Science Skool

A very old video (12 years ago!) of a very very large and dangerous thermite reaction I did. Here aluminium displaces the iron in iron oxide and in doing so gives out a huge amount of heat. If you look closely you can see me lighting the reaction, and then almost getting killed in the process. My apologies for the poor video quality, but camera phones 12 years ago were not that great in low light.

The Dragon's Breath demonstration. Blowing icing sugar through a Bunsen flame. The huge surface area allows the icing sugar to ignite, this effect is one of the reasons that flour mills and their like have to be so careful.

Classic methane bubbles demonstration.

The iodine clock results are in! Two times speed, and thankfully no sound. As you can see, increasing concentration of iodine increases rate, in what should be a first order reaction. Results are not perfect but I blame the students!

Sometimes called the chemical chameleon, this is a redox reaction between glucose and potassium permanganate in sodium hydroxide. We start with the MnO4 - ion which is purple, which is converted into the MnO4 2- ion which is green (the blue is a mixture of the two), and then this eventually is converted into MnO2 which is a brown solid which when suspended gives a yellow colour.