[Applause]
I used to drink a lot of coffee and my
hand shook even more than they do now
about 12 years ago maybe more now I went
to China for a week and when I left I
was really addicted to coffee and when I
came back I was found myself addicted to
green tea and since then I drank nearly
entirely green tea and very rarely do I
drink coffee and the result is that if I
do have some coffee
I feel hyper for the rest of the day and
I really can't sleep well it's a
molecule I know and I can just about
recognize its structure together some
carbons carbonless we've got nitrogen
we've got oxygen and hydrogen
scattering atoms everywhere if I just
saw it as a random molecule I would
probably recognize it because you
usually see it on people's coffee cups
and things like that so there's quite a
good thing this is cupping if you've
never had coffee before then you
probably do get some stimulation from it
there's no doubt about that's been
proven it can help making a bit more
alert and feel a bit bit more vital for
a few minutes if you have too much of
course a lethal dose of coffee is about
80 cups a day so do not approach that at
all
I have read the Tyrian I don't know if
this is correct that if you take coffee
or and some other caffeinated drink at a
regular time each day then your body
starts making the antidote to the
caffeine before you get to coffee time
so if you have coffee at 10:30 in the
morning
round about 10 o'clock your body starts
making this antidote
so you've tend to feel really quite in
need of the caffeine just to get you
back to normal state so this is about
six cups of coffee in here and we're
just going to cool that down but on the
other hand if you're suddenly given
coffee at a time when you're not
expecting it then your body hasn't got
ready to receive this dose of caffeine
and it has a much bigger effect than you
expect and so it maybe not so much that
people are addicted to coffee but they
are counteracting the negative effects
of what's in their body
caffeine is very soluble in hot water
there's much much less than 30 times
less soluble in room-temperature water
so we're going to cool it down so it's
less soluble in water hydroxide solution
drinking tea and coffee is very
important in science in the UK and in
many labs people meet together every day
to drink tea and coffee and some of the
best ideas can grow up over tea and
coffee because when people are relaxed
suddenly clever ideas come in their head
an unexpected side effect of caffeine is
its role in science not directly but in
many labs many departments like this one
at Nottingham the scientists meet
together once or perhaps twice a day to
drink coffee and quite often they have
really good ideas the caffeine of
relaxes them and when they're not
thinking really hard suddenly a good
idea comes into their head in fact at
the laboratory of molecular biology in
Cambridge which has won I think 14 Nobel
prizes there was a rule perhaps there
still is that if people are discussing
in the coffee room it's not allowed to
close in case they're just about to get
a good idea and if the coffee room
closes it may be lost forever so you
never know if you sit a long time
drinking coffee you might win the Nobel
Prize the water water's more dense than
ether estate so it sinks to the bottom
they're not miscible so we're just
draining off that bottom layer at the
moment the water layer
[Music]
and as it goes down you've seen the top
layer is actually fairly clear so the
caffeine now hopefully is in that top
layer flask
there's still some water in the
philosophy so we're going to use is a
drying agent magnesium sulfate otherwise
known as epsom salts
it's a student's often asked me how do
you know how much magnesium sulfate
ready to dry and the answer is when it
goes completely white and fluffy so it's
quite long water and they see its client
using clump together so it's put a bit
more in says when you get that sort of
snow storm effect just let that dry for
a moment filter off
so what we have here is our caffeine so
the Reds here deny oxygen you've got
carbon atoms represented by the black
these smaller white ones are hydrogen
and then the blue ones here which you've
got for our nitrogen so it's kind of the
most common elements that make up so
many
aromatics or organic molecules I tried
to find a mug with a caffeine molecule
in here to go back to the parent table
but what we had sent in by one of our
viewers this gentleman here is clearly a
fan of periodic videos and he's there
enjoying a video of Martin with his
broom in hand but he also included in
his email to us tattoo that he's got as
you can see there the molecule of
caffeine so it's clearly a much more
devoted fan to the molecule than I am I
just prefer drinking it or rather than
inking it on myself okay so now our
caffeine is in the flat state solution
and we're now going to remove these last
eight from it so you put one of these on
these are called Keck clips and dr. Keck
sadly died last year but very handy clip
that bears his name will go on for many
many years to come but no need to car
dice okay so this carebye approach to
how to do it so here we've got some
solid sake so we're gonna use that
condense the ether state so it doesn't
go down the drains or into the
atmosphere
okay so what we're doing is we're
lowering the pressure in the system so
that means that allowing the boiling
point we're lowering the boiling point
of the organic solvent methyl acetate so
in here we've got youthful acetate very
low pressure in here currently around 90
milli bars and that's all that this
evaporating that's coming up here and
it's condensing on this very cold card
ice cold finger here and you can see it
coming down and being collected in the
flask below so what we want to do is to
remove all of that solvent and just
leave what was insulted I hope we'll
have some in there I don't hear it very
much because it was only six cups of
coffee but there should be 20 or 30
milligrams maybe a little bit more for
lucky so what do you think about someone
I've done one in himself with a caffeine
molecule it's certainly a level of
geekdom that I have not subscribed to
but I commend him for his devotion to
this particular molecule well Sam that's
about to change because we've been sent
something which I'm giving to you as a
gift this was sent to periodic videos
mainly well this is absolutely
incredible oh my gosh so where you've
got rid of most of the ether acetate now
just the last few dregs coming off and
you can see that we've got a fairly
light yellow page and some of the color
has come through from the coffee
so there we go here's some caffeine now
if we were really good chemist we'd
recrystallized that gets a nice white
crystals and what we're going to do is
just going to put this on a high vacuum
system to get the very last traces of
ethyl acetate
this is absolutely gorgeous I've got a
caffeine molecule on a chain it's a
necklace evidently but it's so cool what
is this
oh no it's made of I absolutely adore
this it is it's incredible and it's so
Daris it's a dose caffeine but it's so
sweet it's so cute and I love it but you
just you just said people who have done
themselves with care yeah I know I take
it right now that I look like a complete
idiot at all right there's a difference
between getting inked permanently and
being able to take it on and off I'm
gonna wear this because I I'm going to
the Webby Awards and I'm gonna wear this
I'm definitely gonna wear this on the
night it's going to be amazing
I had planned on wearing something else
but now I'm definitely going to take
this to New York and I'm going to wear
it for the Webby Awards because it's
just it's absolutely immense I love it
thank you to whoever made this it's now
it's been on there for five minutes so
we'll take this off now okay wait
Oh 100 milligrams so six cups of coffee
has 100 milligrams of caffeine 17 also
milligrams in a cup of that particular
coffee so in its amorphous powder form
[Music]