Same here, mere blue (or orange?).

and your encouragement never fails to keep me motivated to invest the time it takes to make them :)

This is a very poor demonstration however. First of all, methanol. 2nd of all, no water. 3rd, don't need near the amount of solid used here. So wasteful with a less than great display.

yes those work - or just a simple slide diffraction grating coupled with a hole in some aluminium foil. The wire method is still used (see CLEAPSS PP037) but the wire should not have a loop in it - molten beads of salt can form on the end of the wire and pop. For practical purposes if required, I prefer the soaked splint method (CLEAPSS PP038). This avoids problems with colour contamination from previous samples and avoids students needing to dip the hot wire into acid.

Declan Fleming thanks for the tips. I just did a flame test demo today using the wire dipped in the compound and most samples failed. I think a large problem here is that the lab has a serious lack of equipment (so I use a blow torch rather than a Bunsen burner), and also the compounds are often contaminated or simply old.

I should have kept reading for other replies - I commented similarly - I don't understand why anyone would feel the needed to do this in flaming beakers.

Because it's not as simple as it looks in videos. Solubility is another factor I rarely see mentioned, but the big one is *don't use ethanol* for this. The extra carbon atom ruins it. Do it right, but do it with *methanol*.

@@MadScientist267 i know it is never as easy. But that doesn't answer the question

I was looking for a video on the Flame test of Alkali meals, but found this instead. js.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hKuFlaVyrN2VZJ8.html

Right here!

Yep, just read about Alonzo and was curious what this experiment was.

Meeee

She used methanol instead of ethanol and poured it directly from the bottle into the flame which caused a explosion lol

yup she used a gallon jug of methanol, probably was too heavy and she poured too much at once

Little disappointed at the comments below. This was a life-altering experience for everyone involved. I see "LOL" and comments about "just one letter off". This is serious.

Deborah Rang i disagree - laughter and levity helps humans deal with difficult situations and sometimes have a serious point - such as why you need to be careful about getting names right. Before you suggest I wouldn’t like it if jokes were made about me - I had a devastating diagnosis several years ago, and when I told my students about it, I did tell them about some of the funnier side effects in a jokey manner to help soften the mood. Don’t try to be the laughter police just because you don’t understand why people do it.

Alexandria lol indeed. She was a damn chemistry teacher and she didn’t know that was a bad idea?! Damn! How did she even get to the stage to be able to teach high school chemistry?! Safety of the students is also the first thing you should consider. But a similar thing happened to my brother (not as severe thankfully) on a school camping trip. They were using those Tranja (spelling!?) cookers, which use ethanol as the fuel and as everyone probably knows, ethanol burns well and with an almost transparent flame. The teacher said it wasn’t lit, and my brother informed him otherwise. Dickhead teacher doesn’t check and adds more ethanol and woosh! My brother’s face was closer to the flame (since he was only 11 and hence shorter than the teacher) but luckily it only took off his eyebrows and singed his hair. The teacher was never disciplined though.

Did you watch the whole video? 15 years of showing variations of this demo and I'm still learning from it. I always *also* do it one flame at a time with the spectrometer in hand - hence the revelations at the end of the clip. The risks associated with doing this demo as described are very low. The accidents in the US have been caused by people throwing around winchester bottles of methanol, not millilitres of ethanol. Alternative methods like dipped splints or spray bottles give much shorter-lived colours which are hard to get students to see the spectra from with handheld spectroscopes/diffraction gratings, or with a spectrometer like that used in the video. There is hardly *any* setup required once the beakers are made up because they call all be indefinitely re-used with the exception of the copper. As far as chemistry expts go, this is one of the most recyclable.

Doing as a demo whole group versus individual stations for your lab students. As a demo entertaining, but yes for more concept you need accompanying investigative questions and concept preloading first, with emphasis on each metal and documenting results one at a time.

@@declan.fleming I *never* use ethanol for this because it kills it. Teach respect for chemicals, not blind fear that it will maim. This is why kids today are so stupid.

Where did that $60 million come from? other students! now we turned a mishap to a larger mishap by punishing those other students who now exist in a poorer school district. Slow clap

He deserves that money

His entire life is ruined because of a teacher's fuck up

@@halcyonoutlander2105 I mean it wouldn't be a home without any of those lmao

@@halcyonoutlander2105 Medical bills for past and future treatment?

I was looking for this comment

This whole demo is whack. Methanol, not ethanol, for starters. No water. Waaay less solids. It's like he was completely unaware of the intent of the experiment (this is evident in the coloring generated), carbon is contaminating everything. Look at all the yellow 🙄 But the world is so pansified today, rather than teaching people how to respect the chemicals needed to do something, just quit doing the experiments. Bullshit. Sick of the dumbing down so the morons don't get hurt. Hasn't anyone noticed we have a population problem? This type of thing could be part of the solution!

