Explosions&Fire - 2020-08-22
We dig up some alchemy texts and make some chemicals that were the first of their type in the universe. And they're a bit frightening honestly. Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ExplosionsAndFire/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ExplosionsandFire Second Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvFApMFo_AafXbHRyEJefjA Discord: https://discord.gg/VR6Fz9g Twitter: https://twitter.com/Explosions_Fire Here is a really good paper about the history and science of fulminating gold and silver! Lots more information than I could fit into one video: https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201906356 Now for the Patreon list of cool people! Look how cool they are. All in single file, like the cool people they are. No group presentations this video, but also, no friends? Ah, who needs friends when you're this cool: Jtk08 Mark Hartsteen Stephanie Mills ERJN Jesus Ochoa Juhn Jacob Langbecker Emil Pelloso Sirius Kris Pockell Murray Grant St John Chris Villarreal Atmosys Craig M. Eric Stromdahl apollo wellstein Mattis Schmotz Steven Ngo Idan Benesh Rory Symonds Grue Sam Person Full Modern Alchemist (very thematic name, I like that!) Brendan Upton Diamond Eyes Slopey Henry Chris the Mad Sciencer Michel Heinz Joppe de Zeeuw Joseph Miller Sabino Lanza William Griffin Ian F Aaron Elligsen Bruce Fitzsimons Simon Clucas Brian Talarczyk Darcy Michael Aichlmayr Jacob Bollen Adam Nash GayKobold Vincent Cinfici gug Alok G Singh Samonie67 James Guarnotta Max Scop Rowan James Malkezadek joe WILLIAM BROWN Darren Hansen Punkey Sarah Urfer Mark Blundell Thorben Zethoff Adam Conour Zeo Roger -Dot- Lee Oliver Toth John Libal Ian Munro Daniel Coleman Azide Fox Jannic Rauch Clark from WY Rhodanide The Gayest Person on Patreon Isaac Paciga Kristopher Rush maxallen Mynameisnotdicks Kyle Ward snowhead29 Kristian Skåland Kris Luedke John Scott Chris Mclean acronus . White_as_paper Elliot Williams Martin Essam The Flying Shards Thomas Esker Zane Not a Mimic Harpsichord-uiy Roborovski Gary Virta Max Barnash Ryan Wait Michael Englehorn Aleksei Besogonov Ria Felix Barthelmeß Jana Bollen Lukas Schulz KaiserWilhelmTheII Sam Nudl David K Bennett Tyler Downard Ryan Nguyen General HiPing Jack Steel John Nguyen T.Chavez Dom Vasta Ben Gearon David Jensen uwotm8 Rorie Sean Murphy Jason Petrou Thomas Klotz Michael Lang Bitcore David Ho Justin reid Markus Rüegger Roger Kutyna Joe Galvan Elizabeth Schneider Karsten Hoff Hugh Laird brett j The King of Homestyle Anthony Henrik Jørgensen Arthur McTavish Michal Jenčo Jonny Wright Utulien Matt Jackson Nick David Cagan MillionFoul Thinkingmansgame Radil Rossi Leon Stark PrettyChill Chemistry Jannis Fischer Luke McGoggan Michael Kavulich Corrosion Oz Sabina Zachary Chapin Leon Schutte Thomas Abbott Mortlet Aussie Chemist Nile Red Christopher Stillson killroy225 AllChemystery Woah that took some scrolling, how cool is that. oh and some special messages from some extra special people! (which will continue to grow as I keep remembering to message people on Patreon oops): "Guess that's a fuc*in zero then" -Explosions&Memes wear your fu*king masks cat Also do we need some bonus content?? Some ''B-side materialll??"" if you will? ye cool what about this this is content? : https://youtu.be/kRoIebrNG3g
As a guy who did his PhD in plasmonics, I can confirm, it's probably ghosts
@jay gopinath ...ok?
@Explosions&Fire What do you mean, ghosts are MADE of electrons, that's why they show up with electric stud finders
I bet someone hates Pauling's hybrid-orbital theory....
@jay gopinath "you guys may think it total bs and think iam dumb for saying this"
yeah, we were just meme-ing about physics and electrons being "ghosts", no need to talk about your episode.
