NurdRage - 2018-12-01
We gather up our observations and data so far and construct a mechanism. In doing so we notice a few gaps and use them to find even better catalysts for the sodium production reaction. Donate to NurdRage! Through Patreon (preferred): https://www.patreon.com/NurdRage Through Bitcoin: 1NurdRAge7PNR4ULrbrpcYvc9RC4LDp9pS Glassware generously provided by http://www.alchemylabsupply.com/ Use the discount code "nurdrage" for a 5% discount. Twitter: https://twitter.com/NurdRage Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/NurdRage/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nurdrageyoutube/ #sodium
I'm a moron :)
anyway, major apologies for taking so long, but at 33 minutes you can see where the extra work went.
It's a shame you can't publish this in a respectable Journal because you would have to use your full name.
However as a professional chemist this research quality is worthy of publication
As a third year chemistry student, this video was great! To be able to see how you can apply the scientific methods we learn as a "amateur" chemist is really nice and you've done so with amazing results!
https://youtu.be/4sEi0bBU7KE
Subscribe me plz and like please comment help me 👈👌👆🙏🙏🙏
Could you try to use more "Borneol" in the Sodium production? I think that it could increase the yield.
I will also tell you that "Perfumer's Apprentice" is selling Dimetol in bulk and you can get about 100 ml
of Tetrahydrolinalool at SigmAldrich.
@Moore Analytical I would buy it.
This series has been going for what? A year? Somehow these videos keep getting more and more exciting. I never would have imagined I'd find Sodium so interesting. Congratulations once again on your continuing triumph.
We're getting to watch scientific discovery in action. It's incredible, and naturally getting more exciting as he progresses.
Thanks for the look into the less flashy but IMO more awesome side of doing chemistry!
Hate to be THAT guy, T-rex was from the Cretaceous period.
interesting! i'll be sure to update it if i use the T-rex example again :)
@NurdRage Michael Crichton threw off a lot of people with his title. Most of the dinosaurs were from the Cretaceous. I always love your videos, I feel dumb when I watch them.
Yeah.... You can't trust these chemists to get their geological time periods right!!!
Cretaceous Park
You might be able to test the MgO residue for trapped catalyst.
Right, should be easy enough with a thorough washing, then calcining (destructive / dry distillation) to see what comes off.
Would also be interested to know sodium and hydroxyl content, or crystallography, or particle size, or something. Send a sample out for xray diffraction and fluorescence analyses?
MgO + 2 HCl → MgCl2 + H2O
Underrated comment.
@Mike Guitar
That's more what I had in mind than calcining, where I suspect the heat would transform the distillate beyond recognition.
The acid might react with the alcohol that you suspect is trapped in the MgO, but that would yield a predictable product.
@Kevin Martin That's exactly what I was thinking too.
How much sodium do you have after all this experimentation?
It's a bit over a little and a little under alot, so a wee more than a little pinch over a dab.
He's probably closing in on a kilogram, although I can imagine a lot of it is getting used as jump starts for failed reactions.
i see what you did here
https://youtu.be/4sEi0bBU7KE
Subscribe plz plz help me 👆🙏🙏🙏
Maybe he is supplying the rest of the YouTubers who throw it in a lake or whatnot.
4:50 There was still a possibility that the bug catalyzed the reaction. The reaction went through a different path.
@edgeeffect I know 🙂
It's a spider
Maybe the elves put it there
So his reaction was bugged
@edgeeffect gARY whY
Oh man, that's pretty fantastic - it's awesome that something as cheap and accessible as menthol works so well (and leaves my sodium minty fresh!)
I've been utterly fascinated by this whole video series, right from the start when you showed the making of sodium with the flaming-tin-can approach. But watching the process of real science going on, documented in a way that makes it accessible to a non-chemist like myself, has been especially wonderful to watch.
Honestly, this is just making me try and come up with some reason to need sodium just so I have an excuse to try this out. Maybe I'll decide to start an element collection. ; )
The thing is, if you just need sodium it can be bought directly, much more easily than most of these niche alcohol catalysts. Still, making your own is very cool, and it's great to see that it has finally been brought into the range of the amateur.
I'll probably use it to make a huge load of concentrated hydrogen peroxide which is difficult to get in my area.
