I'm glad you mentioned that the mercury doesn't leach from amalgam fillings in harmful quantities. There has been a lot of pseudoscience surrounding this issue and it's good to see that you didn't sidestep it. Thank you.
One use of sodium amalgam are electrochemical measurements. You cannot put a sodium stick into water as an electrode, but you can use sodium amalgam. In the equations, a saturated amalgam behaves like pure sodium, but it reacts far slowlier. This works also with other highly reactive metals.
Your comment on mercury on a gold wedding rings happened to me. I worked for Ray-o-Vac doing cell exams on button cells and got a small speck of mercury on it. I tried to wipe it off but the ring turned silver. The lab dipped in acid and turned it back to a gold ring.
High Pressure sodium lamps use a mercury-sodium amalgam, the mercury allows the arc to be more uniform, plus it is in a less reactive form than pure sodium. By the way for those who don't know, sodium lamps are the yellow streetlights. She forgot to mention that little use of Na/Hg. Very cool demonstration though! Thanks.
It's forming one of a couple of compounds Na5Hg8 or Na3Hg, so the exact amounts depend on the equilibrium between the two. Assuming that you only make the latter compound and the universe is perfect then 1 mole of sodium (23 grams) should go into 3 moles of mercury (602 grams).
Sodium can ignite hexane, especially in humid air (I have seen it happen) but there is no danger here as argon is heavier than air so excludes all oxygen even with the open top). Another thing: hexane evaporates rapidly and it only takes a few seconds of waving the sodium around on your tweezers for most of it to evaporate away. As we would hope, her technique is quite safe.
lol Debbie, i never cut my sunday roast with a SCALPEL, but nice idea. :-) i once mixed gallium and mercury, and it produced a horrible, stain-leaving but liquid (at room temp) mess. i dont suppose this could be of any use, now could it? =)
Funny how many things go wrong in this video, getting stuck to the tape and the scalpel snapping off. I'm glad they kept this in the final cut it made it much better.
the heavy iron magnetic stirrer swims on a liquid, like a table tennis ball on water, thats quite weird and gives us a imagination how dense the mercury is
Sodium Mercury amalgams are often used in Sodium lamps. I'm not 100% sure but I think the mercury is there to help strike an arc to vapourise the sodium to produce light.
There are several professions where people generally don't wear wedding rings at work. For example, my sisters, who are nurses, don't wear jewellery at work because they want to avoid the spreading of bacteria.
I live on the Gold Country, mercury was one of the safest methods to recover gold. Large facilities used Chlorine, and now it pretty much is exclusively cyanide based recovery. The mercury can be recovered easily, the cyanide just is waste.
sodium is very reactive, and it DOES react with argon, but as you stated argon is inert, but there is still a small amount of reactivity, just not as noticeable :)
I'm sure someone else has said this, but you're perfectly right. However, they did use this process to isolate silver from mines (which is still done in some places today, with both silver and gold). Silver and gold are found as metals, so you just have to remove the metals from the other stuff. This process does that.
According to the video, it can be used as a reducing agent. Reduction reactions are used for lots of things. One really common reduction is converting metal ores into elemental metals, though you'd normally use carbon as the reducing agent for that because it's cheaper and less toxic.
Yeah, actually that was an oversimplification on my part. Generally, an exothermic reaction occurs when chemical bonds are being formed. That isn't exactly the case here, even though it is exothermic. In an amalgam, mercury and another metal form structures, but the length between the atoms is greater than it is with covalent bonds. So instead of reactants > products + heat, as in an exothermic chemical reaction, it's metals > metals held closely together + heat. Pretty close though, I guess.
because back in their days amalgams weren't considered to be actually toxic. as we found out more about mercury, less amalgam fillings were used for the purpose of filling teeth. so nowadays most people have gold or ceramics fillings ;)
my English is not so good, though as far as i understood, Debbie said that Spanish people used this Na-Hg amalgam in 16th century, while sodium metal was first isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807. How is this possible? or i got it wrong?
@gerstners because in a dentists specific case, if he had to differentiate between the two, it would quickly make disposing of such chemicals a seriously expensive task.
small amounts of mercury will not hurt you unless you're sensitive to it. not only is it used in filling,its also used as a preservative in some medicines,like vaccinations. the people who get "go insane" are people who are exposed to large amounts, like hatters back in the day, and people who made Ormolu clocks.
