NurdRage - 2014-12-04
Paramagnetic fluid or “parafluid” is a fluid that is attracted to a magnet. It’s weaker than the more famous ferrofluid but is transparent and somewhat easier to make. To make it, a paramagnetic salt like manganese (II) nitrate is dissolved in water until saturated. The solution is paramagnetic and will be attracted to a magnet. But because it’s so weak the attraction is limited. To assist, a density matched suspension of the parafluid in an immiscible carrier fluid is needed. In this video, dichloromethane was used and the correct density for the solution of manganese nitrate and water was found by trial and error. Chloroform is an even better carrier fluid and in fact is dense enough that it must be diluted with dichloromethane instead of the manganese nitrate solution. I recommend using using chloroform and dichloromethane if you have it. I didn't use it at the time of the video because I didn't have it on hand. Other paramagnetic salts include manganese (II) chloride, manganese (II) sulfate, gadolinium nitrate, dysprosium nitrate, etc.
I misread the title of the video as "Make Paramedic Fluid" and clicked out of morbid curiosity. I was pleasantly surprised to find that no paramedics were harmed in the making of this educational science video.
Next video idea....
You made flubber!!!
I'm so excited that you're finally getting back into the game and releasing more YouTube videos. you have been my inspiration for my love of chemistry from day one. When i started watching I thought nothing of it, and now I'm in collage studding to become a chemical engineer so thank you very much for coming back and letting me some more kick ass science video's :)
Hey nurdrage... i have been watching your videos since 2010... would you plzz make one video on details about making ferrofluid ? Like various surfactants that can be used and different carrier fluid
@tGhIeNrGmEiRte haha. Are you European? Because I have never heard anyone say that verb before in a non offensive way. Also you said university instead of school or college. Lol.
@Igor K Ehh you piece of FUCK .. didnt ask you ,you SHIT
@kshitij Ranganekar such anger
@tGhIeNrGmEiRte adrenaline and testosterone .. Dammit
@Igor K OHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
THANK YOU so much for coming back, we have all missed you!! Can you make a video on cool ways to (this sounds stupid) but to melt a snow man, I think this would be interesting because of its size and the way it reacts to parts of it melting, in the way that it falls and looks,
this is great! Thanks for showing this experiment to us! :)
I am so happy you are making videos again. You were missed!
I'd love to see how that reacts to the field put out by those magnetic stirrers at various speeds.
I am so glad your back! I have loved your video's since the beginning and was heart broken when you finished. Can't wait to see what you have in store!
Likely because it's a woman and too many people, sadly, don't take women seriously in science...even today.
Thanks for the video! It's always a treat when I'm welcomed home by a new NurdRage vid.
Thank You for making this kind of videos again... You'r videos were with me in my "dark time" of live, and gave me a reason to live... So I'm forever thankful for Your work... :)
I watched the majority of your oldest videos something like a year ago, and was disappointed to see you not uploading anymore. Today I was randomly browsing YouTube and I stumbled upon here again, with new videos! I'm really glad and happy to see you back!
Can you do a video on the halogenation of an alkene using n-bromosuccinimide? I'm an undergrad chemistry major and today we had an exam over substition and elimination reactions. However, I'd like to see it in a lab setting.
Really nice experiment !! I will try for sure, and maybe i'll seal it in a glass tube so Dicloromethane wont evaporate and i have a nice permanant demo
Thanks !
Incredibly amazing!
Glad you're back!. Very informative as always.
Glad to see you back man 😄
Now that's cool. I like how it starts "bouncing" around when you stop holding the magnet towards it.
PUT IT ON A STIR PLATE
nice! wonder how this florescent parafluid interacts with regular ferrofluid under UV.
this is great
glad you're back
Interesting. I recon this could work quite well as driver for magnetohydrodynamic pumping for some substances. Might need uncomfortable amounts of it to be mixed in, though.
hey nurdrage, a question please.
One of my friends decided its a good idea to buy bismuth, and we dont really know what to do with it. I did heard that bismuth is very diamagnetic, is there a way to solitify the bismuth and make diamagnetic fluid?
