Justonium

The ammonia theories just aren't possible, as there would not be enough water available to cause any noticeable amount of ammonia or hydrazine or any other substance containing hydrogen. The only reactants that we can consider are carbon, magnesium, oxygen, and nitrogen. It does seem likely that instead of the cause for the fireballs being a flammable gas like carbon monoxide (the only flammable gas I could even consider being created), it was, like UC says, actually magnesium vapor, which would have been hot enough to spontaneously combust when exposed to the air. The magnesium was well past its melting point, so I see no problems with this theory. Because all other theories considered have flaws that make them very hard to believe, and I see nothing left to consider when looking at just carbon, magnesium, oxygen, and nitrogen, I will assume that magnesium vapor was the cause of the explosions. Thanks for giving me you're time, guys. LOL, by the way, the spell check on here doesn't recognize the word "combust."

I was synthesizing magnesium nitride in a small clay crucible. I lit a small chunk of magnesium with a blowtorch (causing it to have a lot of carbon on it as it reduced the carbon in the carbon dioxide from the blowtorch flame). After it was burning bright, I dropped it into the crucible and put the lid on. The limited oxygen supply inside the crucible is supposed to cause the magnesium to start burning in the nitrogen, creating magnesium nitride. After a while, thinking the magnesium was spent, I took the lid off the crucible only to hear a pop and have a fireball spit out of it. This indicates that it may have been filled with a flammable gas which could not ignite without oxygen, but was so hot that it spontaneously ignited when exposed to air, but I cannot think of how such a gas could be created. I put the lid back on and took it off again 10 seconds later, to the same effect. (Yes, I know I really screwed up my yield of nitride, but I was curious!) Both times, when I took the lid off and the fireball was released, the magnesium exposed was just glowing red hot, but quickly began to glow brighter in the air. Later, after all of the remaining magnesium burned, I tested the remains chemically and they contained magnesium nitride. There wasn't much, but it was enough to make an area in the middle of the magnesium remains have a slightly yellow look as well. OK, so those are all my observations, now can anybody tell me why there were small explosions every time I let air into the red hot crucible? I do have one guess, but I still am not sure. The carbon mixed with the burning magnesium could also have burned in the hot crucible, and as the oxygen supply was limited, could have formed carbon monoxide, a flammable gas. But it seems like the magnesium would reduce the carbon back out of the carbon monoxide. The crucible was closed for a while, so I wouldn't think much carbon monoxide could remain in the crucible, being the favorable reactant over nitrogen. PS: Don't comment about my safety, there are many precautions I took which I don't feel like wasting time describing.

Wow, the vinegar actually worked! You wouldn't think vinegar could dissolve limestone, but I guess it does, just slowly.

After doing some experiments using limewater for CO2 testing, my glassware was left with a layer of whitish CaCO3 caked firmly on the inside. I know that hydrochloric acid removes it fine, but I don't want to waste any, as I am running low. Anybody know some other means of removal? Mechanical methods don't work very well as far as I've tried.

If you pass a current through salt water, you will end up with a mixture of sodium... hydroxide, hypochlorite, and chloride left over. This makes some chlorine gas though, so it requires very good ventilation. The negative electrode can be made of metal, but the positive electrode will corrode using most metals, and needs to be either coated in a noble metal, or just made of something like carbon. Remember that I am giving you this information to help you understand the topic you asked about, and before you ever try anything like this you must know what you are doing. You can get seriously hurt with chemistry.

If you drop a gummy bear in molten potassium perchlorate it reacts very violently as the perchlorate ions are converted to chlorate ions, oxidizing the sugar in the gummy bear.

I'm having trouble understanding one of the most basic electrostatic experiments. When silk is rubbed on glass, the glass apparently acquires a positive charge distributed throughout it, and the silk also acquires an evenly distributed negative charge. How can the charges spread evenly through insulating materials, and also, if they can move around in both the glass and the silk, how can the extra electrons in the silk not be able to move right back over to the glass that is touching it? How does it all work? Also, a website explaining all about electrostatics would be very helpful, as I have been unable to find a good one.

LOL, you'd rather breathe a gas made from selenium? Talk about the ultimate life long garlic breath.

The ammonium hydroxide is a catalyst. The aluminum reacts with the water VERY SLOWLY to form aluminum hydroxide and hydrogen gas. The speed at which it occurs is just ridiculously slow. There are no visible effects on the aluminum for weeks, we're talking YEARS. I've hooked it up in an indirect reaction to harvest electrical current, and though you get almost a volt, the current is in micro amps.