Doesn't matter, they're all poisoned by carbon contamination because he's using ethanol instead of methanol. Clueless

Why not? The point of the video is to show people how to do it correctly and safely? The alternative won't be "people won't do it". The alternative will be "people will continue to do it incorrectly and dangerously" The protocol as described is approved by CLEAPSS for use in schools. That's the point.

You're part of the problem. Stop shutting things down because some derp would rather drink the mixture in the beaker than see the colors it produces. Schools are pathetic these days at this level, your line of thinking is *the* cause of this.

@@declan.fleming Not to mention the camera "lies". These will *not* be the colors you will see with the naked eye. They are close, but because cameras and screens have blind spots and variations in which parts of the spectrum they can see and display, it will never look the same on screen as it does in person.

I'm late to the party here but comments like yours are typically from people who see everything that's not in their world as dangerous. As a chemist there many "fire" related experiments that can, and should, be done in a classroom, or a home class. It's these kinds of experiments that can thrill a student and possibly give them a nudge into a field of science that they turn out to be good at. Or, even great. And, maybe make the next product that saves millions. Who knows? It's just a comment of personal disagreement without taking into account why it should be done live. Something to text your same thinking friend, not leave as a comment here.

The heat energy absorbed by the element causes its valence electrons to excite to a higher energy state depending on the quanta absorbed. When it later reaches back to its normal stable state, 'this energy' is emitted back as photons. Depending on the energy absorbed by it, the colour of the emitted light will vary. The Alkali metals or Alkaline earth metals (1,2 groups) have only low ionisation energy. So often (they can absorb higher spectra too), the energy absorbed by these will be in low amount, resulting in the emitted radiation to be in lower energy- Visible spectrum of light. Here are some notable examples : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotechnic_colorant -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As we move to the right of periodic table, the Ionisation energy of elements increases. The nuclear charge increases keeping the number of shells same resulting in a reduction of atomic radii and hence increase in IE. So they would need higher energies for ionisation for an electron to excite from their valence shell. textimgs.s3.amazonaws.com/BLchem/ts-showing-electron-shells.svg#fixme When such an excited higher energy electron jumps down to normal stage, the energy emitted as photon will be of higher order/frequency. These radiations will be above visible radiation (Near UV, UV etc) and are hence invisible to our eyes. Exceptions are there among anions like borates and boric acid which give green colour. (Transition elements also show colour) Most often these Anions (the ones coming in right side of periodic table) aids in increasing/decreasing the flame temperature (brightness) for the compound rather than directly influencing colour. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In brevity : For most metals, the emitted light is in the visible region due to their absorbed radiation being in low energy visible spectra. For anions or the elements right of periodic table, the emitted energy is not in the visible region since it absorbs radiation in higher energy (invisible) spectra. Ionization enthalpy has an important role here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps the anions are fluorescing outside of the visible frequencies.

when you find your iynt friend in youtube comment section

It's a Vernier one ... But presumably other brands are available too ;)

Neither. The result is very boring, sadly. You might get odd flecks of different colours, but normally what happens is that the most dominant colour obscures all the others. If sodium is present, that will dominate, and all you'll see is yellow.

Pyrex is a brand name for borosilicate.

When the ions from the salt make their way into the flame, they are excited by the energy present, and electrons get temporarily changed to another orbit. This isn't a stable configuration however, and the electron really wants to be where it originally was. In the process of reverting back to the lower orbit, these electrons emit a photon. The color of these photons has a direct relationship with where it is/was in the atom and will always be the same for any given element. A "fingerprint" if you will. This is the simplified version, and I'm sure someone will elaborate at some point and muddy the water, but that's the basic concept.

electron transition

Maybe to dissolve the salts beforehand? Ethanol can dissolve salts too but I'm pretty sure it is a lot of a weaker polar solvent.

Danny Rochford sams

Same

yessir

Cameras/screens don't generally render the colors of flame tests accurately because there are spectral lines that are in the blind spots of such technologies. An example of this is boric acid/methanol. On screen it looks rather emerald green, in person a more limey green. This is because boron's yellow line sits just about completely invisible to technological RGB (cameras), vs biological (eyes)... Human eyes have better overlap. This is also why the yellow family has a rather pathetic "color wheel presence" on a computer. You'll notice there are a lot less shades available than for the others. This would hold true for cyan as well but green and blue overlap more than green and red, leaving yellow the short end of the stick.

@@MadScientist267 I see, thanks for the information

@@la912 There's something else that comes to mind... The potassium coloring is rather weak in appearance as well because it's so washed out by other lines, giving it its characteristic pastel. Even trace contamination with other ions can overtake the effect easily and ruin it. To me, potassium is best demonstrated either on a platinum wire loop, or in solid state (eg sugar/kno3)

The salts are not toxic and the gloves are flammable. You have the knowledge, logic, and intelligence of a government worker

hahaha

We have show experiments coming up and I'm planning on doing this but don't worry. I'm doing my research :)

Doin it at my house

Why not?

Yeah better doing it at uni xD