Making Bakelite - Periodic Table of Videos
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ส.ค. 2014
- An audience in the lab as we make some Bakelite.
Featuring Dr Darren Walsh and Professor Martyn Poliakoff.
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From the School of Chemistry at The University of Nottingham: bit.ly/NottChem
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It's funny to watch people make Bakelite with equipment made of various later polymers. You were protected from the flying bits of Bakelite (1907) by a layer of Plexiglas (1933), for example.
Our fume hoods have tempered glass windows...
Scientific irony
I nearly died there when the professor said the molecule would end up looking like his hair. XD
Peter Caron
LOL me too.
He is a great teacher that will help you remember the info. And yes those molecules are all wrapped up in each other thus why they are strong solids and not the liquid chemicals they came from.
A moment of silence for our lost friend the magnetic stir bar.
Alex Graboyes I wonder what happen with that - forgot to ask!
It will be missed!
Each stir bar that dies becomes reincarnated as the main space ship in the video game Arkanoid, and forever emulated.
+FlyingBootable the gladiators of chemistry.
Alex Graboyes RIP
We need a shirt that says. "It squeaks... but that's not part of the scientific explanation."
I think a woman with large breasts would look particularly good in this shirt.
I quite enjoy Martyn's fun little side-comments so much. Very intelligent and a good sense of humour.
The part about the written Bakelite chemical structure looking like _his hair_ got me too, haha.
someone make this PLEASE I would so buy one
A shirt that's just him but his hair is a mishmash of chemical skeletons would be neato
I just had one made
"Baekeland was spelled in a quite complicated way"
Professor Poliakoff, you're really one to talk! :P
It's the martyn that's more odd
"but the material he invented quite soon became much simpler"
Looks at polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride(aka bakelite)
Poliakov could be spelled differently depending on who translates it from Russian
The change of that solution from clear to completely opaque was so abrupt, I thought it was a jump cut at first! It looks like it happened in the "fast-forwarded" part of the slow motion footage, but I was still able to catch a bit of the transition there. Really interesting to see this stuff happening at different timescales.
It was all the hairs getting tangled!
Doctor Poliakoff (and the wonderful crew), I just want to let you know that every one of your videos makes me smile, and the joy you clearly have for the field is completely infectious. ❤️
bakelite is still the primary material used in marine driveshaft bushings that are exposed to salt water and most other bushes and bearings that are exposed to water and other reactive fluids just a fyi :)
+crowbarstube And Bakelite is still used for vintage re-issue Telecaster pickguards.
+crowbarstube
Wow that's cool! Never knew that!
I put this info in the back of my mind, these are cool ways to create things with chemistry. Notice this is something anyone could make with the right chemicals, no huge plant required. Pretty cool, from a liquid to a solid!
The only pickgaurd that should be on any telecaster not just a reissue
4 years late. It is also used in the composites industry for its flame retardant properties. When exposed to an open flame it melts into a gunk and then burns, which protects the interior core from further damage.
both my dogs jumped up and ran over.
gasdive ha ha - Lulu does it every time
Who knew benzine rings were so squeaky? Prof. Poliokoff knew!
Can you make an episode about aerogel?
The thing with aerogel is the chemistry part of it is rather boring and simple - it's the advanced physical processes that make it fancy.
I have several pieces of Bakelite jewelry from the 1920's.
I love Prof Poliakoff AND his hair.
I have a Bulgarian am 47 that has Bakelite furniture on it I also own a a couple Bakelite ak magazines
Very interesting video! I know that many AK-74 (5.45X39mm) magazines are made of bakelite. The bakelite magazines made for the AK-47 (7.62X39mm) are quite rare.
Poliakoff really enjoys his chewtoys.
+Michael Huard I'm sure they prefer to be called lab assistants.
josefblack
Where are their companion cubes?
Thank you! I've been looking for this reaction for quite some time.
NickBlackDIN now you have found it!
These guys could fund their chemistry lab selling bakelite AK magazines.
or they can fund it due to it being a university
Or make some canola oil and sell it as firelube
Or make some canola oil and sell it as fireclean
Or make some canola oil and sell it as fireclean
+Tactical Ultimatum Or make some canola oil and sell it as fireclean
Would have liked to see the exact moment where it turns pink in slow motion - since it seemed to happen almost instantaneously. I felt like the fast-forward part ended just a little too late. Still great video though!
I once picked up a book on polymers at the library. Holly molly. There are plenty that I had not heard of. I learned about kevlar for the first time. There was one resistant to 500 C or something like that and also transparent.
Kapton, or some other Polyimide probably.