Wow, I wonder if the "Due to potentially dangerous misuse of this ingredient" part was referring to your video in a tongue and cheek way.
Edit: They must have seen an unusual uptick in sales for that one product and googled it to find your video
It's also possible peope were adding it to there hash oil
@Mandrake Fernflower For what purpose?
@MysteriusBhoice This is the FBI, stay right where you are!
@MysteriusBhoice Just go to the bathroom. Nitroglycerine precusors are available from urine!
Probably either "sodium is explosive, we don't wanna be liable for someone using our products to make bombs", or just plain old chemophobia ("keep chemistry out of amateur hands, it's bad, mmkay?")
Hey, if this is your idea of annoying.. I'm more than happy to deal with "annoying"!
Awesome
I'm no chemist but the problem solving aspect of your lab notes series is amazing and inspiring. Good job and good luck!
Don't apologize for a video series being long. It's rather fascinating to me. Chemistry was not my field of study, though with the bit I've been learning, I kind of wish it would have been.
You can always learn about it in your free time. Look at how much NurdRage did at home; if you study online for long enough you may be able to do the same.
So they will still sell to perfumers. Why not explore some of the science involved in perfume making?
This is so awesome. This payoff after all this time is so impressive it's probably hard to find a better example of how incredibly powerful a scientific mindset and strong persistence can be.
I love the research progress itself in your videos the most. If one really wanted to it wouldn't be hard to puzzle out the process from the lab notes anyway.
This is the best chemistry channel on YouTube by a substantial margin.
Menthol works! MENTHOL WORKS!!
What would a mixture of borneol and menthol do in terms of yield and reaction time?
Cyclohexanol was among my thoughts on this matter as well.
Seriously, menthol. After all the exotic alcohols being tried, you get 90% yield from something you can buy off Amazon in kilogram quantities.
Hey, don't apologize for doing science, man. Yes, a final video would be nice, but honestly, the breakthroughs and new discoveries are much more interesting! And I can tell you really geek out about it, too, which is exciting to watch since it comes across in your videos. This whole project has been fascinating to watch and it makes my patreon contribution very worth it.
0:50 they heard about you and they shut you down. Notorious NurdRage. Watch out!
I'd be perfectly happy to watch 100 more of these lab notes videos before the final tutorial. This whole series is absolutely captivating.
You know, there is something rather amazing about watching true science unfolding before my eyes. This series is undoubtedly your best ever, Nurdrage's second symphony as it were (pyramethamine synthesis being the first).
I let out an audible "gasp" when you got ~90% yield with friggin secondary alcohols! Great work!!!
Especially as it was something as easy to get as Menthol... I'VE even got a bag of that kicking around somewhere.
Please publish this when you've worked out the alcohol catalyst method! Dude, you're showing that it's possible to contribute to brand new understandings of chemical processes using household chemicals and (relatively) simple equipment. Who knows how this might inspire some future material scientist, maybe defining this process leads to a breakthrough moment for some different project.
I would love to send you cyclohexanol as a gift but I'm not certain what the canadian customs buro would say about that? Here in Germany you can buy cyclohexanol unrestricted.
Maybe you could test if cyclohexanol works if you have access to a lab?
Dod gammit! Im trying to go to sleep.
God, do not apologize for further refining your process. It is fascinating to see your experiments. I would say this is the most actual science that I have actually seen. It is exciting.
New discoveries are fun to watch. It's like a let's play but with chemistry. The rollercoaster fails and successes is something I don't thing any other chemistry youtuber as shown. This is real science. Not the let's make this thing that I know works and is cool. This series is true science. Keep it going.
Btw that linalool is not available because that is one of the many terpenes people are adding to those THC vape cartridges for flavor.
This series has great value, not just because new discoveries. It has value of showing how proper research looks like. I would strongly recommend to anyone to wants to do science. You try existing solutions, you try to understand how they work, then after literature research you have new hypothesis, which you test in actual experiment, having results of experiment you exclude bad ideas, you rethink everything again, then you test new hypothesis and so on, great work.
"Annoying rashes of new discoveries"
I'm sure we all would beg to differ. :)
Commin at the third minute!
Edit: this is purely brilliant as watching the process step by step over 7 month, showing how complicate and how much was actually involved in designing a new pathway. Cheer for the success!
