Chemistry Project Help

[Moff Chumley]

Well guys, a chem project snuck up on me while I wasn't looking. The project is quite open-ended: come up with some sort of experiment to do in front of the class. I need to write a summary and come up with procedures by Friday, and I need to get the topic approved before then. Needless to say this is the week all my other teachers have been piling on the essays, so any help I can get would be quite appreciated.

Basically, I'm looking for your favorite exothermic (explody) reactions. I'm not picky; the only limiting factor is that I must be able to legally and affordably acquire the materials. :smallwink:

Thanks in advance!

[Elentari]

try HCl and Al. in a bottle with the top on. its awesome! but you might wanna be careful.

[Sneak]

Make guncotton (nitrocellulose) and explode it.

It's basically just cotton soaked in nitric and sulfuric acids. Then you can either touch it with a match to set it off or heat a stirring rod in a bunsen burner and then touch the rod to the guncotton. It'll set off a nifty explosion that will leave almost no residue. It looks especially cool with the lights off.

You can find videos of it on Youtube and instructions on how to make it from Google.

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but...

[snoopy13a]

If you truly want a quick and easy one, buy some Alka Seltzer and run an experiment to see if it dissolves faster in hot water than cold water (obviously this is a no-brainer).

However, what you can do is dissolve it at three or four different tempartures (say 30, 40, and 50 degrees Celsuis) and then create a graph. Using the graph you could then try to predict what the dissolve time would be at 35 degrees Celsuis. Then you would run an final experiment to see how close you are.

Another good one is to measure the calories in a potato chip by burning it and using a caloriemeter (basically water) to determine how much heat went into the water and in theory, the calories in the chip.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Sugar + sulphuric acid!

Makes water, graphite and some cool special effects in the form of a graphite rod rising up from the solution...

[Maerok]

Thermite. Get finely powdered iron oxide and aluminum in a stoichiometric ratio and ignite with a flare or magnesium strip. Do it outside in a terracotta pot.

Or, cut up a glow stick and explain the light-producing reaction involved.

Electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then detonate the gases. If this gets into a large enough scale, it can do damage.

Potato lightbulb.

If you can obtain the D- or L- enantiomers of a chiral molecule (sugar might be one but it might be a mixture of D and L), put it into a polarimeter and show how the D- version bends light one way and the L- version bends light in another. This was originally done with tartaric acid which was separated into left-handed and right-handed crystals (one being L and the other being D).

Bleach or dye your hair. Explain the process.

See if you can get the stuff to make nylon polymer.

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I wish I'd get to do more fun chemistry projects as an undergrad. I guess it's technically called 'research' now. I can't think of anything more at the moment that doesn't end in "obtaining a spectrum via ___ spectroscopy." Could go back in time and win a high school science fair...

[Moff Chumley]

If you truly want a quick and easy one, buy some Alka Seltzer and run an experiment to see if it dissolves faster in hot water than cold water (obviously this is a no-brainer).

However, what you can do is dissolve it at three or four different tempartures (say 30, 40, and 50 degrees Celsuis) and then create a graph. Using the graph you could then try to predict what the dissolve time would be at 35 degrees Celsuis. Then you would run an final experiment to see how close you are.

Another good one is to measure the calories in a potato chip by burning it and using a caloriemeter (basically water) to determine how much heat went into the water and in theory, the calories in the chip.

Believe it or not, we've don all of those... >.>


Thermite. Get finely powdered iron oxide and aluminum in a stoichiometric ratio and ignite with a flare or magnesium strip. Do it outside in a terracotta pot.

Done that one.


Or, cut up a glow stick and explain the light-producing reaction involved.

Shall consider it.


Electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen. Then detonate the gases. If this gets into a large enough scale, it can do damage.

Sounds promising. :smallamused:


Potato lightbulb.

Nah...


If you can obtain the D- or L- enantiomers of a chiral molecule (sugar might be one but it might be a mixture of D and L), put it into a polarimeter and show how the D- version bends light one way and the L- version bends light in another. This was originally done with tartaric acid which was separated into left-handed and right-handed crystals (one being L and the other being D).

English please?


Bleach or dye your hair. Explain the process.

Aw hell naw. :smalltongue:


See if you can get the stuff to make nylon polymer.

Maybe...


Sugar + sulphuric acid!

Makes water, graphite and some cool special effects in the form of a graphite rod rising up from the solution...

I like that one. :smallsmile:




Well guys, I shall look into the experiments suggested. Keep 'em coming!