I went to a course in UCC, In Ireland a few months ago. It was a school trip for a few students invited from a few school but regardless, they showed us how they made nylon and it blew my mind. At the time I understood it but after a while It slipped away, you should make a video on that too. Such a cool experiment.
I have an awesome old radio with a bakelite case. Good stuff!
His hair makes these videos 10 times better.
So the name "bakelite" is not very common anymore (I think it's owned by Sumitomo) but the condensation reaction of phenolic compounds with formaldehyde is still an important and industrially relevant bit of technology. While most plastic products are composed primarily of other plastics, phenol- and cresol- based resins are still some of the best adhesion agents available to formulators of adhesives, sealants, and coatings of a variety of chemistries, and it is a virtual certainty that phenolics are binding the pulverized friction material into a cohesive units in your car's brakes and clutch. They are also still the preferred bonding agent in the manufacture of plywood and particle board. It's interesting to note the proteins used by many simple sea creatures like barnacles and bivalves also use a large amount of aromatic moieties to achieve a strong bond (all while constantly immersed in sea water, no less) to whatever rocks or boat hulls they choose to call home. There is actually a lot of very interesting chemistry to study with them. Or engineering, as the case may be. Regardless, I would relegate the phenol-formaldehyde condensation reaction history no sooner than I would with Goodyear's vulcanization reaction. It is every bit as important to the course of human development, and every bit as still-relevant to modern industry.
While I know this is a dated reply, you can see "grown" space ships in Sci-Fi movies. I think that is the next wave of organic "living" chemistry. Could you imagine a paint that was alive and lived off the light and kept your home looking great? Those ideas abound!
They list multiple things made from bakelite but, the only thing that came to my mind was Russian AK mags lol
+AlexNKnives MP-40 furniture.
AK furniture too!
I live in a house built in 1920 and the light switch plates are all bakelite.
Most AK's use AG-S4 instead of Bakelite
The glorious TKB-022 prototypes used glorious Comrade Bakelite furniture.
Radio knobs! And casing,
Some reason it reminded me of my sisters cooking, that's why I had to do the cooking growing up!
Distributor caps and rotors, interior components, Phones, Ashtrays, Fans and shrouds, Steering wheels shifter knobs, Jewelry boxes, Lamp shades, Radios, toys ect ect ect..Its amazing how much stuff was made with Bakelite.
2:23 notice how all the scientists are holding their cameras in landscape mode.
I remember the window handles in my 1948 Plymouth. They had very fine cracks all through them and looked great.
That's a very fascinating reaction, the way it just flash-foams, expands, contracts, and THEN explodes.
It's the best plastic ever for so many rigid purposes, it machines well and feels like polished ebony. Very aesthetically pleasing.
If only i had teachers like u at school. Imagine where i would be now? Fantastic videos. Love the hair!
Bakelite is also a great insulator I have a intake manifold for a motorcycle machined out of some to prevent the carb from heating up so much.
That idea came from using a slab of it to make an adaptor for a Webber carburetor to an "incompatible" manifold, the plus side was it kept the carb temperature much more stable.
Im a bio-composite student, this is great! I would make this as my final year project! thank you so much for making this video!
Why oh why was chemistry not taught in such an interesting manner when I was at school? These videos make it fascinating.
J. Hanna wow. That's awful. Glad there still is a lab in my school and students in my school get to do some practical work during chemistry lessons.
Seems like all that the schools want to teach today is subjective subjects that pretend to be sciences like the humanities. Chemistry is bedrock of our modern society! Better living thru chemistry!
whiny PTA members on "safety concerns" and that demonstrations can get pricey when you do them at least 6-8 times in a day, and that's assuming only the instructor does it.
We had a pretty cool guy in our high school who taught physical science and bits of chemistry and physics and all that... his name was Mister Berner .. I think it was Bill Berner. He was really nice and he made everything fun... and then sometime later I found out he was in a lot of trouble for having an affair with a student who I think was 16 years old... oh well .
It was really a shame because I think he lost his right to teach.. but I couldn't understand how smart guy like him got caught up in writing love letters to a student... letters of course that could be found later
Make more materials! This is fascinating!
Some bakelite used to use asbestos fibers I believe instead of wood flour. Something to be aware of if working with it in a way that creates dust
I've read about this reaction a few times and now finally I get to see it. Didn't know it was that violent :-) Thank you for sharing!
I love the solid and smooth cold heavy feel of bakelite. So shiny, too. Way better than other plastics, but I guess it has it's drawbacks, if it'a brittle. Most people like lighter plastics, too.
They're like hovering parents, I love the passion chemists have for demos.
