IN YOUR FACE EXPLOSIVE CHEMISTRY!! (VR180)

hey smart people Joe here with my friend dr. KP Bergdorf hi we're at the University of Texas and we're about to do some explosions okay here's the thing with chemistry demos you never get to get up close and personal because of like safety reasons and stuff but you're about to see some awesome explosive chem demos like you've never seen them before because we've got BR 180 all right she's goggled up we're gonna do some awesome chemistry I'm gonna go away so I don't get caught on fire all right I'm gonna go with the lights the lights okay good so the first thing I'm gonna do is come over here I'm gonna coat my entire arm with water water has a very high specific heat capacity so it basically acts like a protective layer for my arm now I'm gonna come over here and scoop as many bubbles as I possibly can into my hand now these bubbles are filled with methane gas and now I'm gonna try to light my an hand on fire so my favorite part is I'm gonna turn my arm into your arm here we go three two and one okay that was awesome I'm glad that wasn't my hand maybe you can explain what just happened okay so that was a standard combustion reaction using methane gas as a source of fuel so for a combustion reaction you need some source of fuel so that can be cool it can be oil it can be natural gas which methane is the primary ingredient in so you take a source of fuel treat it with oxygen and then you form carbon dioxide and water obviously we release heat it's very exothermic very exothermic extremely exothermic and it is so much fun because I actually get to see the fire bounce on my hand that was really cool okay I want more fire let's do another one okay okay that was awesome but can we have a bigger explosion oh yeah absolutely okay but how do you make a bigger explosion I think the best way to do it is by actually breathing fire okay yes so what I'm gonna do is use cornstarch as my source of fuel so I'm gonna put it directly in my mouth and then blow it over a propane torch okay why cornstarch cornstarch has a lot of carbons so the more carbon you have the bigger fire you're going to have and it has a lot of surface area so it actually is a great source of fuel that's going to be important you're about to see why I'm gonna get out of the way again so I don't get caught on fire all right goggle up time for explosions all right so goggles lab coat on we're ready to go so the first thing I'm going to do is take a huge mouthful of cornstarch and then I'm gonna blow it directly over the propane torch here we go that was so cool awesomer and bigger yes okay I just have one quick question though why don't we see cornstarch explosions in like every kitchen and pantry across the world great question so cornstarch actually packs really nicely together so the oxygen cannot sit inside of a pile of it so when I exhale cornstarch I'm actually lighting the oxygen from my exhaled that's what's lighting on fire which lights the cornstarch on fire which then boom we have an incredible fire-breathing dragon that's why I said surface area was gonna be important you're basically like a human jet engine fuel injecting machines exactly that's what I call myself okay so I want to see some more chemistry that was really cool but I think we got some more stuff in store huh absolutely okay so what's next in this reaction we are going to use potassium iodide as an example of a catalyst catalysts wait I'm remembering something from school it's just not quite entering my brain so a catalyst is something that basically allows for you to go directly from A to B instead of going from A to B to C to D to e so it provides a new mechanism or a new route and what that does is it lowers activation energy barrier what really means that speeds up the rate of the reaction so it makes something go faster I like faster reactions because those are usually cool reactions right they're my favorite okay let's get to chemistry yeah okay so what I need to do is I'm going to put my goggles on and my gloves on for this one so I have a four liter Erlenmeyer flask what I'm gonna do is add thirty five percent hydrogen peroxide at home we have anywhere between three to six percent peroxide but this is Texas so we want to be big here then I'm gonna add some dish soap it doesn't matter what kind of dish soap you have we just need some bubbles here and then I'm gonna swoosh swoosh is a technical term so we're trying to make a homogenous mixture here one face now what I need to do is add some food coloring and because we're on the University of Texas's campus we're going to try for a burnt orange color so I have some yellow I have some red that's probably good now let's smoosh again oh let me definitely have a swoosh system here now I'm going to add my catalyst so our catalyst is potassium iodide so I'm going to add it and step back and we're gonna be able to observe our reaction here we go what are we seeing there's like stuff happy thermic it's all releasing Heat these are thermal energy it's the heat waves being released here down here what we did is we release oxygen gas now the dish they'll trap the oxygen gas and it's being released here it's coming out of the top it's still coming out yeah hydrogen peroxide h2o2 we release oxygen gas at the top and then liquid waters condensing on the inside which is kind of hard to see but you might be able to see it this is so awesome man I'm glad I was over there for this one okay so not every reaction is a chemical change that's correct some of them are actually physical changes or phase changes so what we're gonna do right now is I'm gonna add hot water to a bucket of liquid nitrogen and we're gonna see the nitrogen molecules move further and further away from each other which will cause a phase change okay liquid nitrogen is like my favorite kind of nitrogen we're about to see some awesome boiling I'll be over here goodbye get out of here okay so now what we're gonna do is start with our liquid nitrogen which is 77 Kelvin or negative 194 Celsius I'm gonna add about seven or eight liters here because I want to have a big explosion whew I feel like we're making a sci-fi movie okay so now what we're gonna do is I'm gonna put my cryogenic gloves on cuz I want to make sure my hands are nice and protected because you want to look cool oh yeah sorry because I want to look cool and be safe both things okay my favorite part I've got hot water here we're gonna add it to the liquid nitrogen you ready all ready three two one [Music] that was awesome these changes are the best it's raining off these raining on me

Channel: Be Smart

Views: 135,102

Keywords: science, kate the chemist, chemistry, breathing fire, elephant toothpaste, pbs digital studios, pbs, joe hanson, it's okay to be smart, kate biberdorf, its okay to be smart, it's ok to be smart, its ok to be smart, public broadcasting service, chemistry experiments, experiment, science experiments

Id: rvIX0vzx3NM

Length: 7min 3sec (423 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 02 2019