Love it!
Hey Nurdrage, Your thoughts on Molten salt reactor technology? as a substitute to our current generation nuclear power?
i never understand anything of this, but i love his experiments :)
What about adding medication, and a magnetic bandage to keep the medicine at the place it needs to be? ( bet you only need a nanogram of medication instead of a whole bottle because it spreads trough the body and gets demoloished in the liver)
I know a great use for this, getting kids interested in science again. We as a country are slipping fast in this area. Great video for educational use.
That is so cool.
I love it that you upload videos again. I will contribute to a funding campaign if you start one :)
Also: First :D
Epic video as always!!
This is why I love chemistry.
ha! just leave it to them artists, I love that
Any idea how to make a Magnetic resin with that? I'm thinking about making an action figures joint using magnets and a Magnetic resin to make it stuck.
Awesome, i have waited soo long for your videos :D
Hey nurdrage I've been watching your videos since when you started.I tried this one out but I actually used dysprosium nitrate and carbon tetrachloride as a career fluid.But im still not sure if dysprosium nitrate is stronger than manganese nitrate.
Give it a try, it should work.
Although i think carbon tetrachloride is too dense so the bubble of parafluid will always float. You'll need to dilute the carbon tetrachloride with hexane.
Thx man! It worked! Also you were right CCl4 was way too dense.I diluted it and it worked much better.And btw Dy(NO3)3 is much stronger but gives a more yellowish solution when saturated.
@casaverdero awesome! could you make a video of it? i'd like to see how well it works.
@NurdRage Good to see you active in the comment section! I was wondering if regular food coloring drops would work for the "parafluid".
As always NurdRage makes my day
"I recommend using using chloroform" - NurdRage 2014
Edit: I just noticed "using" is there twice, but I'll leave it because that's what it says in the description.
Would I be safe to use conc. HCl and MnO2 from a lantern battery to synthesise MnCl2? If not are there any readily available (I'm talking supermarket or chemist OTC) sources of manganese(II) salts?
@piranha031091 I quoted his formula. I know it was faulty
@nucleochemist
For small quantities, you can just dump them in a 2 liters plastic bottle with the cap screwed on and the bottom removed.
Let it settle to the bottom after a few hours, and manually pour water out of the bottle, you should easily get 4/5 out. Then, repeat a couple times.
The secret to avoid it getting messy/taking a lot of effort is not to be greedy on the amount of the rinsing water you get out. Nevermind if there still a good amount of water remaining, you'll just make a couple more rinses.
Also, you can help the particles clump up by bringing them close to their isoelectric point : adjust the pH to somewhere around 4 with a strong acid of your choice before the first rinse, and make sure your rinsing solution is slightly acidic (DI water is never perfectly pure, so adding a tiny amount of HCl to it isn't that big of a deal. Especially if you're going to use that MnO2 to make MnCl2).
@HunChem
Sorry, missed the "read more" button again.
So, yeah, @Crazy Hans :
There's two hydrogens missing on the left hand side of your formula. The reaction equation would be :
MgO2+4HCl --> MgCl2 + 2H2O + Cl2
You start with manganese IV, and reduce it to manganese II. So, something has to get oxidized in the process to keep charge balance : 2 Cl- goes to Cl2.
It's not vodoo : just making sure both atoms AND charges are balanced on both sides.
@piranha031091 Heheh, I know it's not voodoo. I balanced the equation at 3am and forgot how to count, sorry :P
Alright so the question remains; rinse my MnO2 then proceed from step 3?
@Crazy Hans
Now that I think about it, you may have to change something in step 5 :
Since your manganese dioxide is likely contaminated with carbon, it will never go clear. You may have to eyeball it or use an excess of hydrogen peroxide, then filter it to remove the carbon.
If you've used a really large excess of hydrogen peroxide, you may also have to catalyse its decomposition before proceeding to step 6 : heat up the solution (no boiling required, just get it warm), and stir it with something silver-coated, like a silver spoon. (ironically, MnO2 would be a great catalyst for peroxide decomposition...)
You may also have issues with iron contamination.