Taking High School Organic really helps with understanding your videos. It took me 7 years of school and NurdRage to get here....
@NerdRage Can you make cyclohexanol? And I have a question... If cyclohexanol works, Could cyclohexane- 1,3,5 triol work faster than cyclohexanol?
I find myself unconcerned with the extra time and wish upon you more "annoying rashes of new discoveries" 😆
Why apologize? this was great, keep it up!
after sodium maybe you could tackle another topic like this and take us along
This series continues to be an amazing journey of reasoning, measurement and discovery. Well done.
I think alcohol acidity might also play a role deciding a good catalyst, since it's well known tertiary alcohols are generally less acid than secondary alcohols.
If the alcohol is more acid, the Na-O bond will form faster on the first step, but it'll require more energy to break up in the second step.
If the alcohol is less acid, the Na-O bond forms slower but it'll require less energy in the second step.
If this hypothesis is correct:
1. Using alcohols with lower pKa makes the first step faster, but the second step slower.
2. Currently the step limiting the reaction speed is the second, so higher pKa = better.
3. If you add more energy to the system the reaction will go faster due to the second step, so non-optimal catalysts become more viable under higher temperatures.
It would be cool for you to make your months of hard work into something worthy of being published. This is a great series!!!!! Take your time, we'll all wait patiently for content if it's as great as the stuff you put out.
I still like the elves did it idea.
This series is one of the best things I've seen on YouTube. A lot of the organic stuff is over my understanding-horizon but enough of it is within my sight to get a view of how chemistry research works.
keep pushing it back, I want it to be as detailed as possible, there must be no questions left behind(or at least mostly)
I can’t donate yet but i can watch that Ad
Phenomenal as always. Dunning Kruger wouldn't work if we all knew everything. Awesome progress/process.
With all the alcohols he's been looking at, it should be phemonenol :D
@Andrew Hawkins I was trying to think how to make that joke. Well done
@frollard phenomenol is presumably the enol form of phenomanal. Let's not go there.
This is probably my favorite video of yours, because it goes so deep into the mind of an active working chemist. Thank you for sharing your brain with us!
Absolutely brilliant. Some may ask why spend so much time on a single topic. Unlike someone's piranha solution experiments, this was not a frivolous toy but real research. Nurdrage, I am impressed.
Gosh, would camphor reduce naturally to the alcohol under the reaction conditions?
What would a ketone do here? Aldol type reactions come to mind of course, but these conditions are rather more aggressive, and dry, than the conditions usually used for those reactions.
Good question!
One of the best videos yet. Must be loaded up with sodium metal by now!!
Holy cow menthol works?! Great work mate now we have a simple catalyst even if its slower. Cause menthol can be literally obtained everywhere. You could just go in your local pharmacy. But if you get borneol that's great too. Nice work, narrowing down the mechanism and the side reactions!
Assuming primary alcohol fails due to the alcohol/Mg release step on step 3 failed to proceed, can we use equimolar of alcohol to just provide sufficient alcohol for step 1 and 2 without completing the catalytic cycle?
so today, I was experimenting with electrolysis of brine solution (table salt and water) with use of copper electrodes and an aluminum foil strip as a bridge between 2 separated cells, where one cell would be reducing the aluminum "electrode" and in the second cell it would be oxidizing the aluminum. (We will call these cells right and left, respectively)
So, in the right solution, hydrogen gas was forming at the copper electrode, and what I can only expect to be relatively pure copper I chloride was precipitating out of solution. Neat, I guess.
Then I look in the left cell, and I become surprised to see a solution of orange precipitate. After some further research, this appears to be relatively pure copper I oxide, which makes sense.
I figure that this is a fairly simple and fun way to show how electrolysis differs depending on the nature of the anodes and cathodes, and that you might have a little bit of fun with this experiment.
Note:
It turns out that I used iodized table salt as my electrolyte in the cells, as opposed to pure NaCl, so an unmentioned deposit of brownish substance at the bottom of the container may have been iodine, but it readily dissolved into the solution upon stirring the container.
If it was in fact Iodine, cool!
if not, cool!
Eric Pham - 2018-12-01
Your sodium production videos are some of the greatest science videos I've ever scene