Laser+Syringe=> Microscope

Well this is quite impressive: using just a laser and a drop of water you can project the microscopic world on a wall. That’s right, you can see bacteria and other small creatures moving through the water molecules.

Experiment: The energy from the sun

This really cool video shows us how to calculate the energy received from the sun using a simple device.

Methods of obtaining Hydrogen

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75 % of the Universe’s elemental mass.^[4] Stars in the main sequence are mainly composed of hydrogen in its plasma state. Naturally occurring elemental hydrogen is relatively rare on Earth.

Hydrogen gas (now known to be H₂) was first artificially produced in the early 16th century, via the mixing of metals with strong acids. In 1766–81, Henry Cavendish was the first to recognize that hydrogen gas was a discrete substance, and that it produces water when burned, a property which later gave it its name, which in Greek means “water-former.” At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is acolorless, odorless, nonmetallic, tasteless, highly combustible diatomic gas with the molecular formula H₂.

Hydrogen is highly flammable and will burn in air at a very wide range of concentrations between 4% and 75% by volume.

Wikipedia Reference

Although you can’t collect hydrogen from the environment because it’s almost non-existent in our atmosphere(in natural state, because it’s very abundant in combination with other elements: water, for example ) there are numerous ways of producing it. No, you don’t need a chemistry laboratory at home to make your own hydrogen gas, you just need to improvise some equipment. Actually you don’t need to improvise at all if you just want to produce hydrogen for demonstration!

What can you use hydrogen for? Well, hehe, there are numerous applications if you are inventive. First of all, you can just have fun by setting it on fire while the reaction produces hydrogen. It will make small pops, or, if you have a nozzle, it will make a small beautiful flame. You can inflate a balloon and let it fly… or light it and it will wonderfully explode. You can make a water gun that throws water when hydrogen explodes in a “combustion chamber” as described here.

I’m going to post some methods of producing hydrogen at home, and probably provide some examples from external links.

With acids

You can prepare hydrogen through the reaction of acids with metals. It’s like this:

2HR+2M=>2MR+H2

“H” is hydrogen, “R” is the acid radical(example for sulfuric acid: SO4, so the acid is H2SO4) and “M” is the metal. So what acids and metals you can use at home?

For acids, you can use vinegar!(which is acetic acid btw, H3C-COOH ). On every bottle it must say the concentration. Most of the commercial vinegar is some around 5%, but the higher, the better. Of course you can use other acids. If you find any! You can actually use sulfuric acid found at hardware stores as “car battery electrolyte” but it is far to dangerous to play with.

For metals, you can probably find iron around the house. But even better, you can use zinc. You can get zinc from galvanized nails, or batteries.  It’s probably easier and faster to get it from batteries if you don’t find any galvanized nails, just peel of the metal casing from a zinc-carbon or alkaline battery, wash it, and you’ve got zinc metal.

For example, the reaction of zinc and vinegar goes like this:

2H3C-COOH+2Zn=>2H3C-COOZn+H2^

If you put the 2 ingredients in a transparent recipient( a glass for example), you will start seeing bubbles coming up from the zinc metal. If many bubbles form at the top, you can place near them a match and they will pop, because hydrogen explodes forming water.

Note that if you can find magnesium(Mg), the reaction will go even faster.

From water

You can make hydrogen through the electrolysis of water. Water electrolysis is also use at an industrial scale to produce both hydrogen and oxygen.

I actually did some water electrolysis myself and I posted on my blog: link. But I only did it for oxygen at that time, and I plan to do it for hydrogen as well.

It’s actually easy to do at home, all you need is to improvise a little apparatus. There are hundreds of explanations on the internet on how to do this, so I won’t bother to describe the method here(first of all, read that link from above on Wikipedia).

Some external links:

• Instructable on collecting hydrogen and oxygen
• A fun application of water electrolysis.
• Another instructable

Other methods

There are other methods as well, but I’m not going to describe them here because they’re not really possible to do at home, and some of them are dangerous.

One more way to make hydrogen at home is by mixing Caustic Soda(NaOH) with water and then adding sheets of alluminium foil. It’s a rather dangerous experiment, which I made myself.

Link to my experiment

View it directly on youtube.

If you want to make hydrogen by using the last method I showed you, please be cautious. It can be extremely dangerous. For safer production please use the water electrolysis method. It is much more safe.