Very cool. I'm a modern user of early 20th century shaving methods. There are quite a few people in the online community that seek out Bakelite razors, and razors with Bakelite handles.
Fun Fact: Bakelite was used in aviation engineering as some planes were still largely made of wood. Coating the wood components of the airframe prevented it from rotting and reduced its flammability.
Holy balls. I am currently learning about aldehyde and just finished phenols in school. This is wonderful timing. Thanks!
1984. I was six. My family moved to a farmhouse in Devon that had been built in the late 19th century, and extended by successive generations of the same family. The whole house was filled with light switches, power outlets and wall sconces, all made out of Bakelite. I loved that house.
It must be very durable as I have stayed in many old pubs over the years that still have old light switches and fittings made from Bakelite.Also the Red Rattler trains in Sydney which ran from the 1920's to the 1990's all had Bakelite electrical fittings.
brilliant lads, cheers :) looked like a lot of fun
I made phenol formaldehyde in the lab, but I definitely did not use either acetic or hydrochloric acids. We did use hexamethylene I seem to remember as an accelerator or modulator, I can't remember exactly, this was over 40 years ago, but then we used the resin after polymerisation, mixing it with wood flour and various other additives and we made ash trays out of the stuff. I also made some fibre filled resin ( a bit like Tufnol) and even paper filled, but wood flour was definitely the preferred filler.
More Organic Chemistry please, and while your at it, Non-Organic Chemistry too. Thanks.
From what I've read, the glue used to manufacture plywood used to be phenol-formaldehyde (Bakelite), which was very successful because the resin is water-resistant and immune to rot. Nowadays, it's apparently only used for outdoor or marine plywood. Indoor plywood is now made using urea-formaldehyde.
I think Formica (commonly used for kitchen counter-tops) also used to be made by gluing sheets of paper together using a phenolic resin, with melamine used for the decorative top layer (because it's transparent).
that's so funny my dog ran over to me.
Bakelite is still used in applications where rigidity is important. If you have a desktop CNC, it sides may be bakelite. It has no give, it holds its shape very well. Instead of wood dust, glass and carbon fiber can be used, which is the kind that you are most likely to see these days.
This was interesting as i have a few bakelite items mostly fishing reels from a brand called Alvey in australia and its a interesting material in the sense as it can hold fishing line and a fish going everywhere but if you drop it or impact it hard enough it just breaks.
I didn't realize the actual polymerization happened so fast. I'd love to see more polymer chemistry on here.
Bakelite is a very utile material still. It will make a comeback someday. The smell of a bakelite phone is nostalgic for some of us.
GREAT EPISODE! Some applied chemistry! This is what it's all about: making stuff! Now, if UofN still has an industrial engineering school (my alma matter doesn't, which is outrageous), then it'd be great to see what could be done with that plastic. I am surprised that wood "flour" was part of the manufacturing process, using Bakelite. I do know the Bakelite plastic, though. It was still very much in use when I was a little kid. I was born in 1965. I remember those ashtrays and telephones. Moreover, I remember quite well the special placement of the one phone in the house. This episode took me back for just a moment...
THANK YOU!
Reichhold Chemicals in Houston Tx used to make phenolic resin in the early 1980's. The stuff exotherms as it is mixing. One day the heat in the reactor got away from the operators. Rather than have it harden in the vessel the shift supervisor opened the bottom-out valve and dumped the whole batch on the ground. It looked like a huge pile of afterbirth and took days to clean up.
Awesome,mind blown. U ppl really put great effort . Finally the words in my book make some sense thanks to u ppl . U really try hard to make chemistry fun.
Could you show the *full* polymerisation of PET (polyethyleneteraphtalate), so starting with the melting polymerisation and continue with the solid-state polymerisation. This leaves a lot of room for explanations, and it looks pretty nice at the end!
Just finished working with Bakelite today in my Materials Engineering lab. We used it to mount a metal sample so we could grind, polish and etch it so we could observe the crystal grains.
And Prof. Poliakoff had an epic model of a molecule handy, as usual. :)
Explosive foam ! Nice reactions !
As much as the science was great (as always.) For some reason I was mostly just captivated by the magnetic stirrer. That things a marvellous invention! :)
itd be cool to see more videos of the synthesis and explanation of materials used in everyday objects
Did you capture slow motion fotage of the solution turning from clear to opaque? That looked interesting.
It was pretty cool... we used to have some BAKEKITE stuff at our house when I was a kid.. I'll bet you a lot of it got thrown out where my brother sold it for pennies at flea markets knowing him
Nile Red gives a better explanation on how to actually make Bakelite and the different methods for doing so. But these videos are still fun and educational. I enjoy them.
