• Question: What's the most interesting chemical reaction you've ever seen?

    Asked by Theo to Aoife, Brian, Conor, Louise, Matthew on 7 Nov 2016.
    • Photo: Aoife Lucid

      Aoife Lucid answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      It’s been a long time since I carried out a chemical reaction in a lab but one that I thought was pretty cool was when I made some polymer electrolytes and actually put them into a prototype battery and there was a small electrochemical reaction observed, which means we were able to see chemical energy turning into electrical energy.

    • Photo: Louise Mc Grath

      Louise Mc Grath answered on 7 Nov 2016:

      Hi Theo,

      The coolest reaction I have ever seen is either Mercury(II) thiocyanate decomposition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ritaljhhk7s) or the iodine snake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N0m95PExHY) You may need to skip on a bit in the videos to see the reactions happening..but they are totally worth it!
      My chemistry teacher showed us both of these and I was pretty amazed!

    • Photo: Brian Caffrey

      Brian Caffrey answered on 8 Nov 2016:

      I think the coolest reaction is this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qhYDuJt8fI just go straight to the 2:00 mark 🙂

    • Photo: Matthew Kitching

      Matthew Kitching answered on 9 Nov 2016:

      Oh My – there are soooooo many cool reactions!

      One that was interesting for a bad reason – i was making a chemical called sodium ethoxide. You can do this by dropping pieces of sodium metal into ethanol. As you add the pieces they dissolve slowly in the ethanol, and the whole reaction warms up. So you have to use an ice bath(with water in it) to cool it down. I was doing this on 20g of sodium and the flask shattered – and all the water from the ice bath started mixing with the sodium and the whole thing caught on fire – luckily we were able to put it out quickly. Have you ever seen sodium react with water?

      Here a block being thrown in a lake (don’t do this at home) (around 0:50)

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