My own video production on lab safety

Hi all, it has been quite some time that I did not write my blog. Partly is I am too busy & also I have nothing interesting to share.

As I have to do lab safety briefing for students at the start of the year. Using power slides to show all the lab safety rules will bored the students in this era where everything is shown with pictures & videos.

So I have decided to make a video from the 30 lab safety rules together with my school Media Studies student. I am quite impress with the students that are in the video. They can act and even do filming themselves. All the shots were created by the students themselves. I only told them what I want to show, then they know which angle or position they need to stand or film in order to get a good shot.

So instead of keeping such a good educational video only to ourselves. I would like to share this information to everyone and educate them on the importance of lab safety.

Here the link to the video. Hope you will like it.

Eating liquid nitrogen biscuit

Have you tried eating a biscuit that has been dipped into the liquid nitrogen? What will happen? Don't worry it will not be very cold to cause frost bite in your mouth. As you are eating the biscuit not drinking liquid nitrogen. (Please do not drink liquid nitrogen as it will kill yourself!). The taste of it? No taste of the biscuit only feel cold and dry.

The moment you eat it, the heat from your body will cause the liquid nitrogen to become gas. Hence what will happen? You will look like an angry bull with smoke coming out from your mouth & nose. Here is the video, happy viewing!

YBCO floating on neodynium magnet

Hi all, here is an interesting experiment. When you cool a YBCO (a kind of superconductor) using liquid nitrogen and placed it on top of the neodynium magnet, it will create a meissner effect which will allows the YBCO to float on top of the neodynium magnet as shown in the video.

Do note, it need strong magnetic field, in order to let it float. So neodynium magnet is needed and not other normal magnet. The theory behind it that cause the floating is quite complicated so I will not touch on that. I only want to show the video, how amazing it is to see something floating.

Blood grouping with artificial blood

I tried to search online for the recipe. Actually I did saw different recipe and tried it out, but because online did not mentioned on the concentration used and the brand of the dye. My experiment fails with their recipe.

I did get agglutination when I react HCl with silver nitrate (recipe from online). However the agglutination is white colour in a pool of red water.

If you all seen a real blood grouping before using blood and the serum with different antibodies, the agglutination is actually red in a pool of pale yellow solution (which is serum). Below are my recipe:

Blood Gp A - Star brand Red Dye + Tap water

Blood Gp B - 10% FeCl3 (Iron III Chloride) + Char Siew powder (to give red colour)

Blood Gp O - Char Siew powder + Tap Water

* Star brand Green dye is used to adjust the red colour to look more like blood.

Anti A - 0.1M HCl (Hydrochloric Acid)

Anti B - 0.1M NaOH (Aq Sodium Hydroxide) 

So after a few trial with different chemical, I finally come out with my own recipe. All thanks to Star brand red dye which agglutinate in the presence of acid.

However I do have a problem is that I cannot make Blood AB as the Red dye (from Blood A) will agglutinate in the presence of FeCl3 which is acidic even no acid is added (I only mixed 5g of FeCl3 powder with 50ml of tap water and it gives a pH of about 1.5)

So I intend to leave out Blood AB, as after a lot of trial, I still cannot get the result I want. I even let the agglutination in my Blood AB to settle down and get the supernatant. However it only react with Anti B (NaOH) but not in Anti A (HCl) which I think all have been reacted to form agglutination so the supernatant does not gives a reaction when react with Anti A (HCl).

If anyone who read my article can create Blood AB, or you have any recipe where the result is as good as mine shown in the picture (really look like real life blood agglutination). Please leave comment in my blog. Thank you.

Attached below is the picture of the item I used for my blood grouping kit.

    

  

The magic of water to wine to milk then to beer

Wow you must be amaze to see water can change to wine then to milk and then to beer. See Video. 

Actually is all based on chemical reaction. Below are the chemical that is placed in each glass before doing the demostration. I actually named the glasses A - D.

1.    Glass A (Water) – Pour 110ml of deionised water into the glass. Add in 20ml of saturated sodium bicarbonate with 20% sodium carbonate.

2.    Glass B (Wine) – Add a few ml of phenolphthalein into the wine glass. 

3.    Glass C (Milk) – Pour 25ml of saturated barium chloride solution into the glass.

4.    Glass D (Beer) – Pour 4ml of concentrated hydrochloric acid into the glass. Add in 5ml of bromothymol blue (0.1g in 8ml NaOH and top up to 250ml).

The explaination:

When Glass A is poured into glass B, the colourless water turned red, resembling wine. This is beacause Sodium Bicarbonate and Sodium Carbonate are alkaline which change the Phenophthalein from colourless to deep red (depending on the conc of the phenophthalein, the more concentrated, it will resemble more like wine).

When the ‘wine’ from glass B is poured into glass C, the solution turns milky white, resembling milk. This is because the barium chloride will react with the sodium carbonate to form barium carbonate which is a white precipitate and make the solution turns white and resemble milk. Since it is not alkaline anymore the phenophthalein change back to colourless.

When the solution from glass C is poured into glass D, the solution turns into a clear yellow solution with bubbling, resembling beer.This is because the barium carbonate reacts with the acid, forming soluble barium ions, water, and carbon dioxide gas. The white solid dissolves, the carbon dioxide creates bubbles. The bromthymol blue which turns yellowish-brown in acidic solution, gives the colour of beer.

Elephant toothpaste

Hmm nothing special to mention on as I think it has been featured in alot of video. However in case you do not know the theory behind it, let me explain it. The procedure mentioned below is what I used for the video.

Firstly, we need to add in 30ml of 30% H2O2 in a 100ml measuring cylinder. Add one squirt of dish washing detergent. Then the most exciting part is the 2M potassium iodide. Once a few ml of it is added, the foam will form. Blue dye added is optional as it only give you a nicer colour.

The reaction behind it is due to the potassium iodide which act as a catalyst to break down the hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and water. The oxygen produced caused the liquid detergent to generate bubbles/foam which is what you will see. Do note the reaction is exothermic, so please do not touch as it is quite hot and H2O2 is also quite corrosive in case not all have been reacted.

Anyway enjoy the video and you can try it yourself if you have the chemical needed.

Flame test for Cation

Having difficulty controlling the amount of NaOH and Aq Ammonia used during the Cation test? Try this, just spray the cation solution on the flame and you will be able to identify it. If you do not have a spray bottle, get a metal innoculating loop and dip that into the cation solution, you will be able to see the colour change of the flame.

These are the result of the colour of the flame based on the cation. See the video that I have tried. Enjoy!

Copper - Green
Sodium - Orange
Potassium - Lilac
Barium - Yellow
Calcium - Red