Hydrogen can be fun if you manage to control it(that is “to store” it, to not let it escape).’

Have fun and be safe !

The Phytoplankton Experiment: A climate saver

A couple of days ago I remembered a show I saw on Discovery or National Geographic. I think it was a year ago…( I just remember things sometimes out of boredom, not that I do something that requires me to remember things…)

Anyway, it was about an interesting experiment related to the phytoplankton.Before you ask what this is, I’m going to quote from wikipedia:

Phytoplankton are the autotrophic component of the plankton community. The name comes from the Greek words φυτον (phyton), meaning “plant“, and πλαγκτος (planktos), meaning “wanderer” or “drifter”.^[1] Most phytoplankton are too small to be individually seen with the unaided eye. However, when present in high enough numbers, they may appear as a green discoloration of the water due to the presence of chlorophyll within their cells (although the actual color may vary with the species of phytoplankton present due to varying levels of chlorophyll or the presence of accessory pigments such as phycobiliproteins,xanthophylls, etc.).

In simple English, that means they are a very small type of plants. So small you can’t see them! But they are very numerous. In fact, they are actually called “the invisible forest” because they are responsible for producing half of the atmospheric oxygen! They live in the oceans and seas, at the surface of them(because they need light to survive). In the Earth’s youth, cyanobacteria(a component of the phytoplankton) was responsible for the massive amounts of oxygen released in the atmosphere.

They are also extremely important for capturing that bad gas that affects us and helps the climate getting hotter- CO2. Like all plants, they breath CO2 and through photosynthesis they release oxygen. But again, like all plants, they die. Well, when they die, they still have in their bodies a small amount of CO2 that isn’t processed anymore, it’s trapped in the cell that will sink to the bottom. Being so numerous this process is actually happening at a gigantic scale. This CO2 doesn’t resurface for about 1000 years. It’s like a massive ecological pump.  No wonder they attracted scientists attention!

Even though they can practically live anywhere on the surface of oceans and seas, they’re much more effective when coming in packs, simply named “blooms” because of the greenish color they make when seen from above. But this occurs only near shores or places where deep underwater currents bring nutriments to the surface. After all, they have to be feed with something!

Phytoplankton bloom

Knowing this, scientists wondered whether it is possible or not to move those nutriments up to the surface through artificial ways that won’t affect the ecosystem. The answer was yes(I’m actually telling you the experiment I saw at TV now).

The Experiment

They thought about a simple mechanism, so simple in fact that it makes you wonder why they didn’t think about this in the past… The thing they used was a very long tube that stays in a vertical position. It has a valve at the bottom. But how it works ? Well that is simple: wave energy. When the tube is brought up by a wave, the force of gravity pushes the water down and the pressure created closes the valve. When the tube descends, water is forced out of the tube, spreading nutriments at the surface of the ocean. This creates a negative pressure that helps absorb more water with nutriments from the bottom. The cycle repeats.

They left these mechanisms in the ocean for some time, and then came back. The proof was there: an entire mini-ecosystem was created.

This is what happened: phytoplankton population started to grow in the presence of light and nutriments. This attracted very small animals that live by feeding on the phytoplankton. Fish that eat these small animals began to multiply. Even bigger fish that … ok, you get the ideea. So not only they are good for producing oxygen, trapping CO2, but they are also the base for a thriving ecosystem !

The whole idea?

The whole idea is about informing you and spreading the message! There are other means of reducing the pollution than just planting trees. Don’t get me wrong: we should plant as many trees as we can, because we consume a lot of wood anyway. But planting trees is a long-term solution to the pollution reduction. If we can place enough “pumps” like these in strategic locations, they will start working in a matter of days. I also read some time ago about other methods of increasing phytoplankton population like dumping dissolved iron in the water. But in some cases it just doesn’t work- it disrupts the chemical balance. The pump solution is a much more natural way of solving this.

We can hope for a better future as science evolves!

Sick experiments

While sometimes I consider myself doing some dangerous experiments, and I admit that I thought of some weird experiments sometimes, there’s much to discover.

I’ve stumbled upon a top 10 of the wackiest experiments. Well, I don’t believe in these tops, but they sure are wacky!