@Cezar Catalin Personally, I like the energetic ones that splatter everywhere in "bed solutions", just get a towel for her dude jeez
"Can't get excited unless the explosive has tentacles or some shit." Ah I see you also are a man of culture.
@Thomas Truant
The eight-limbed saboteur...
I like it!
Tentacle in i know it
@X ScalierSolid119 7 if it messes up lol
@Thomas Truant they are pretty intelligent...
@Chemistry of Questionable Quality I've moved on to tactical nuclear polka blasting octobots
Imagine Basil Valentine taking a break from his monk stuff, walking into a room and saying, "Hello everyone, welcome back to Fulminations&Pyres"
I am watching the mental decline of a chemist haunted by the colour yellow.
He's becoming a green lantern
Hilarious.bcoz it's true
Yellow chemistry is bad...
☠️💛
The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever
next video: who is an explosive, where Tom walks around hitting people with a hammer
This bloke is the Russel Coight of chemistry. I
And then finally how is an explosive
There's a little boy and a fat man, lets go smack them with a hammer and see if they blow up.
I'd pay to see this.
If you believe in spontaneous human combustion….I guess this can be a thing?
I feel like physics at this point is a hundred year stretch of guys going "well that doesn't make any sense, and *also I hate it*. Let me see how I can disprove it" while then accidentally adding proof for it and furthering the absurdity of it all.
So accurate. Relativity already feels wacky enough, but then you get into quantum mechanics and.......
Kylemsguy so I’ve only watched one online course on QM, and without like, doing any assignments (wasn’t enrolled, just watched the videos), but, honestly,
Is QM really all that weird? Like ok, sure, there’s the “how do we interpret measurements?” , but besides that, like,
from what I’ve seen so far of it, the math all makes sense?
I guess I’ll admit that spin seems kinda weird. But not that weird?
There were parts that were *impressive*,
but it isn’t so much “no fair, it shouldn’t work that way” and more “I didn’t expect that to simplify out or factor in that way”.
Maybe all the popsci I saw first made me sufficiently used to the entry-level weird parts that I no longer was bothered by them when I watched the actual classes?
@drdca qm isn't that bad people just have a hard time thinking of a particle as wave.
i didn't have physics in high school because of all the extra biology lessons
I once made like 5g of silver fulminate, while drying it, it exploded due to too much of it piled in one place, I was working in a ceramic plate and plastic utensils to reduce the explosion risk hahaha I failed at that and ended up with 2 weeks without hearing well and a damn buzzing sound...
That's beautiful
Because SCIENCE
"involves too much human urine"
*excited nilered noise
-i dont think urine was actually used
*sad nilered noise
In abouts hes near the bottom of patreon list
Add it to urination in n web
Science: here's a cool compound, blows up like freakin nuts
Britain: hey Afghanistan, come here, i wanna show you something
any time britain, france, spain, the netherlands, or portugal wants to show your country something, just fucking leave it. Make a new country somewhere else. You're better off.
@Darasilverdragon Now it's 'Murica
And they still get owned 😂
Is it wrong that I’ve watched this vid over 10 times now? I’m no chemist (I got a D in gcse chemistry in 1994) but your voice is very relaxing and oh boy do we need a lot of more of that right now. Cheers chap.
They were truly some madlads. I'm sure they would be mind-blown to know that you need the forces of a collapsing star to make gold out of other stuff.
Ex&F: Man, I wish Mercury wasn’t so toxic…
Gallium: Hi!
Galium and cesium are solid at room temperature though.
@dur shurrikun only because the dipshits in charge decided the range for "room temperature" to be based on their homes in cold-temperate climates, which isn't really reasonable.
@Ivan Bartrina Carreras At standard conditions, aka 1 bar 298,15K Cesium and gallium are solid.
So only mercury and possibly francium are liquid in standard conditions.
@dur shurrikun not the point. I'm complaining about 25 C° being the "standard" to begin with.
@Ivan Bartrina Carreras That's what the scientific community defines standard conditions in chemistry and probably physics and biology.
It has already decided, accept it.
"Large scale manufacturing with only the loss of some life"
Perfect!
It's the 1800s way!