I loooove bakelite! Used to eat on bakelite dishes as a kid... somehow I love the sound they have when you cut, or pick up food from them. Weird probably..
Is it the same thingvas Melamine?
I too, Love Bakelite. It was all around growing up and it was some tough stuff!
Brady I really do appreciate the slow motion replays, just wondering whether you are going to upgrade your kit to get better footage?
That was a very satisfying reaction.
It is still used in metallography to mount metal & alloys for polishing.
Bakelite was commonly used in US home light switches and power sockets well into the 1980's. It's high electrical and thermal resistance made it a nearly perfect material. The development of less brittle heat resistant plastics left Bakelite to niche products.
I actually made a little toy from Bakelite in my middle school shop class, it came in granular pieces about the size of a normal BB.
We used heat and a hydraulic press to make pretty much anything we could imagine, though it is rather brittle.
I remember a time when the only common plastics were Bakelite and nylon. Our phone and radio were Bakelite . Always a grotty brown or black. How does it get from pink to those colors and how is it moulded . I remember being excited when the first polythene buckets and basins were sold.
at 5:40, "when you write down the formula it quickly looks as my hair! " Classic :-)
Was Walsh able to extract the stirrer bar from the first batch?
That escalated quickly.
Again I learned something here! Thanks!
Can we get an episode about cleaning up chemistry equipment? What do u guys use?
How about a video on casein?
It's a another early plastic made out of milk protein and formaldehyde. I used to have a fountain pen made of it.
It'd be interesting to see a slow motion video of when the bakelite turns opaque.
Like, would it be uniform, or would it be possible to see it spreading out from numerous "seeds"?
I have heard the ortho and para state described in the storage of liquid hydrogen in dewars and the change of state would generate heat. How does this work and why.
Would it be possible to do a video on Graphene? Or would it be to difficult to acquire enough of it?
I'd love to see a video of you guys cleaning this fumehood up :)
If you run the reaction slower at a lower temperature do you get less gas holes and a more solid Bakelite?
Philips had made its own formula to make some thing similar as bakelite because the name bakelite were not allowed to use.
This had the name Philite and one of the ingredients of it was beetle wings.
Here's my hypothesis about why the reaction from the previous day sprayed bakelite further. It looked like there was less liquid in the beaker. The gases generated from the reaction could immediately fling the bakelite out of the beaker, whereas when there is more bakelite in the beaker, the gases have to build up to a higher pressure to fling the bakelite, giving more time for gases to escape around the sides of the bakelite.
Was big in the 60-70 for engine distributor caps.
To this day I remember the distinctive smell of burning bakelite. It's unmistakable!
It’s quite satisfying to see scientists grinning when things explode and splatter. I grin, too.
“And it squeaks...but that’s not part of the scientific explanation.” 😂😂😂
Bakelite is also used as a pan handle, so you did own bakelite, unless you don't have pans at home.
My uncle had a factory in Brazil and the odor was very characteristic, you could feel blocks away.
Amazing.
Here in the states a remarkably large number of things are *still* made of bakelite, I suppose on the "don't fix what isn't broke" principal. Many components of a completely operational electric home fitted with "knob and tube" wiring were bakelite, especially junction boxes and the round ceiling mounted boxes for supporting light fixtures. Those bakelite components remain in widespread use, tho newer 'blue plastic' alternatives are also available. And other things... I suppose the fact that it is durable, cheap and easily molded, and that production facilities are already 'tooled up', makes folks reluctant to demand other materials.
Not sure if it was explained in the video, but what was the purpose of the acetic acid in the reaction?
I was out hiking along the river and found a old trash dump/pile guess that was long forgotten and I found a old brown glass 'Clorox' bottle and was surprised to find it had a intact Bakelite cap still on it. estimated was made about 1930
I've made Bakelite before. We made a puck of it with steel samples embedded in my engineering materials course
Interesting to see how much material actually formed out of that "bit" of solution.
Great video + Brady added a nice apologies to dog owners. Epic!
looks like they had a little less solution in the more explosive reaction, maybe that meant less resistance when it started bubbling violently causing it to spray more?
So please let me know if I've got this right, for my own understanding: the hydrogens from the HCl bond with the oxygens from the formaldehyde, breaking them off, and the resulting CH2 pieces bind to two phenols, resulting in long chains--polymers--of Bakelite. Is that right? And does that mean the gas released is chlorine, hence the fume hood?
I think the grip panels on the Colt 1903 pistol were Bakelite.
"...but that's not part of the scientific explanation."
Thank you for clearing that up! LOL!