1) Elephants on Acid

A curiosity-led experiment from the 1960s, in which Warren Thomas decided to inject an elephant named Tusko with 297 milligrams of LSD — about 3,000 times the typical human dose — to see what would happen. The idea was to determine whether the hallucinogenic drug could induce musth — the state of temporary madness in which male elephants become aggressive.

The result was a public relations disaster: Tusko died. The scientists claimed in their defence that they had not expected this to happen — two of them had taken plenty of acid themselves, they said.

2) Terror in the Skies

Another 1960s experiment, in which ten soldiers on a training flight were told by the pilot that the aircraft was disabled, and about to ditch in the ocean. They were then required to fill in insurance forms before the crash — ostensibly so the Army was not financially liable for any deaths or injuries.

They were actually unwitting participants in an experiment: the plane was not crippled at all. It revealed that fear of imminent death indeed causes soldiers to make more mistakes than usual when filling in forms.

3) Tickling

In the 1930s Clarence Yeuba, a Professor of Psychology at Antioch College in Ohio, formed the hypothesis that people learn to laugh when tickled, and that the response is not innate. He tested it on his son — the family was forbidden from laughing in relation to tickling when he was present.

Leuba’s wife, however, was caught some months later bouncing the boy on her knee while laughing and saying: “Bouncy, bouncy.” By the time the boy was seven, he was laughing when tickled — but that did not stop Leuba trying the experiment again on his sister.

4) Headless rats and painted faces

In 1924 Carney Landis, of the University of Minnesota, set out to investigate facial expressions of disgust. To exaggerate expressions, he drew lines on volunteers’ faces with burnt cork, before asking them to smell ammonia, listen to jazz, look at pornography or place their hands in a bucket of frogs.

He then asked each volunteer to decapitate a white rat. While all hesitated, and some swore or cried, most agreed to do so — showing the ease with which most people bow to authority. The pictures, however, look quite bizarre. “They look like members of a strange cult preparing to offer a sacrifice to the Great God of the Experiment,” Mr Boese wrote.

5) Raising the dead

Robert Cornish, of the University of California at Berkeley, believed in the 1930s that he had perfected a way of raising the dead. He experimented by placing corpses on a see-saw to circulate the blood, while injecting adrenalin and anticoagulants.

After apparently successful experiments on strangled dogs, he found a condemned prisoner, Thomas McMonigle, who was prepared to become a human guinea pig. The state of California, however, refused permission, for fear that it would have to release McMonigle if the technique worked.

6) Slumber learning

In 1942 Lawrence LeShan, of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, attempted subliminally to influence boys into stopping biting their fingernails. While they were asleep, he played them a record of a voice saying: “My fingernails taste terribly bitter.” When the record player broke down, he stood in the dormitory repeating the phrase himself.

It seemed to work: by the end of the summer, 40 per cent of the boys had stopped biting their nails. Mr Boese, however, has another explanation: “‘If I stop biting my nails,’ they probably thought, ‘the strange man will go away.’”

7) Turkey turn-ons

Martin Schein and Edgar Hale, of Pennsylvania State University, devoted themselves to studying the sexual behaviour of turkeys in the 1960s, and discovered that the birds are not choosy. Taking a model of a female turkey, they progressively removed body parts until the males lost interest.

Even when all that remained was a head on a stick, the male turkeys remained turned on.

8) Two-headed dogs

Vladimir Demikhov, a surgeon from the Soviet Union, revealed his surgical creation of a two-headed dog in 1954. The head of a puppy had been grafted onto the neck of an adult German shepherd. The second head would lap at milk, even though it did not need nourishment — and though the milk then dribbled down the neck from its disconnected oesophagus. Both animals soon died because of tissue rejection — but that did not stop Demikhov from creating 19 more over the next 15 years.

9) The vomit-drinking doctor

Stubbins Ffirth, a doctor training in Philadelphia during the 1800s, formed the hypothesis that yellow fever was not an infectious disease, and proceeded to test it on himself. He first poured infected vomit into open wounds, then drank the vomit. He did not fall ill — but not because yellow fever is not infectious. It was later discovered that it must be injected directly into the bloodstream, typically through the bite of a mosquito.

10) Eyes wide open

In 1960 Ian Oswald, of the University of Edinburgh, sought to test extreme conditions for falling asleep. He taped open volunteers’ eyes, while placing a bank of flashing lights 50cm in front of them, and attached electrodes to their legs that administered electric shocks. He also blasted very loud music into their ears.