Or, you can do as Nurdrage did in this video to get the sulphate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gXByJkg0iY
And then purify it as he showed in his next video.
Though I am not sure the sulphate is soluble enough for the paramagnetic fluid experiment.
In case it isn't, and you REALLY want to get pure manganese nitrate from battery MnO2, you can follow Nurdrage's method to get MnSO4 from it, and his purification method to get rid of any impurities.
Then make PURE MnO2 from the pure sulfate (mix 1 mol MnSO4 with 2 mol NaOH or KOH, add a large excess of hydrogen peroxide while stirring vigorously. Again, small volume, large container, or it gets messy)
And then proceed from step 3
-------- to summarize : ------
Do as Nurdrage did here :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gXByJkg0iY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLJgBSrhZI8
If the sulfate is soluble enough, great.
If it isn't, make PURE MnO2 from the pure sulfate (mix 1 mol MnSO4 with 2 mol NaOH or KOH, add a large excess of hydrogen peroxide while stirring vigorously. Again, small volume, large container, or it gets messy)
And then proceed from step 3
What would this fluid do in the presence of 2 apposing magnetic Fields?
I think Pfizer has found a use for that in their new fouchie’s ouchie’s
It would be interesting to use it a a liquid lens, magnetically controlled.
Lava lamp + Parafluid + Electromagnetic coils in the lava lamp base = Awesomeness.
I got it! Gadolinium salts are the best! I think it's due to the fact that gadolinium has 7 unpaired electrons and in pure form it's ferromagnetic under 20°C.
Cool idea, nice video. I especially liked the added fluorescence.
To the artist/scientists out there I think it could make a cool "lava lamp" if one added varied electromagnetic fields and UV light. But how strong was that magnet you used in the video?
Exactly what use this would be, I have no idea... :)
Doesn't matter, it's cool right? Thanks for yet another great video!
get a bowl of colored suspension fluid, color the paramagnetic fluid something different.
maybe red and green for the holidays.
use magnets to create patterns.
FINALLY! A VIDEO!!!!!!!!!!!
How's the lab coming? I am considering making my own.
Hey! @NurdRage you're back! Would it be too much to ask for you to review an experiment someone else has been doing? There's a bit of a thing another youtuber I follow is trying to figure out and can't solve yet (unless he hasn't released the video, or it is a prank, which I doubt since he debunks things quite frequently, science and otherwise.)
The experiment he's been doing started off involving water being attracted to objects with an electrostatic charge, but then went on to demonstrate that it works with other fluids as well, including methanol, and honey of all things, but he cannot figure out why. this also started out as an attempt to debunk the explanation for why it works, which was done quite thoroughly. anyway, here's 2 videos the guy did for you to look at. Even if you just reply with your thoughts on the subject, even that alone would be great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ev_k__U3Io
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBZ-oklH7VI
aaand that's it so far. I'm somewhat interested to know what causes this, and really you and only a few other youtube channels are the only people I can think of who I have reasonable ability to contact, who could know.
TKOR - 2014-12-04
You're such a cool guy! For reference, what's the pull force of that neodymium magnet?
Laharl Krichevskoy - 2014-12-25
@Pixelmaniac close. but more like 27 teslas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnet#History
Saw it in a video, the researcher said you cant have anything metalic or electronic in the room while its in operation because it would erase everything and even fry it.
Those superconducting magnets are serious business. They work with tens of kiloamperes because super conductors dont have dissipation problems. (the problem though is generating those 80kA)
Pixelmaniac - 2014-12-25
@Laharl Krichevskoy
Four billion tesla.
Laharl Krichevskoy - 2014-12-26
@Pixelmaniac Three point five billion teslas and that's my last offer.
Uk Stormchasing - 2015-01-05
it depends on the size and how magnetic the neodymium magnet is,i have had ones that have a pull force of just under 10 grams and some that were strong enough to support my weight easily (i weigh about 70lbs) and i once had one that could make objects from 7 feet away fly straight toward the magnet.
Noorquacker - 2015-09-28
+Grant Thompson - "The King of Random" Hi Grant!