Pointer, take it or leave it: don't put the chemical in the title. People with short attention spans are more likely to click if it's a mystery.

If he was on top of things, he'd respond for valentines day.

Back in 1955, when I got an HO train set for Christmas, it came with a selenium rectifier. That was when I first learned Selenium dioxide was extremely toxic. Please take the warnings in this video extremely seriously.

=DUDE,MAKE *_THELLURORGANICS_* ,OKAY????????????? ............U'LL BE DEVASTATED OF IT'S ODOR....1 DROP SPILLED RESULTED IN 100,000 PEOPLE EVACUATED

The warning after the manufacturing process... hmmm.

I doubt it, he is the piss chemist after all.

There's definitely precedent for that, what with the fart juice video on NileBlue where he was fine but people were dying around Nigel, and also phenomena like not smelling H2S after too much exposure to it.

he is definitely nose blind. so is this guy. i think he should test his sense of smell, objectively, againts other people. not just stinky stuff, but all kinds of smell, at different levels of dilution, to see how sensitive each participants sense of smell is.

Possibly one the worst ideas one can have. Imagine how confused the mailman would be for smelling something awful for days in his van

@@DrMoe.Lester should get him to give bear grylls a few drinks 😏

*Reeking havoc

Ignoring that, I would highly enjoy seeing them collaborate and create the most nasty and disgusting stench to ever exist.

You are describing the Smell of Foul Ole Ron, which I believe would be best left on the alleys of Ankh-Morpork.

@@handpaper6871 thank you, I was going to comment this but I wasn't sure if anyone would get it

how many kilometers LabCoatz and NileRed are to each other ? -)

Sounds like a topic for another video. Would be cool to have a different kind of smell compared to the thioacetone and selenium based molecules.

In 2013, there was a leak in a plant producing that stuff in Rouen, France. The stench was felt in Paris where I live, over 100 km away. I still remember it (it happened on my birthday, it helps), it was like the whole city had been doused in diesel. Unbelievable.

Someone in my lab works on thiols, they spilled a full vial and had to use 5-6L of ethanol to clean it up

@@ryandoyle3413 I'd be extremely surprised if there wasn't still a residual smell. Stuff is crazy. One of the thiols I worked with would make your piss stink after just smelling it.

Ohhh yes, mercaptans are fucking vile. Although, while they're uniquely disgusting, they're not necessarily overpowering in their stench (imo).

Is it the same person that I’m thinking of: Nigel from Nilered?

I was so worried that I would get the "selenium stench" from this endeavor, but I never did (even though I handled the selenium directly at times, and inhaled small amounts during the tests). Hopefully tellurium is in the same ballpark!

After (mis)handling some broken Peltier device my sweat used to smell like moldy cheese mixed with rotten cabage for like a month. Don't recommend, fortunately it went away. The breath was ok though.

@@LabCoatz_Science Try other stink champions like n-butyl selenol, putrescine, 1-methyl indole (the one with the methyl group on the nitrogen, not 3-methyl indole), n-butyl isocyanide and 2-thiopheneselenol. Together those are the royal flush of olfactory horrors.

LOL @ tellurium breath!

@@cezarcatalin1406 what does n-butyl isocyanide smell like? is there anything you can compare it to?

Hey, nice to see you here man, glad you enjoyed the video! I salute you right back; it's channels like yours that inspire channels like mine.

Only comment let’s change that

Let's be honest, this is probably one of the least sketchy things someone could see at a park in Oklahoma.

Perhaps it's just me, but I haven't thought of any of your things as being sketchy. Fun perhaps, but not sketchy🙂

@Nick Knight To an uninformed lay person, wearing a respirator and mixing chemicals in your trunk totally looks like Breaking Bad.

naughty grad students get sent to the Stinky Room to atone for their crimes

@@_iakvb771 Rule 1 of the stinky room. Talking about the stinky room to new people is very funny and we should do it as much as possible to bait them into visiting it.

@@_iakvb771to a(ce)tone for their crimes was right there

The triThio disappeared pretty quickly when airborne, only some tubing stank after a week long bleach bath for the equipment. But then again tri deadens the smell. Handled 3grams and after an initial half second hit, i smelled nothing (of the Stink). Still smelled everything else, my food, hot car motor. How weird. So the selenium smell sticks around? Makes sense. Or there could just be a single drop or piece that got missed. My synth of tri was odorless, pride myself on good scrubbing. Two aquarium bubblers in series through bleach. Sadly for me there was no way to purify it without a scrubbing fume hood. Being out in the countryside does not help, it got smelt 4 miles away while I still smelt nothing trying to wash the solution. Treacherous stuff. Do not do it. The danger is that those not exposed to it b before experience it like the first time you've smelt it. It's almost a tool of terrorism, one that oneself might quickly grow numb to, think a synthesis failed, etc. Don't do it

I have worked with them and bringing one of these old reekers into the office was akin to an act of war . This was because a burned up power supply with selenium rectifiers was a very common " nuclear option " in the endless prank wars that we engaged in . Fun times .

