Reaction Between Conc Sulfuric Acid and Potassium Permanganate

Hi, here is an interesting video on the reaction of Conc sulfuric acid and potassium permanganate. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm2Q_UCCMoU&feature=email

Conc sulfuric acid is added into a boiling tube (please hold the tube with a retort stand instead of your hand as the reaction can be quite explosive so please handle it with care) followed by a layer of 95% denatured ethanol on it. Then use a forcep to add it some potassium permanganate (add abit will do, do not add a spatula of it as the reaction may be too vigorous and cause explosion.

Once the permanganate dissolved in the sulfuric acid, you will be able to see spark appearing in the layer of ethanol. So what is the theory behind it that causes these reaction?

Concentrated sulfuric acid reacts with KMnO₄ to give Mn₂O₇, which can be explosive. This reaction also produce some ozone which has a high oxidising power which oxidises the ethanol causing it to combust. Therefore together with the explosive Mn₂O₇, it create spark inside the boiling tube.


You can also try to soak a filter paper with ethanol and over a beaker of conc sulfuric acid and KMnO₄ the ozone created can also oxidises the ethanol in the paper and cause it to combust.

Reduction of Manganese. Colour change with KMnO4, Sucrose & NaOH

Hi all,

Just happen to see a video on colour change of the KMnO4. So I decided to try it out as the chemical needed is quite easy available.

You may have seen alot of people mixing sucrose, sodium hydroxide and potassium permanganate in youtube. This reaction occurs because the Manganese is being reduce from 7+ to 3+.

Therefore for every reduction of the manganese the state of colour is different which is why we can see the colour changes from purple (7+) to grey/blue (6+) to green (5+) to yellow (4+) and finally to orange (3+). Orange is a bit difficult to differentiate from yellow from my video. So in my video I just wrote the final colour is yellow.

Have a look at my video, it can be found in youtube too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9FQlxDu28U

Preparing placenta into powdered form

I have tried taking my own (or my baby?) placenta. As you should know in the market, people sell sheep placenta and claim that it will keep you look youthful. So after giving birth to my first child, I actually requested the hospital to give me back my placenta so it will not be so wasteful to throw such a good stuff.

However is quite scary to deal with real placenta with blood oozing out from it (see pic). I didn't know how my mother actually deal with it as I was under confinement so what I do is just rest and take care of my newborn. I just give her the recipe which I found in the internet and pass it to her to prepare for me.

Actually the taste is quite nice after being cooked and dried to powdered form. I treat it as pepper and sprinkle it on my rice. Is quite sad that now I am expecting a 2nd baby, but my mum said only the first placenta can be consumed and not from the 2nd baby.

I am not sure whether the placenta have helped me or not, but I really look quite radiant during my confinement period even though I always look radiant. But I suppose one should be quite weak after delivery.

Anyway I am here to share the recipe on the preparation of the placenta, so anyone who is pregnant can keep your placenta and try it.

1) Wash the excess blood from the placenta. Put fresh ginger slices, half a lemon (sliced) and hot pepper slices (or red capsicum) together with it and steam for 15 min.

2) Turn the placenta and steam for another 15 min to ensure both side are cooked evenly. Make sure there is no juice or blood coming out when pricked with a fork. If not steam again until it is fully cooked.

3) After steaming, slice the placenta into strips that are as thin as possible so as to reduce the time for it to dried up.

4) Place all the strips over a aluminium foil and baked it in the oven using as low heat as possible until it is completely brittle-dry (this may takes a few hours). Make sure you turn the strips occasionally so it will not get burnt and certain part is still not dried.

5) Once it is done, try to remove and throw away those part that are burnt then put the rest into an electric grinder and grind it to become powdered form. Make sure the strips is cool before grinding as the heat may produce water vapour and cause the powder to be wet and this will cause the powder to spoil easily.

6) For prolong storage, (if you only treat it as pepper like me instead of having 1 big spoonful and put it in your mouth) is better to keep the powder in a fridge.

Hope you will find this useful and do feedback to me whether it has done any miracle for you.

Wall Mural

I have never been asked to do a wall mural before. Initially I thought it will be quite difficult to get student to provide ideas on what to draw on the wall. However I was quite shocked that the students are very proactive, they drew their basic concept on a paper and then get approval from us before drawing on the wall.

Initially the sketching is quite badly done, however once they start to paint on it, we can slowly imagine the picture they are going to put up.

Each wall is done by around 8-10 students within 2-3 days (each day 3 hrs only). I am really impress with their drawing . See my pictures, maybe you will like them too. If you wish to draw on the wall of your house, maybe you can get paint from me as I still have some left over paint.

My Ant Universe (continued)

Hi is so long that I have not update my blog on my ant universe. Actually my ants have died long ago. I think they can only survive for 2 weeks, slowly their movement become slower and died. This is the final master piece of my ants universe that is created by the ants I caught.

My Ant Universe

I saw this Ant Universe online and was interested to buy it and rear ants. It is a plastic flat aquarium with blue colour gel. To my surprize, I actually saw it at the souvenir shop in Science Centre and it cost SGD 30. So I quickly bought it to create my own ant universe.

Catching ants is a challenge as you need to be fast to keep it in a small container. However putting the ants in the aquarium is even more challenging, as once you put 1 in another will escape. So I decided to put a clear plastic tube as a passageway for the ants to travel in. At least with that, it slow down the ants from inside to escape as it needs time to travel through the passage way and before they can move to the exit we have already closed the exit.

So have a look at the aquarium at Day 1 when we just put in the ants (you can see the passageway is still there, as some ants still stay in the passageway so I cannot remove it till Day 3 when the ants are all in the aquarium.

Forgot to mention that the ant universe is not for rearing ants only, the interesting part is to see how they dig tunnel, so you can actually see my pic on Day 3 has tunnel dig by the ants already. Soon the whole aquarium will have a network of tunnels.

Day 1

Day 3

The Final Version of the Poly Density Bottle

Hi, just want to update that my student have come out with the design of the poly density bottle (with the help of their mentor). To make it interesting, they actually made 4 bottles with a theme of four season. So each bottle the colour of the plastic is link with either Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter. Behind each bottle, the students also pasted pictures from magazine to suit its theme.

What I am proud of them is that, the group win a special mentioned prize, as the judges say it is very creative and is also look like an artistic piece that shows a science theory. Even though they are not the top 3, however the other winner are from Raffles Institute and Hwa Chong which are those top schools of Singapore, so we are really proud to win that prize.

The theory is still the same, once shake, the density of the mixture will cause 1 kind of plastic to sink another type will sink. However once the propanol and salt water is separated, the float plastic will sink to the middle and the sink plastic will float to the middle. Now have a look at their final version.