Hey, guys! Usually when someone hears about chemiluminescence,
they think about either Luminol or TCPO, that is contained in glow sticks.
In this video I’ll show you an inorganic chemiluminescence,
which is a very rare phenomenon in inorganic chemistry.
For this reaction I’ll be using a small amount of potassium permanganate, about one tenth of a gram,
that I’ll dissolve in fifty milliliters of water,
also adding a couple milliliters of ten-percent sulfuric acid
and a couple grams of Sodium hexametaphosphate
and let it all stir in a magnetic stirrer
Then I’ll prepare another solution.
For this one, I’ll dissolve one gram of sodium borohydride
adding a couple milliliters of ten-percent potassium hydroxide
beforehand for the hydrolysis inhibition of sodium borohydride.
I’ll be adding this solution to the first one, using a drip funnel full of it
As you can see, light makes this redox reaction look like an ordinary one
But if I turn off the light, we’ll be able to notice red chemiluminescence
on addition of a sodium borohydride solution to potassium permanganate.
In order to film and show you this unique inorganic-chemistry phenomenon,
I had to fully open lens aperture
and increase shutter speed to one tenth of a second,
and, because of that, the image is not that fluent in comparison to the one with standard video settings.
Now I’ll change the settings back to normal.
This red emission has often been attributed to the production of singlet oxygen,
but the spectral distribution for singlet oxygen is unlike that observed for acidic
potassium permanganate chemiluminescence.
Let me know what you think about it in the comments,
while I’m preparing another unique reaction of inorganic chemiluminescence,
that you definitely haven’t seen before.
Seeya in the next video