Now that is something I would love to see.

yep, i've come across an odd one or 2 that were a bit stinky when not in use, still have one

in german they were called Gleichriechter (spoken "gleich riecht er"), which is a derivation from the word Gleichrichter (Rectifier). it translates into "(it) smells right away" or "soon he smells"

@@gamerpaddy hehe, yeah, i 've seen that term on german sets and service data

@@gamerpaddy Wow thank you for that. Did not know that at all ;)

Same here. That burnt selenium rectifier smell is one that stays with you for life !

You're not concerned about their health and long term consequences?

@@neomt2 @neomt2 ? I am, I actually left another comment on this video about the filter of his respirator as he shouldn't be able to smell through it if it is fitted and working properly. But his dad is an adult and chose to not wear PPE. He said in another video that his dad takes and does mobile radiology tests (you can actually see the machine in the shots where he's mixing in the back of the vehicle.) It is not like his dad is being subjected to anything blindly. He's obviously intelligent and also behind the camera for most of not all this video. So he made an informed decision. You don't have to agree with someone's decision, but when it involves the possibility of hurting or saving themselves and doesn't affect others, it's their choice. I would've thought we all would've learned this with the whole heated debate the whole world went through recently about vaccines, etc... Guess not. I was more inspired by parents that just support their children and the things they are interested in and passionate about, even if supporting those things is a burden or nuisance to themselves while they support their children. (Garage space being used instead of being available for storing what they want. Driving out to secluded spots to help film and be a second opinion on tests of smell or whatever, instead of staying home to watch a game or something they would rather do.) So many parents shut down their childrens interests or passions as soon as it interferes with what the parent wants to do.

I get the feeling you have your own pair of FBI agents assigned to you. I would say that you have your own agent, but with a name like that and comments like this....they probably gave you two just in case :D

I'm just grateful that I didn't experience the flu-like effects of more serious exposure...or worse, selenosis!

@@LabCoatz_Science you legit are - you guys smelled them WAY too close to your face

Ah, you too? 😊

😂

This comment gives me flashbacks from college quantitative analysis. ;)

@@colemannielsen2099 oh hey Coleman! What are the odds I’d run into a friend on KZfaq? 😂

Haha it’s a small world for science peeps 😂 did Nile Red send you here too?

@@colemannielsen2099 I just found it when I looked something up. I recently followed Nile though.

Go for it, it's worth the experience in my opinion, but then again I'm insane, lol! Just doing eat it or over-expose yourself to selenium, and you'll be fine.

yo any ideas who's the guy at 2:17 i really wanna check his video out

@@sivvamsudhir2636 It's explosions and fire

@@alexgutter8509 thankss

@@sivvamsudhir2636No problem ! Have a great day !!

They're rather unstable, however, especially hydrogen telluride.

Maybe when I'm an old geezer on my death bed, I'll make my last wish be to smell the polonium analogues, lol.

To bad Derek has seemingly abandoned TIWW and How Not To Do It type of stories . They were absolute gems and many of the comments were pure gold as well .

I understand why he's apparently stopped doing such content, as eventually the things one wouldn't work with and the stories of chemistry mishaps must eventually run dry. But it's still great stuff to revisit. Seems like every time I go back for a re-read, I feel inspired to open Max Gergel's "Ignition", which isn't a bad impulse at all!

From what I can tell, the stories are accurate, but a main part of it is ignored. The chemists whose friends ended up having to prove to them thioacetone was vile never said they smelt anything that bad. The way it was proven to them was by showing the detectable range, rather than the potency. I think the main problem is that chemists with experience smelling weird compounds eventually have their sense of smell dulled to the point that something capable of knocking out a sensitive person doesn't make them feel that much. That was the case with NileRed's videos too, with his friends having a far, far stronger reaction than he did to all the smelly compounds he made. I imagine this guy's dad, constantly being with him in all these experiments, also has a more 'defended' sense of smell. In the worst of the stories, the people that got affected the worst were always common folk, and there was no mention of the exact percentage of the people that got knocked out, other than the fact that it wasn't a majority. The closest we got to seeing an actual average person react to the smell of thioacetone was NileRed's friend, who was still definitely compromised as he smelt the compounds used in producing thioacetone and probably smelt a variety of other chemicals. I think we're just underestimating how wildly a person's sense of smell can vary in strength.

