Yet another nice experiment - selenium allotropes

[woelen]

Undoubtedly. And safety should NEVER be ignored when working with chemicals. In the case of the experiment spelled out by woelen here, anybody who has the equipment and materials to carry out the experiment would have to inherently be aware of the safety requirements of the experiment. Those who do not would simply not understand what is going on and would have no need to understand.

I think this is a very strong point. The average k3wl does not do this kind of experiments, such a person prefers playing around with KNO3 or KClO3 and the common set of reductors like S, sugar and C. There is no fire and smoke at all, only some dark green color. Very dull . For this reason I have no objection against placing a description about this (yes, dangerous) experiment on this forum, while I would never place a description of an experiment with KClO3 and the like on this forum. That kind of experiment would attract kewls and could cause much more harm.

 

People, who do this kind of experiments, tend to be more scientificly interested and have an understanding of the risks. For each experiment I perform, I first think about what could go wrong and what could happen afterwards. If you want much more of this kind of experiments, then have a look at http://www.sciencemadness.org. This experiment is one of the easier and safer ones if you look around over there. But still, there is no problem with all those dangerous experiments, because the people who do so, are very knowledgeable people, who are willing to invest hundreds or even thousands of dollars in equipment and chemicals and who are of a totally different kind than the first k3wl you can meet in the streets. I also learn a lot of them.

 

Why would a k3wl buy selenium (a meagre 30 grams for $9, no fun at all!! he can buy a kilo of KNO3 or S for that and have much more smoke and fire !!), the average k3wl probably never heard of selenium (is that a planet ??).