Hello. There is a considerable delay after you add the sodium before the sizzle and production of the gas. Could that delay be a pause while the Oxide layer or the hexane dissolves, followed by the fast dissolution of the elemental Sodium? Also, ignore the comments about your lab coat. That's a badge of honor. Clean science is for theoretical types. The real world is beautifully messy.
Yes, it would amalgamate the tiny bits of gold, leaving the black sands (iron) behind. Then the mercury would be boiled off, leaving the gold dust behind.
You say this: "Since it's impossible to test for the reactions of all of the chemicals your body is currently interacting with, I'd instead ask for the removal of likely dangerous compounds until proven safe instead." I want to ask you: if a specific problem has not been established, from where do you get the basis to call something "likely dangerous"? On what basis do you say amalgam is "likely dangerous" other than the naive notion that "mercury=BAD"?
Also, in the particular case of sodium, the structure is pretty compact, with sodium atoms grouping with two mercury atoms. It would be rather arbitrary not to call that a chemical structure. It's different from the ones I'm used to, but it's there.
So how does one get one's metal OUT of an amalgam, if one chooses. I know they must be able to do it with gold, because mercury to form an amalgam is (or was) used is small-scale gold mining
I think what she probably meant was that Mercury was used to easily extract Silver from ore - because it created an amalgam with the silver. Then they would only have to separate the The silver from the quicksilver.
If you look closely, you'll see a vacuum connection on the neck of the flask. The fumes are getting sucked away by the vacuum pump, not floating about in the lab.
I though dentists didnt used amalgams anymore. Then i was wrong. But i think i've read somewhere that the fillings that they use today are more resistant than the teeths itselfs.
well actualy chemists almost never wash their lab coats, because as soon as you do wash it you get only schreds out of the washing machine. thats chemistry for ya.
My science teacher was talking about how she dipped her wedding ring into mercury to demonstrate that gold is very unreactive she didn't understand why the ring changed colour and put it down to her ring not being pure gold i only just saw this video a few weeks after leaving year 10 D: she'll never know
"Well she thinks I'm a chemist." Hahahah I love you Professor! xD
How are all these people so likable?
I'm glad you mentioned that the mercury doesn't leach from amalgam fillings in harmful quantities. There has been a lot of pseudoscience surrounding this issue and it's good to see that you didn't sidestep it. Thank you.
One use of sodium amalgam are electrochemical measurements. You cannot put a sodium stick into water as an electrode, but you can use sodium amalgam. In the equations, a saturated amalgam behaves like pure sodium, but it reacts far slowlier. This works also with other highly reactive metals.
Your comment on mercury on a gold wedding rings happened to me. I worked for Ray-o-Vac doing cell exams on button cells and got a small speck of mercury on it. I tried to wipe it off but the ring turned silver. The lab dipped in acid and turned it back to a gold ring.
@ 3:35 I always cut up my Sunday roast immersed in hexane.
High Pressure sodium lamps use a mercury-sodium amalgam, the mercury allows the arc to be more uniform, plus it is in a less reactive form than pure sodium. By the way for those who don't know, sodium lamps are the yellow streetlights. She forgot to mention that little use of Na/Hg. Very cool demonstration though! Thanks.
Again great video, really well done bringing this to the tube
I like the way he said "she thinks im a chemist" with that smile made me laugh
It's forming one of a couple of compounds Na5Hg8 or Na3Hg, so the exact amounts depend on the equilibrium between the two. Assuming that you only make the latter compound and the universe is perfect then 1 mole of sodium (23 grams) should go into 3 moles of mercury (602 grams).
Sodium can ignite hexane, especially in humid air (I have seen it happen) but there is no danger here as argon is heavier than air so excludes all oxygen even with the open top). Another thing: hexane evaporates rapidly and it only takes a few seconds of waving the sodium around on your tweezers for most of it to evaporate away. As we would hope, her technique is quite safe.
