoiding heating AA and using very cold water, then dissolving the gelatine separately into the ammonia solution then adding both to the copper sulfate.
Thus the described reaction you give the copper reduction isn't going to be accurate, but it proceeds through a different reducing compound. So I feel that aspect of the video is a bit misleading.
For the same reason cooked, canned fruits and vegetables won't help scurvy and pickled ones lose efficacy after a few months. The dehydro-AA in living things needs to be constantly regenerated by glutathione but some of it escapes and gets slowly destroyed by Reactive oxygen species.
Could copper chloride work for this instead of copper sulfate, it a lot easyer to get a hold of
Very cool. Now I know something to do with the mercury and copper sulfate that have been lying around here for years waiting for a worthy project. I've grown some beautiful blue crystals and done a lot of experiments with mercury, but I never thought of combining them by making an amalgam. Brilliant! Thanks for a great video!
Mercury is my favorite element 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
Not surprise?
Yum
Making the copper powder like that was cool. Now I'm wondering if other metal powders could be made like that from other metal sulphates and also wondering what else ascorbic acid could reduce.
Awesome...Low melt solder !
Nice work! I am yfraid your copper nanoparticles are not so nano as the Chinese article promises as copper nanoparticles are black. If not they are just micro but not nano. You will have better success by using NaBH4 alone or in combination with ascorbic acid and some common anti-clumping agent. Mercury rules!
Have you tried playing with a mercury/sodium amalgam and ammonium chloride?
Not yet, but I have it on my to-do list :)
@Amateur.Chemistry yeah it's a pretty unusual phenomenon and a fun experiment. You probably know nile red did it. I have this short of sped up footage of when I tried it...
th-cam.com/users/shortsLTFhd8QTKg8?si=q-9DntYFQZBNRd-Q
Damn, you have so much lab space to work with, I wish mine were bigger too.
Could you make DDT?
It's interesting that Mercury is always called "the only liquid metal" but it's only true at the usual temperature on our planets surface. Even in our planet's core the iron is liquid
Everything is relative
The term liquid means that something is a liquid at room temperature (About 20°C)
3:36 😅😅😅 This is true!
Have you considered copper foil or copper leafing for this amalgam? I think they might work if the thickness is fine enough and, having had oxides removed.
Do you not consider cesium liquid?
It's technically not at the official "standardised" room temperature but when it's even slightly inpure it tends to be a liquid I think 🤔 I'm being pedantic and technically you're still correct. Alloys and impure metals don't count
To my experience reducing Cu2+ with ascorbic acid to elemental copper doesn't work very well (in contrast to the reduction of Ag+ to silver metal).
In an acidic environment the reaction doesn't go to completion, so the yield is quite small. In an neutral or alkaline environment you will only get copper-I-oxide instead of copper.
"Metal Honey" would be a great band name
"The almighty Songping Wu"! 🤣
When it comes to reductor, I always think of hydrazine, while hydrazine is really bad compared to ascorbic acid.
bro is building a T-1000
centrifuge then a rince with distilled water multiple time might help getting a more pure product.
You kinda give me "nile red" vibes. 😂
During the making of PCBs at home copper is etched (dissolved) away with Ferric Chloride, eventually the etch stops because it can't take any more copper and you are left with a brown sludge ! this must be fine copper powder I think ! do you think so please ? :)
You're a repeat process machine, mate. Bloody good show!
Would gallium have a similar reaction with the copper powder? Might be interesting to see the difference in properties.
Could you make a harder amalgam and use that to make mercury sheet metal? Could it withstand sulfuric acid at 900℉? If not, do you have any ideas for what could?
Mate look up dental amalgam composition... old school ones they firm up but they are the consistency of a wet sand..
Mercury 😍 Great job 👍
made ultrapure double destilled mercury
..Proceeds to pour it into incredibly dirty dish
Caesium and gallium are both liquid metals at room temperature, if you have a particularly warm room
Mmm scrumptious
god it looks so tasty
Everytime i see mercury i wonder something. What would happen if we made an nickel or cobalt amalgam and bring a magnet close to it. Would the ferromagnetic metals seperate? Or would it act like a ferro fluid
Songping Wu is the real hero here
Metal honey you say?
As a mead brewer I could work with this.
I'm afraid to ask just how much mercury-contaminated waste you have on your hands. Maybe a clean up and safe disposal video?
Probably a good few liters of liquid and a lot of contaminated paper towels/gloves. In the future I plan to record such a video :)
What about gallium?
Metal honey... 😂 Nice.
The way I get copper powder is to put iron nails into a copper sulfate solution, and then wash the precipitate with dilute hydrochloric acid.
This also seems like a quite good way, I may try it in the future :)
I think replacing the gelatin with EDTA would prevent the foaming. Not sure why you used gelatin instead. Unless EDTA requires a permit or something in your country of course. I know you've mentioned some of the silly rules before.
Kinda sounds like someone got the ratio of mercury to copper backwards 🤔
I just keep hearing Weird Al's hit song "Eat It" playing in my head 😂
Ibe seen rhe copper rain experiment, and tried it myself. It doent work well for me (domt know why), but when successful it didnt seem very efficient.
Instead if i need copper powder, i just resice it from copper acetate, or copper oxide and carbon.
13:00 you made copper pigments =o
Wrap it around a copper wire then wrap it light, then run electricity through the wire
What chemical have you made your mercury from?
Mercury is beautiful 😍😍😍
17:54 Forbidden rib
Pretty neat.
You are a Chem God!
Is chemlab glassware good enough? Where do you buy reagents in poland?
Chemland is pretty good, I buy most of my reagents online