We've definitely asked when is an explosive. The answer was the 60's
Behold, Japan! When I split this atom, your citizens will disappear!
which, for the 60s, was astonishing
Fuck I love the 60's.
I think it was actually August 6, 1945
Actually it was 1945
Honestly, fulminating silver is a lot like what people described azidoazide azide as (can’t remember the other name)
I remember I was making 50 years ago fulminating mercury in a simple way: You put in a test tube Hg and pure alcohol (99.9) to absorb the water produced, then you drop slowly concentrate HNO3 while cooling the test tube.It was produced a white crystallic powder. You wash it with alcohol and dry it.You finished.
every so often i find myself back watching all of these videos because struggling through a degree without comedic relief and good chemistry which is basically impossible. Thank you for these videos :)
i remember this channel a few years ago when it only had a few hundred subs and I always hoped that you get enough subscribers so you could continue to produce cool content and not stop :) Thank guys, love ya!
i've heard much about the allusive gold fulminate from Nile Red on the Safety Third podcast. It's nice to have an indepth history on the substance and to finally see the reaction!
Love this channel! This is how I anticipated high school chemistry would be when I did the tour of the chemistry lab on open evening... Oh how disappointed I was when I reached A-Level chemistry and still hadn't blown any shit to pieces! 🤦🏼♂️
This is hilarious. Deserves to be on TV actually. Kind of like Russel Coitt does Chemistry. I wonder what would happen if you sent it through to SBS or ABC?
Alchemy: lets try to make anything into gold to obtain immortality
Chemistry: lets make some unstable compound which could kill very reliably
The real question is: Can you make Fulminating Fulminate?
@bladd nun cyanates are explosive?
@Joshua Waite I understood your Fullmetal Alchemist pun....
I mean, it was _horrible_, but I understood it, so for that, take my updoot. lol
@TheBackyardChemist they've already done that with Space Shuttle Challenger. Apparently it doesn't make for a particularly useful rocket fuel.
@Deekshant It might have something to do with complexation, where coordination bonds bound to the ion can be pretty much the same strength as are covalent bonds. That's why they are sometimes called "coordinate 'covalent' bonds".
@TVdinnermasterchef Your joke is bad, and you should feel bad.
It's nice to be able to come back here and tell past Tom that he did in fact end up co-authoring a published paper! 👌#can'twaitforseason3
"Explosives are entirely a human invention"
The Bombardier Beetle and the Sun: "Allow us to introduce ourselves"
You are so funny. I know you’re a chemist. And you seem like a good one. But, that being said. You are also very funny.
Like a comedy chemist. If that’s even a real thing. Lolololol. Keep up the great work. I love your videos 😀
As an engineer, everything you chemists do seems like devil magic
Tom is going to die of jaundice one day isn’t he.
Nah, but his kidneys are just going to say "peace out" one day
Toast Point but it’s the yellowest way to go!
I’m glad your channel is catching on man. I’ve watched you put so much work into these vids for a while now. Easily one of the most entertaining science channels on yt 👍
-Amazing content
-bizarre upload schedule
-Australian
You are canonically the Maxmoefoe of chemistry and I absolutely love it
Really man, I'm a physics guy but secretly love chemistry. I love the language you use, nobody talks science in such lovably raunchy terms like you do. I fucking love it.
I've watched this video many times now. It's fun every single time.
The energy is great and the edits a perfectly chaotic. Like, I just love this guy.
I wish I had a thorough knowledge of really obscure explosives to have you synthesize . I love your series on obscure and interesting reactions and explosives and I hope you never stop making the videos.
"Alchemy is about turning everything yellow, whereas chemistry is all about preventing everything from turning yellow"
-Explosives&Fire 2020
Loving the way you are starting to make these videos, more stable camera, and lots of humour. keep it up ;)
When i first saw the smoke i thought: "hey that must be gold nanoparticles. Wait, has anobody published this as a method for solvent- and ligand-free synthesis of Au-NPs?" If you get a somewhat uniform size distribution or special kind of shape this is absolutely publishable work! Maybe you could even form some kind of high entropy alloy by this kind of reaction?...
@The Terrible Animator You would be surprised.