Gosh her intelligence and her dimple, she got such adorable gestures, I am going to cry myself to sleep tonight :)
lol Debbie, i never cut my sunday roast with a SCALPEL, but nice idea. :-)
i once mixed gallium and mercury, and it produced a horrible, stain-leaving but liquid (at room temp) mess. i dont suppose this could be of any use, now could it? =)
Funny how many things go wrong in this video, getting stuck to the tape and the scalpel snapping off. I'm glad they kept this in the final cut it made it much better.
the heavy iron magnetic stirrer swims on a liquid, like a table tennis ball on water, thats quite weird and gives us a imagination how dense the mercury is
Sodium Mercury amalgams are often used in Sodium lamps. I'm not 100% sure but I think the mercury is there to help strike an arc to vapourise the sodium to produce light.
There are several professions where people generally don't wear wedding rings at work. For example, my sisters, who are nurses, don't wear jewellery at work because they want to avoid the spreading of bacteria.
ah! that makes so much sense, thank you!
do you know what the smoke stuff was that fizzed when the sodium reacted with the mercury
I live on the Gold Country, mercury was one of the safest methods to recover gold. Large facilities used Chlorine, and now it pretty much is exclusively cyanide based recovery.
The mercury can be recovered easily, the cyanide just is waste.
sodium is very reactive, and it DOES react with argon, but as you stated argon is inert, but there is still a small amount of reactivity, just not as noticeable :)
for more on the history lesson, google huancavelica or the patio process
What is the gas, that's been formedd when she drops the sodium into the mercury? Is this gaseous mercury?
Is Debs wearing a gold ring.
What are the gas released during dissolution?
I'm sure someone else has said this, but you're perfectly right. However, they did use this process to isolate silver from mines (which is still done in some places today, with both silver and gold). Silver and gold are found as metals, so you just have to remove the metals from the other stuff. This process does that.
Very interesting stuff as usual. Thanks ;) Have you any name suggestions for the newly discovered 112 element?
what's that grayish cloud that appears when u start or stop the magnetic stirrer?
What do they do with that mixture after they are finished?
Wow, I didn't know you could dissolve metals into mercury! Nice video! Thanks
It is neurotoxic if chronically exposed (e. g. see the effects on solvent abusers).
What will they do with the Na Hg amalgam once they've made it?
I Love how she says "Here"
how do you get the sodium or silver or gold back from the dissolved state?
According to the video, it can be used as a reducing agent. Reduction reactions are used for lots of things. One really common reduction is converting metal ores into elemental metals, though you'd normally use carbon as the reducing agent for that because it's cheaper and less toxic.
Yeah, actually that was an oversimplification on my part. Generally, an exothermic reaction occurs when chemical bonds are being formed. That isn't exactly the case here, even though it is exothermic. In an amalgam, mercury and another metal form structures, but the length between the atoms is greater than it is with covalent bonds. So instead of reactants > products + heat, as in an exothermic chemical reaction, it's metals > metals held closely together + heat. Pretty close though, I guess.
whats the grayish gas that forms when it amalgamates?
can you use gallium?
didnt old gold prospectors use mercury to dissolve gold dust? I believe I read that, I seem to remember they used leather to sqeeze it out again.
because back in their days amalgams weren't considered to be actually toxic. as we found out more about mercury, less amalgam fillings were used for the purpose of filling teeth. so nowadays most people have gold or ceramics fillings ;)
I'd reallyreallyreally love to see the NaK amalgam
Is that a mercury mist that arises when the sodium dissolves?
my English is not so good, though as far as i understood, Debbie said that Spanish people used this Na-Hg amalgam in 16th century, while sodium metal was first isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807.
How is this possible? or i got it wrong?
@gerstners because in a dentists specific case, if he had to differentiate between the two, it would quickly make disposing of such chemicals a seriously expensive task.
Could you also do a bit on distilling mercury.
Hmmm, you're pooring hexane into your cup like that, I thought i was kind of neurotoxic. We can only use hexane in a fume hood at my school.
Nice video once again, excellent work, team!
small amounts of mercury will not hurt you unless you're sensitive to it. not only is it used in filling,its also used as a preservative in some medicines,like vaccinations. the people who get "go insane" are people who are exposed to large amounts, like hatters back in the day, and people who made Ormolu clocks.
can amalgams be made using gallium instead of mercury?
Hello.
There is a considerable delay after you add the sodium before the sizzle and production of the gas. Could that delay be a pause while the Oxide layer or the hexane dissolves, followed by the fast dissolution of the elemental Sodium?
Also, ignore the comments about your lab coat. That's a badge of honor. Clean science is for theoretical types. The real world is beautifully messy.
