Spectacular Demonstrations in Physics and Chemistry

[Ferdinand]

I am a high school science teacher and I have a repertoire of interesting and spectacular demonstrations that I incorporate into my lessons. Colleagues, I want to start a thread that titles some of the more memorable demoes you have encountered or conducted and could be demonstrated to Year 11s and Year 12s who are focussed on chemistryor physics

 

Some of the ones I'm listing below are now not permitted in high schools in Western Australia.

 

1. Plasma torch(my all time favourite - however CS2 is "banned" now)

2. Platinum Candle

3. Instant implosion of sealed 44 gallon drumwith boiling water in it

4. touchpowder

5. Acetylene/Oxygen balloon bomb

6. white phosphorus activities

7. melting phosphorus in boiling water in a darkened room

8. Coloured precipitations

9. Equilibrium Clock

10 rocket launching

11. levitation of superconductor

12. Dry ice experiments

13. Liquid nitrogen experiments

 

I hope some of these titles inspire some of you...could you keep the thread going or tell me of a thread that already exists on this?

 

Thanks

[insane_alien]

14. one balloon filled with pure H2 the other 2:1 H2:O2. nice fireball.

15. chippan fire in a thimble.

16. Van de Graff generator and a big line of people on polystyrene insulators.

17. cycling reaction(can't remember the composition but it keep changing colours in a pattern for hours)

[aj47]

From Year 11 my most memorable demonstartion was potassium, sodium etc in water to show the reactivity of alkali metals.

 

But that was probably because the teacher knocked it off the table and the whole tank of water smashed on to the floor.

[Klaynos]

I recall one where my teacher converted some oil into a polythene plastic strand...

[jdurg]

The generation of singlet state oxygen is pretty neat, as is the reaction between acetylene and chlorine gas. In addition, using light to initiate a hydrogen/chlorine reaction is pretty impressive too.

 

One of the most interesting experiments I've seen/done is when you fill a container with a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen gas, then take some platinum wire and warm it up in your fingertips. With a VERY long set of tongs, you then take the platinum wire and submerge it into the H2/O2 mixture. Almost instantly, the H2 and O2 ignites without any spark or source of ignition. (The Pt catalyzes the reaction almost instantly).

[RyanJ]

Decomposition of Nitrogen Triiodide works well as a demo, we did this for out schools open evenind and the peopel jumped a mile even though they were warned there would be a loud bang

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[stsanthony]

Perhaps the reactions of sodium added to steam might be really spectacular...and dangerous...

 

The reactions of fluorine might satisfy me...i love dangerous experiments...and they are usually forbidden in hong kong

[evilwalnut]

Thermite demonstration was quite memorable.

[sunspot]

The coolest experiment I remember was performed by my freshman chemistry professor. It was called the beating heart experiment. I am a little sketchy on the details but he started with a blob of mercury at the bottom of a beaker of chromate or dichromate solution. He then stuck an electrode into the mercury, and the other one into the solution. The mercury began to beat like a heart, due to the surface charge that would form due to the chemical and electrical potential. It would beat a few times to form a triangle and then beat a few more times to form a cube, etc.. He said it sometimes goes on for hours. It seemed to touch the imagination of the entire class and made everyone laugh with delight.

[warut]

JCE has a very nice video of "Mercury Beating Heart" demo at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCESoft/CCA/samples/cca3heart.html

[RyanJ]

Last night I saw a program where they used a 1KG lump of sodium in a rubbish bin full of water... it was quite impressive

 

Made quite a mess of the bin... Would have liked too see Caesium the wame way.... what a crater

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones