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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
When I think of bakelite I tend to think of the hard brown substance, normally I find it in old control knobs or insulating me from the high voltage coils in vintage violet ray units (which would make your geissler tubes glow very nicely) What makes the bakelite I know of brown and not pink?
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.
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?
Bakelite and its relatives still aren't obsolete, either -- in addition to having seen quite an assortment of knobs made of phenolic plastic on equipment that is still in service (and even manufactured within the last couple of decades), I think the handles of some cookware are of a similar substance, and screw caps for media/chemical bottles with 35 mm mouths are often phenolic (although another type of plastic is also used for these -- the phenolic caps are slightly less dark, and definitely less flexible; either way, the limit on durability usually isn't the plastic of the cap itself, but the binding to the interior seal).
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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.
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.
fun fact: in the super slow mo at the end that flashing light is a normal light. all lights resonate at the frequency of the electricity that powers them
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.
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?
Phenol is that used in phenolytic board? they used it under vintage steam boat boilers etc and is very carcinogenic. Banned in most places never grind or carve shape it. Where does bakalite get the reddish brown colour?
@@vitollock575 Phenophtalein is obtained from phtalic anhydride and phenol if I remember correctly. This polymerisation sure is a messy reaction, but I doubt that phenophtalein can be produced. The pink colour happens only in the acid catalyzed polymerisation, the base catalyzed one is much slower and ends up with a more yellowish colour. Overall I'm not able to come up with a decent explaination, so I'll leave it up for someone more informed than me.
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
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!
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
When you squeaked the toy my dog heard it from the other room and came running to find out what it was. When he got here and sat down I looked at him and said "But the professor needs his dog toys to explain chemistry." He glanced back and forth, looked down at the ground, stood up and sulked away.
Baekeland wasn't the first. I have a small musical box from C. 1860 with a moulded bakelite type case I guess this is also based on a wood fibre process.
I did this in 11th grade chemistry. We didn't make the piece of bakelite into anything useful, it just ended up a useless plug shaped like the bottom half of a shallow porcelain bowl. So a puddle shaped piece of black plastic. But very high quality plastic. They should make more things out of bakelite. It is truly the classiest plastic. The same black plastic as is found in irons. Unlike regular plebeian plastic, it doesn't melt so easily in heat.
Okay that's way to complicated. Have a old meerschaum pipe with a orange bakelite stem, unfortunately a piece of the button has been chewed through. Was wondering if I could make a bakelite blank to make a new stem on the lathe but I think ill stick to vulcanite or acrylic.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 several pieces of Bakelite jewelry from the 1920's.
I love Prof Poliakoff AND his hair.
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.
Thank you! I've been looking for this reaction for quite some time.
NickBlackDIN now you have found it!
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
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!
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.
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!
I have a Bulgarian am 47 that has Bakelite furniture on it I also own a a couple Bakelite ak magazines
I have an awesome old radio with a bakelite case. Good stuff!
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.
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 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.
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!
I remember the window handles in my 1948 Plymouth. They had very fine cracks all through them and looked great.
Poliakoff really enjoys his chewtoys.
+Michael Huard I'm sure they prefer to be called lab assistants.
josefblack
Where are their companion cubes?
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
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.
If only i had teachers like u at school. Imagine where i would be now? Fantastic videos. Love the hair!
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.
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.
Radio knobs! And casing,
Some reason it reminded me of my sisters cooking, that's why I had to do the cooking growing up!
Yes, saucepan handles were all bakelite at one time
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
His hair makes these videos 10 times better.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 didn't realize the actual polymerization happened so fast. I'd love to see more polymer chemistry on here.
If you run the reaction slower at a lower temperature do you get less gas holes and a more solid Bakelite?
They're like hovering parents, I love the passion chemists have for demos.
Holy balls. I am currently learning about aldehyde and just finished phenols in school. This is wonderful timing. Thanks!
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.
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.
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.
2:23 notice how all the scientists are holding their cameras in landscape mode.
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.
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.
It is still used in metallography to mount metal & alloys for polishing.
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!
I think the grip panels on the Colt 1903 pistol were 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.
So it doesn't look like I'll be molding my own Bakelite AK magazines any time soon...
When I think of bakelite I tend to think of the hard brown substance, normally I find it in old control knobs or insulating me from the high voltage coils in vintage violet ray units (which would make your geissler tubes glow very nicely)
What makes the bakelite I know of brown and not pink?
How do you mold it when it reacts and seems to harden so quickly????
Can you heat it up to melt it into a shape?
Crazy how suddenly the mixture shifts, it looks like a jump cut
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.
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.
Bakelite is also still used to make thermostat housings in vehicles because it's cheap and fairly resistant to heat for a while
What should be the pH value of the novalac resin and how should the reaction be the final test?
How did you make the Formaldehyde a liquid?
Did you cool it or is it a solution?
tytanus
they probably had it dissolved in water and/or methanol, which is called formalin if you wanna buy
Interesting to see how much material actually formed out of that "bit" of solution.
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?
Bakelite and its relatives still aren't obsolete, either -- in addition to having seen quite an assortment of knobs made of phenolic plastic on equipment that is still in service (and even manufactured within the last couple of decades), I think the handles of some cookware are of a similar substance, and screw caps for media/chemical bottles with 35 mm mouths are often phenolic (although another type of plastic is also used for these -- the phenolic caps are slightly less dark, and definitely less flexible; either way, the limit on durability usually isn't the plastic of the cap itself, but the binding to the interior seal).
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.
Not sure if it was explained in the video, but what was the purpose of the acetic acid in the reaction?
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.
Can we get an episode about cleaning up chemistry equipment? What do u guys use?
fun fact: in the super slow mo at the end that flashing light is a normal light. all lights resonate at the frequency of the electricity that powers them
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.
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?
Phenol is that used in phenolytic board? they used it under vintage steam boat boilers etc and is very carcinogenic. Banned in most places never grind or carve shape it. Where does bakalite get the reddish brown colour?
What makes it pink ?
Probably conjugation of the phenol groups, would be my guess :)
@@vitollock575
Phenophtalein is obtained from phtalic anhydride and phenol if I remember correctly. This polymerisation sure is a messy reaction, but I doubt that phenophtalein can be produced. The pink colour happens only in the acid catalyzed polymerisation, the base catalyzed one is much slower and ends up with a more yellowish colour.
Overall I'm not able to come up with a decent explaination, so I'll leave it up for someone more informed than me.
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
is this in any way a similar process to how they make stuff like Paxolin SRBP?
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!
Would it be possible to do a video on Graphene? Or would it be to difficult to acquire enough of it?
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
An art forger also used Bakelite to emulate the paintings of Vermeer.
When you squeaked the toy my dog heard it from the other room and came running to find out what it was. When he got here and sat down I looked at him and said "But the professor needs his dog toys to explain chemistry."
He glanced back and forth, looked down at the ground, stood up and sulked away.
Was it molded like that (seems dangerous)
Or can the bakelite be melted and molded that way ?
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!
More Organic Chemistry please, and while your at it, Non-Organic Chemistry too. Thanks.
So how would you change the color of the plastic to something other than bright pink?
Is Bakelite the plastic that breaks down after a while, producing ethanoic acid (acetic acid)?
I've made Bakelite before. We made a puck of it with steel samples embedded in my engineering materials course
So when they made this on an industrial scale. Did they have that same burst at the end of the reaction and how did they deal with it?
Baekeland wasn't the first. I have a small musical box from C. 1860 with a moulded bakelite type case I guess this is also based on a wood fibre process.
I did this in 11th grade chemistry. We didn't make the piece of bakelite into anything useful, it just ended up a useless plug shaped like the bottom half of a shallow porcelain bowl. So a puddle shaped piece of black plastic. But very high quality plastic. They should make more things out of bakelite. It is truly the classiest plastic. The same black plastic as is found in irons. Unlike regular plebeian plastic, it doesn't melt so easily in heat.
How does this mixer work? Is there any blades?
And Prof. Poliakoff had an epic model of a molecule handy, as usual. :)
There are still some bakelite switches and receptacles in use today. If it ain't broke etc. But why the violent reaction at the last second?
Was Walsh able to extract the stirrer bar from the first batch?
Okay that's way to complicated.
Have a old meerschaum pipe with a orange bakelite stem, unfortunately a piece of the button has been chewed through. Was wondering if I could make a bakelite blank to make a new stem on the lathe but I think ill stick to vulcanite or acrylic.