Yes, it would amalgamate the tiny bits of gold, leaving the black sands (iron) behind. Then the mercury would be boiled off, leaving the gold dust behind.
I know there are a couple of metals that do not amalgamate, like Iron.
Do Iridium or Platinum amalgamate? My girlfriend is a chemist. ;)
Was all that sodium only one gram? Or if not, why did only one gram dissolve in the mercury, and where did the rest of the sodium go?
I have no idea but if it gets very hot when it dissolves then maybe its mercury vapor?
why was there argon gas with the mercury? Is that the gas that fizzed out when the sodium went in?
You say this: "Since it's impossible to test for the reactions of all of the chemicals your body is currently interacting with, I'd instead ask for the removal of likely dangerous compounds until proven safe instead."
I want to ask you: if a specific problem has not been established, from where do you get the basis to call something "likely dangerous"? On what basis do you say amalgam is "likely dangerous" other than the naive notion that "mercury=BAD"?
Also, in the particular case of sodium, the structure is pretty compact, with sodium atoms grouping with two mercury atoms. It would be rather arbitrary not to call that a chemical structure. It's different from the ones I'm used to, but it's there.
What if you add the sodium to the hexane and set fire to it?
Why does it fizz? What's the gas that's given out?
So how does one get one's metal OUT of an amalgam, if one chooses. I know they must be able to do it with gold, because mercury to form an amalgam is (or was) used is small-scale gold mining
whats the gas that comes of as it dissolves?
I like the way the crazy haired professor talks. :3
@andrewkiwi100 well yeah i know that, but i didnt expect it to be THAT light :)
Did you hear the one about sodium hypobromite?
aww, these nerds are the coolest.
I'm pretty sure she meant they used some form of amalgam in the 16th century, with another metal, not a sodium one
Learning is fun
Thank you for zooming in on that fantastic looking tooth. I think I will not eat another snickers again.
IS that where the word amalgamation comes from?
I think what she probably meant was that Mercury was used to easily extract Silver from ore - because it created an amalgam with the silver.
Then they would only have to separate the The silver from the quicksilver.
5:03 But will it blend?
If you look closely, you'll see a vacuum connection on the neck of the flask. The fumes are getting sucked away by the vacuum pump, not floating about in the lab.
Don't know what to do with your sodium amalgam? Try the Julia-Lythgoe-Olefination. :D
I though dentists didnt used amalgams anymore.
Then i was wrong.
But i think i've read somewhere that the fillings that they use today are more resistant than the teeths itselfs.
i love his hair
Forgive me for my unscientific comment, but she is truly beautiful.
there is a reaction you can quite clearly see there is a reaction!
Toby fox in 2015 be like
*"Interesting"*
So THAT's what an amalgam is. I knew the word, but didn't know what it meant.
Always the possibility that they used it, but didn't know it was, specifically.
What is your Problem?
well actualy chemists almost never wash their lab coats, because as soon as you do wash it you get only schreds out of the washing machine. thats chemistry for ya.
sodium + mercury, because both of them is too safe alone...
Mercury is very fascinating. I wish it wasn't so dangerous because I would love to do experiments with it.
MORE DEBBIE
It looked like Jack Black was chillin in the back there at 5:55.
Debbie is wearing her wedding ring.
Hexane is not a known carcinogen. Neither is bromine, for that matter, but it's highly corrosive anyway.
My science teacher was talking about how she dipped her wedding ring into mercury to demonstrate that gold is very unreactive
she didn't understand why the ring changed colour and put it down to her ring not being pure gold
i only just saw this video a few weeks after leaving year 10 D: she'll never know
I first read the title as "Anagrams - Periodic Table of Videos" for some reason.
@ 5:32 That's what she said.
they bathe soy beans in Hexane before we eat it. Awesome!!!
In most of the offices in the united states they don't use mercury any more, they just do the plastic ones now...
she's cute and I heard jesse pinkman say the word amalgam on a episode so that's why I'm here
What, no boron?! This is an outrage!
i believe so :)
Spotty lab coat = experienced chemist :-)
@andrewkiwi100 wow, sodium's pretty light
I dont wear a wedding ring... (smirk) for precisely this reason
yes its called mercury vapor.
Calm it you randy chemistry lovers ;) We don't all need to know your feelings for debbie!