You were right on, it's carbon! Thanks a bunch! All of the magnesium I used was lit with a bunsen burner, and all of the blackening occured WHILE IT WAS UNDER THE FLAME. When it was allowed to burn alone, the reason most of the black stuff vanished is probably because the high temperature created by the burning magnesium burned it. The reason black only remained in the center is probably because it has less oxygen to burn there, and magnesium takes priority over carbon to grab oxygen. I don't know why I didn't consider it before; I threw away the idea because the air is only less than half a percent carbon dioxide, not even considering the gasses from my burner.

I was heating magnesium metal and suddenly became really deformed looking and turned black. When I continued to heat this, it then caught fire and left white magnesium oxide, with a little of the black stuff in the center. It can't be mangesium nitride, I tried burning magnesium in pure nitrogen and the resulting powder was yellow. I really have no idea what else magnesium could do, unless there is another metal alloyed with it? It was labeled as lightweight magnesium, but it could have had something else added to improve its strength or other properties. If the formation of this black substance indicates another metal present, any ideas on what this metal is? And when I heated it to ignition, why did almost all of the black stuff turn white like the magnesium oxide, or if it is a magnesium compound, oxidize to magnesium oxide? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI burned magnesium just now in air but with a limited supply and the result was a mixture of black and white powder, but some nitride must have been formed because the mixture smelled strongly of ammonia. No yellow was visible, but before, when I burned magnesium in completely pure nitrogen gas, the resulting substance was dark yellow.

It didn't all suddenly decompose spontaneously, there was a vigorous reaction taking place just above the ammonium nitrate, indicating a completely gaseous reaction.

Yes, I know about the danger of a thermal runaway with ammonium nitrate, and I was heating only .5g of the stuff. OK, I was heating some ammonium nitrate in a test tube over a Bunsen burner, and it was decomposing pretty vigorously, until all of the sudden, I heard a pop, and then a bunch of crackling inside of the test tube. When it popped, there was a flash of yellow light. What happened? This reaction looked remarkably like what happened when somebody on Youtube dropped a gummy bear into molten potassium perchlorate, but there was nothing else in the test tube to react with my ammonium nitrate. The only explanation I can possibly think of is that a spider fell into my test tube from the ceiling, and what is the probability of THAT? Yes the ammonium nitrate was very pure. If there is no other explanation, then I guess I have to say, that was one unlucky and very ill fortuned spider. I think I figured out what happened. I repeated this only I didn't take the test tube off the flame when it started going crazy, and maintained a yellow crackling glow above the ammonium nitrate. I believe that the high temperature I created allowed for a reaction between N2O and air, and I would never have thought of this, but I noticed a brown gas forming in the test tube, and smelled NO2. So N2O must react with oxygen! That is expected, but to go all the way to forming NO2? Wow. You'd think it would just make O2 and N2, and maybe it does, but some NO2 was formed as well. I guess the high temperature reaction between N2O and O2 promotes the formation of NO2, which is more stable at higher temperatures. OK, I now realize that oxygen from the air was not a major factor in this experiment, because gas was being pushed OUT of the test tube, and the crackling yellow pops were coming from deeper within the tube, close to the molten ammonium nitrate. So I really don't know what happened after all. NO2 was definitely made though, because I just know what that stuff looks and smells like. I mean I know the only possible result is that instead of ultimately getting just water and laughing gas, I've made NO2, and O2 as well. I read something about NO being formed unintentionally in laughing gas plants, but I don't know exactly what is going on. NO makes sense to react and then make NO2, but why would NO form if its enthalpy is so high compared to N2O?

Read the beginning of my first post, nuff said. And I've already got my filtration apparatus working with NaOH, so this thread is now OLD.

The results are not identical, hydrogen is half as dense as helium. Oh, I was using aluminum foil, yes, and the reaction is very slow without sodium carbonate and calcium hydroxide. Please stop telling me how dangerous it is to breathe hydrogen, I know the dangers, you don't need to warn me.

It's not any worse for the body than helium is.

I don't know why gallium does wet glass, but I do know that mercury also wets glass when you cool it down to near its melting point. Gallium probably wouldn't wet glass if it were heated sufficiently. But yea, It doesn't make sense how metals near their melting points actually stain glass, when glass is polar and they are not.