All three subjects were able to fall asleep within 12 minutes. Oswald speculated that the key was the monotonous and regular nature of the stimuli.

Info from Times Online.

Hydrogen making, the exothermic way! :)

Recently I discovered a method of producing Hydrogen, using a faster method than electrolysis. This is the reaction:

2Al+2NaOH+6H2O=>2NaAl(OH)4+3H2

I described it in the previous post.

Today I filmed it. So here’s how to make hydrogen from NaOH, aluminum and water.

Watch it HD on youtube.

The video is actually only 3 minutes long! I left from mistake a part of the song later in the video and forgot about it. So when the video is half-streamed, it’s actually all ready to play

In other news, today it’s 21st June. It’s the summer solstice! Yay ! Or not yay? Now the night will grow and the day will shrink . Anyway, I’m beginning to feel the vacation. Happy summer to everybody!

Dangerous Hydrogen Making Experiment

Yesterday I discovered a faster, simpler way of producing hydrogen without all that electrolysis hustle. I hope I can get my hands on some NaOH tomorrow, because NaOH+H2O+Al=> lots of heat and H2 and other substances that are hard to write(something like NaAl(OH) but I may be wrong). I just put them in a bottle, then cover the bottle with a balloon! How cool is that?

Sodium Hydroxide(NaOH)

Well, I was at my grandmother today and I found out she had some old NaOH from some time ago when she made soap. It was nearly rock solid, so I could only scratch some NaOH from that rock. I didn’t make the above experiment(I plan on doing it tomorrow), instead I made something… “bombastic”.

So this is what I did: Placed NaOH in a 0,5l glass bottle half-filled with warm water, then quickly added some aluminium foil. Shaked the bottle a little bit and the reaction started immediately. It started making a lot of H2 and foam, but it wasn’t sufficient for what I wanted(I placed only a small quantity of NaOH)- a continuous flame coming from the mouth of the bottle.
So instead I placed a cover on the bottle’s mouth- hydrogen built up inside. After about 1 minute, I took the cover and came near with a match.

I wasn’t expecting that: it exploded into a flame about 20 cm high(the flame could be seen even inside the bottle) with a loud bang. It really scared the crap

Alluminium foil

out of me, and I wonder what would’ve happened if I let the hydrogen build more in quantity… I really feel lucky that bottle didn’t explode.I guess things like this increase our experience so next time we are much more cautious.

So anyway, tomorrow I’m going to buy some balloons and fill them with hydrogen .

And btw,  I found the reaction equation, it is this:

2Al+2NaOH+6H2O=>2NaAl(OH)4+3H2

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, making up 75% of normal matter by mass and over 90% by number of atoms

News

• I finished the linking all the videos of the “S-Star” competition ( a music&fashion competition that’s been held at my school in february). I’ll hopefully upload the video, cut in several parts(it’s 2 hours), sometime soon. The rendering took about 15 hours on my Intel Pentium D 3.2 ghz xD .
• I finished my cubicle entry for www.twhl.co.za “TWHL Cubicles” mini compo. Not much to say about it anyway, so here’s a link to download it if you want(includes screenshot ): LINK_DOWNLOAD&SCREENSHOT
• I got myself into the mapping team for a new PQL project(the same team that produced Issues and Reissues ). It’s almost the same thing, but now the mapping is done in Spirit of Half-Life. The maximum length of the level each mapper can post is 2 maps.I’ll be mapping something puzzle-themed with custom resources. All the maps will be connected through a hub . Right now people from the HL communities are not aware of this project as the team is just growing up right now. I already started mapping my entry .
• This week I’ve done a “not so cool” experiment, but hey… I like experiments . I made some ZnSO4(CuSO_4(s) + Zn_(s) = Cu_(s) + ZnSO_4(aq)). In a time period of about an hour, the blue coloured solution lost its color and some brownish-black deposits formed on the bottom of the glass. I think that’s the copper. Still, it’s interesting I can make experiments at home . (CuSO4 is easy to get, it’s found at gardening stores I guess…. it’s used to protect the grapes).
• I reaaaally want to make a new mini-film….
• I reaaaally have to finish my project for french =)).