@Tomartyr What if you set the reaction off in a highly energized microwave chamber while filled with supercritical O2
@The Terrible Animator reminder that easily-repeatable graphene isolation was discovered by someone slapping sticky tape onto a chunk of graphite and peeling it off again.
@The Terrible Animator man thats a shit outlook on life. "If it was possible....someone already did it"
I bet you're disappointed very often.
@Zach Johnson well, not if it was possible, but easy.
I might have been in a pissy mood so dont take what i said at face value. Hell i dont remember what i said.
Now I'm curious....did something go wrong with the fulminating platinum, or am I totally underestimating the cost of the amount you would need??
Part of me wonders if alchemists who claimed that they transitioned lead into gold were using radioactive materials without knowledge of the process. It would explain the lack of repeatable processes experimentally.
“Ghosts”... Explains why much of my childhood involved neighbors questioning mushroom clouds and bangs they heard, and people with shiny badges stopping by to “have a little look around”, while I jumped haphazardly in childlike naivety on the burnt trampoline in the backyard saying to myself... “don’t look in that shed”.
Hey there Explosions&Fire and friends 👋🙂 This question is very late to the party, but I would really love to know what you think about the fulminating mercury scene in Breaking Bad. My questions are: Is it actually possible to synthesize the compound into crystal form as shown in the scene in question, is it sensitive enough to detonate in the manner that Walt utilized it, would anyone in the room have actually survived the initial explosion, and even IF they would have survived, would the shockwave from the aforementioned explosion have been enough to set off the rest of the mercury? Please and thank you 🙏
Tom has reached a level of chaotic neutrality so far above our mortal understanding he can now comprehend when for explosives
@Marcos Filho Why are you posting this everywhere?
He doesn't look like he walks the eightfold path though...
@Marcos Filho stfu
@Robin de Roos Fool. The eightfold path is a lie. Tom as ascended past this point, into an entirely different realm. He has become a god among men. We must fear, for he is armed with explosives and mental instability.
i want to take a moment to thank the man who upon discovering a new form of mercury just had to know what it tasted like ...for science.."a saline(salt) taste"....
Since you are very good at the history behind this kind of stuff I have a question for you. Do you know by any chance who created the method of generating sodium chlorate by boiling bleach? How old is this method? Who came up with this idea first? The electrolysis path is relatively well documented and is the way for producing it industrially due to the higher yield, but I couldn't find anything about the boiling method or the history behind it. Any help from anyone regarding this subject would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.
I'm glad I'm not the only chemist that's insecure about still not being able to code properly
i just started school this week and am taking organic chemistry for the first time your videos have brought me happiness for the last year and they will get me through orgo whether or not i go insane
There are several mercury-nitrogen compounds which you can get from Hg(II) + ammonia solution. Look at this discussion: https://www.sciencemadness.org/whisper/viewthread.php?tid=156839#pid652423
Fulminating mercury which you tried to make is today mostly known as Millon's base, you definitely find more info when you search Millon's base.
Mercury is like by far my favorite element, isnt it glorious? So pretty and so deadly
Tom, how are you consistently just getting better and better at these videos? You have me screaming with laughter. No other videos do this to me. And so educational. Thank you. <3
The German "Feuerwerkbuch" from 1420 mentions a substance called "Schießwasser", a liquid propellant for firearms. It has been concluded to likely have been methyl nitrate.
Alex Besogonov - 2020-08-22
Be careful. Your videos are getting dangerously educational. A bit more and you might become a legitimate educational channel.
Andreas Gerasimenko - 2021-11-06
@matteo Cdt buuuuut, is he thoo?
Zach Johnson - 2021-11-09
@Chris Brent lolol i love that put politics in your mind. I know I'm a year late but its still a good comment eh
The YouTube Poop , Esq. - 2021-11-09
The channel stopped uploading videos not long after this comment and I blame YOU!
E Razn - 2021-11-29
@unknow unknown he made cubane on his 2nd channel Extractions&Ire so that seems a lil related, haven’t watched it though so not sure
Alan - 2022-03-06
You have to add a disclaimer at the beginning of your next video, something like, "warning, this video is definitely not for educational purposes, I swear if you learn from this video"