Oh, come on, think of it as a stunt. It's hilarious, and I'm not exactly encouraging them to go home and make their own gasses to breathe. Oh, that apparatus I made to make nearly pure, NaOH mist free hydrogen turned out badly, I must have mixed the epoxy wrong, because it didn't fully set, and remained rubbery and fuming. I'll get it right though.

My lungs hold 4 liters (not including what is already inside them when I have fully exhaled), and when I breathe hydrogen, I only inhale about a liter. A lot of the hydrogen I breathe doesn't even make it to my lungs, so the air in my lungs is still mostly just air. The goal is only to make hydrogen present in my vocal cords so I can say "So this is what happens to my voice when I breathe hydrogen," or whatever. I have never even felt lightheaded after doing this, because my lungs maintained contact with oxygen rich air the entire time. The hydrogen hardly has time to mix with the rest of the air in my lungs in the small period that it is inside of me.

Have y'all ever heard of Donald Duck?

Yea, that's what I'm doing, partly because of your suggestion, but I'm just using sodium hydroxide instead because I know more about it, and how it doesn't form vapors. Any liquid has some amount of vapors, and I'm just not going to risk breathing anything that came off it. Will it be safe? Probably. But I just don't want to find out by breathing it.

Sorry, its just too fun to make for me to buy it. I'm not a professor giving lectures or anything, I'm just a high school student showing cool chemistry stuff to friends. Don't worry about me getting hurt or anything, I value my health, and I'm not going to breathe anything that I'm not absolutely sure is safe to breathe. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedTomorrow I'm going to build a filtering apparatus for the method by which I react aluminum with water using sodium hydroxide. There were no suggestions that I knew for sure were safe, and were faster than the reactions I already knew of, so yea, I'll just use NaOH and purify the H2. Thanks for all the suggestions guys! Oh, and I was also tempted to try reacting magnesium with water at high temperatures, so I've bought myself some pencil sharpeners, and once I get some welding goggles, I'll have some fun with that too. (Not to mention making vacuums, as Magnesium is good at reacting with every gas it comes in contact with for a period before it cools down.) Maybe I'll make my first cathode ray tube. I just got into chemistry and electronics last year, so there's tons of stuff for me to try.

insane alien, I agree that sulfuric acid makes hydrogen very fast with most metals, including easy to get iron, but I don't think you breathed yours. The MSDS for sulfuric acid says to use it in a well ventilated area, so I'm not taking any chances with it. I know for a fact that sodium hydroxide only poses a threat as a mist, as it's boiling point is way too high to form vapors, so if I find no other reaction that is safe like sodium carbonate and calcium hydroxide are (with aluminum), I will just use sodium hydroxide with aluminum, and filter the gas through water. Sodium hydroxide is also far easier to make than sulfuric acid.

Wow how would I remove the copper? Actually, the rod wouldn't be very high surface area anyway, I was thinking more like a plate or something. Yea. I have no idea where to get a flattened plate of graphite. Even if anybody knows where I can buy copper plate, though copper isn't very efficient, I'd still like to know where I can get some. Any information y'all throw out will be useful to me. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI just tried a carbon electrode, and it wasn't any better than copper was. Maybe the technology for an efficient aluminum battery just doesn't exist. I don't know why it doesn't work like that zinc carbon sulfuric acid battery I saw, all I'm doing is replacing zinc with aluminum, and replacing sulfuric acid with sodium hydroxide dissolved in water. Could anybody give a suggestion as to why with aluminum, the hydrogen bubbles don't completely move over to the carbon electrode when the circuit is closed? Because it works with zinc, to where the zinc completely stops bubbling. Oh yes, this is similar to the voltaic pile invented by Alessandro Volta, where water reacted with zinc to form zinc hydroxide, but the hydrogen bubbles formed on the copper when they leads were connected. (Well, this cell is different in that the activation energy is too high to be reached without the copper, but that is not true with the sulfuric acid battery, and it still does the same type of thing.) Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI'm not, however, abandoning my battery, as it still produces significant current. If I can not find any better solutions, I will use copper foil.

If you heat the magnesium sufficiently first, when you put it in the acid it will "burn" in it, instead of just bubbling normally. This is very hot and generates a lot of steam, not to mention possibly blinding light. I'm also interested in trying these types of experiments with magnesium (if you eat it first it will react very fast even in water) but I'm worried about hurting my eyes, so does anybody know what types of glasses would adequately protect my eyes from strong visible and UV light? That is what magnesium makes when it burns in air, and though I don't know for sure what it releases when in water, I would suspect a similar spectrum. I can't use this method in any kind of demonstration for the sake of others' safety but I still want to try it!