Lol indeed! Just for the record. “Ignition” is by John Clark - mr Gergel wrote something similarly entertaining, but I don’t recall the name.

​@ Oh gosh, you're right! Gergel's was "Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?"

I'll definitely be trying tellurium this summer, as soon as school gets out!

@LabCoatz If you have a peltier cooler you have bismuth telluride, and since bismuth has such a low melting point it's very easy to inadvertently melt a peltier device if you don't cool it properly... as I found out the hard way, so it's not necessary you smash it or anything to get the contents out of the porcelain sandwich.

Organotellurium is a great way to poison yourself right quick

Me neither. His channel went downhill and he doesn't even really do chem anymore. Just quick shorts that make him money. That's all....

Add sulfuric acid to a nitrate salt, pure nitric acid after distillation :)

They're just scared Germans might almost take the world over again because Germans are too awesome for their own good so they restrict the heck out of you lol

Just add some rotting fish too let it all rot and ferment. 😵😲💩

@@christopherleubner6633 Surströmming distillate? Sounds fun :D

@Lil Yeet Now I've gotta ask.... Did you do it for chemical science? Or for culinary science? 🤓

@@christopherleubner6633 God that sounds awful! *_SPEAKING_* of scat... At this point, I feel like the pressure cooker will never get that stank out of it, so.... _might as well_ toss in all the bodily fluids as well! 🥴🤢 If anything, it'll yield the best non-clickbait, clickbait title! 🤣 _"I Combined All of These Things for_ _SCIENCE, and _*_THIS_*_ Happened..."_

I kind of like the smell of surströmming, so I'd imagine that this is a LOT worse. Or ... better? Would love to smell it sometime.

@@Paonporteur It isn't anything particularly interesting: I diluted potassium selenide outside of an aspiration hood (because, idiot); the solution's pH was *theoretically* high enough that no hydrogen selenide should have evolved, but wasn't mixed well enough, so it did. Luckily, it only lasted a couple of seconds, then the potassium oxide at the bottom of the vial (i.e., under the selenide) decided to dissolve as well. Not a great two seconds, though.

@@Paonporteur Honestly, no. I read everywhere that it smells horrible, but I think it has the same problem as hydrogen sulphide, i.e., in higher concentrations, it interferes with the functionality of your olfactory nerves, and you can't smell it any longer. I knew I was inhaling it because it feels like your lungs are paralysed, a feeling that starts in your throat and proceeds down your airways, but I couldn't smell anything, not even before the exposure symptoms or after the whiff was over. If it can be of any help, a Polish colleague of mine, who had smelled in trace concentration, described it as resembling the smell of rotten horseradish, referring, however, to a type of horseradish they eat in Poland, and I am not entirely sure it's the "standard" one.

Honestly, that award would probably go to vanillin. If I recall correctly, it has one of the lowest odor thresholds, and it smells good to most people, so you could argue that it is the best-smelling "smelliest compound".

@@LabCoatz_Science : I’ve never smelled isolated vanillin, but I want to now. Of course I’ve smelled vanilla which contains hundreds of other compounds besides vanillin, but only monsters don’t like the smell of vanilla so you’re probably right. Thanks for sharing all of your hard work!

I considered the Grignard pathway, but ultimately settled on this method, since it was basically a "one-pot" synthesis with claimed yields greater than 90%. With the 1,4-butanediselenol, I think I was mainly smelling the diselenol, since we made it and smelled it within a timespan of roughly thirty minutes, and it was sealed off from the air for most of the time, so very little oxidized (in contrast to my isopropaneselenol and diselenoacetone samples, which were not sealed off and consequently had visible signs of oxidation).

There is a restriction on poisonous materials, and selenium is toxic (although there isn't any data available on most selenols or selones). To get around it, I'm only sending trace amounts: enough to be smelled, but not enough to be measured or considered dangerous!

@@LabCoatz_Science Keep us posted, then... :P (I'll get me non-lab-coat...)

Yeah, I've never smelled something bad enough to trigger my gag reflex. Most smells just don't offend me that much! But there are some things that make me cough and pull away, like pure chlorine gas, acid vapors, or irritants like chloramine.

What would we do without Germany!

A moment of silence for the chem Dads who sacrificed their weekends and noses for science.