[Don Julio Anejo]

If you can obtain the D- or L- enantiomers of a chiral molecule (sugar might be one but it might be a mixture of D and L), put it into a polarimeter and show how the D- version bends light one way and the L- version bends light in another. This was originally done with tartaric acid which was separated into left-handed and right-handed crystals (one being L and the other being D).

You mean R and S enantiomers?

Also, sugar won't be one. It has way too many chiral centers to easily see a noticeable effect... You want a molecule with only 1 center, something like 2R-methylbutane. Random example of a made up molecule off the top of my head, could be any random molecule with 1 center, but yeah.

[Moff Chumley]

Wiki'd that. Looks a tad too much.

I liked the electrolysis of water and dehydration of sucrose ones; any more along those lines? Thanks!

[Maerok]

You mean R and S enantiomers?

Well yeah. I forgot to change that part back as I had written an entire thing out and switched it around.

[The Duke]

If you take a reaction that creates lots of gaseous products and add soap before reacting it is wooshes up nicely in a bubble tower.

I don't know the exact reaction that was used to make the one I saw though

[Bookworm42]

You can do a simple experiment with flour for your explody needs. A pile of flour will burn slowly, but a cloud of flour will burn quickly, causing a small explosion. You can tie this into oxygen ratios necessary for burn, diffusion, and many other things, and you get to make a fireball using a basic cooking ingredient.

[Maerok]

Explain 'glow-in-the-dark' materials.

Use a diffraction grating to break down sunlight into a rainbow pattern and then show how fluorescent lights don't produce a continuous rainbow effect but only show several discrete colors.

Put different metals into a flame to produce different colors (like in fireworks).

Liquid nitrogen ice cream is a big seller for demonstrations. Alternatively, you can make something similar with dry ice.

Diet Coke and Mentos.

[Milskidasith]

Make... oobleck? Corn starch and water. Get a giant vat of it, and dance on top of the resulting non newtonian fluid.

Explain how fireworks work.

Do a mundane test on the X property of household objects. Suggestions include how good a lubricant it is (test how fast it slides down a ramp, how many degrees you have to tilt a seesaw before a constant object starts sliding down it, etc. I think if you do the second one, you'd need to test for kinetic friction in a separate test), how much energy various appliances use, the contents of various foods by weight, etc. That's more science fair stuff (and rather middle school science fair stuff) but it could work.

Make toothpick torpedoes, then explain how the surface tension makes them go.

Do an experiment to produce... I can't remember what they were called, but it was a fun one. It wound up producing the... whatever causes skunk smells, artificial smells for foods, and other stuff; it's a certain type of molecule that the nose detects. Show how various mixtures make different smells, like sulfuric acid and some other chemical mix to form a banana like smell, or something like that.

For a really cool but stupid project you shouldn't try: demonstrate violent strong base and strong acid reactions, then very carefully mix the acid and the base together in exact proportions in a shot glass, then take a shot of the mixture. If you did it right, you should feel no ill effects.

Seriously, don't do that. Ever.

[Cyrion]

If you go with the flour idea, you can also use iron. Stick an iron rod in a bunsen burner and ooh aah nothing happens of course, but blow iron filings into the bunsen burner and you get pretty sparklies.


Technically, he was right when he said D and L. R and S do refer to enantiomers, but D and L refer to light rotation (dextrorotatory and levorotatory). The stupid and confusing thing is that although this is where the terms originated, in practical use D and L aren't used to describe the actual direction the polarized light is rotated, that's + and -. D and L are typically used by carbohydrate chemists and refer to the hydroxyl group on the lowes chiral carbon of sugars. If it's on the right it's D; on the left it's L.

[Maerok]

Outside of sugars D and L are typically empirically determined where the R and S notation can be solved for by the priority rules.

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As for stinky stuff -> Thiols (R-SH group)


As for smelly stuff -> Esters (R-O-CO-R)
This is a carboxylic acid (R-OCOH) and an alcohol (R-OH) reacting or in many other ways. They smell nice, usually, but some of the butyric stuff starts to smell like throw-up. The stuff I'm working with smells like apples, I guess. I would still waft this stuff if sampling it, rather than directly smell it.
They might also be called something along the pattern of ethyl ethanoate.

[ForzaFiori]

If you take a reaction that creates lots of gaseous products and add soap before reacting it is wooshes up nicely in a bubble tower.

I don't know the exact reaction that was used to make the one I saw though

This is even better if you release a flammable gas, as you can then like your bubble tower on fire, and it goes up REALLY well.