Alright everyone, welcome back to Cody's Lab
So a lot of you seemed to enjoy my video on
Ceasium tungstate, the salt that when dissolved in water makes a liquid that is dense enough that it can float rock
And so I think I will do a few more videos on the subject
Today I will be making the densest water based liquid that I know of, and that is
Clerici's Solution
This is actually two salts dissolved in water and both of them are thallium based
Thallium of course is well known for its use as rat poison because its salts are tasteless, odorless, and incredibly soluble in water
which makes it very useful for making dense liquids, but also incredibly toxic
but I should be alright so long as I don't try to eat it and also
keep it off my skin whenever possible.
So without further ado lets crack this jar open.
and see how it looks.
This a sample of thallium that I bought for my element collection a few years ago.
As you can see it's inside of a tin can and packed with vermiculite
because thallium is that toxic.
It's not really something you want to get out into the environment
The lethal dose of thallium is about the lethal dose of mercury.
But thallium I would say is more toxic than mercury because this stuff is a known carcinogen, whereas mercury is not.
So anyway, let's get one of these chunks out of there and make a super heavy liquid.
Get all that mineral oil off of it so I know exactly how much I have.
I've worked out that I need one and a half grams of formic acid and 3.4 grams of malonic acid.
So, let's weigh them out.
I'm going to call that good.
So there's our acids.
Now all I'm going to do is mix them together with a little bit of water and use this to dissolve my piece of thallium.
That could take a while and I think I'm going to do it in an area with a little better ventilation.
Fun Fact: one of the antidotes to thallium poisoning is actually Prussian Blue, a cyanide compound.
I found that rather amusing.
It didn't seem to react until I got the solution very hot and at those temperatures the formic acid would want to leave so I put a cover on it to help reflux the acid back.
But, there we go, it's finally reacting.
Now, I guess I'll just let it sit here for a few hours.
I might eventually cut this ingot in half, just to make it go a little faster. There you go.
So here we are two days and some change since my last cut.
You can see I put some fiberglass in here to maintain some heat.
I think most of it is dissolved now.
So let's have a look.
Pull that up. Set that over there.
So yeah there's still some pieces left.
I eventually took my knife and actually cut the thallium into little chunks and that made it dissolve quite a bit faster.
And as you can see I'd say around 80% of it was dissolved.
So, I think I'm going to call that good enough.
I'm going to take this out of there.
Let's just pour it off into this larger beaker to evaporate.
After evaporating down, this is what I'm left with.
A material that looks a lot like melted sugar.
Which is slowly crystallizing from the sides if you can see there.
So now, I'm going to add a little bit of water back.
Pretty much drop wise, just get it to the point that it's mobile again.
That couple of drops and let it dissolve.
There we go I believe I got it mobilized.
And that's definitely a liquid.
It's amazing when you think about how that piece of thallium metal is actually right here in the solution.
Anyway, let's take a diamond and put it into the solution.
Remember diamond sank in the cesium tungstate.
Let's see what it does in this thallium solution.
There you go
Diamond floats!
Now that is cool...
Almost lost it there.
Excellent, let's see what else it'll float.
Diamond has a density of about three and a half grams per cubic centimeter
And this piece of corundum has a density of about four.
Okay, just give that a little shake
Make sure it's floating
And it is!
Look at that
That is corundum floating on liquid
Next let's try a piece of barite or barium sulfate
I believe this has a density of 4.5
Let's see if it'll float
Oh, it sinks
Okay, I guess I expected that because this solution
should have a density of about four and a quarter grams per cubic centimeter.
So four and a half
Obviously sinked.
But there you go
By now you guys will probably guess this solution is very useful for
measuring the density of different minerals to figure out exactly what you have.
For instance you could put your sample into the solution
add water until it is neutrally buoyant
and then from there calculate the density to figure out what mineral you've got.
Today though I'm just going to do a sink-or-swim analysis
To see whether I have diamond or cubic zirconia.
Let's put in the diamond.
And of course you guys know that floats
And now the rock that I suspect to be zirconium dioxide
Did it sink?
And it sank.
There you go.
Cubic zirconia has a density of around six grams per cubic centimeter
So it sank in the solution that is 4.25
And the diamond of course being 3.5, floated.
So there you go, that is cubic zirconia.
So there you have it, possibly the heaviest aqueous solution in the world
I think you could go a little bit heavier if you maybe added a couple more ions
Took advantage of the multiple ion effect a little bit better
Or used heavy water instead of normal water
But I can't imagine going more than a couple of percent heavier than this
This is possibly...
This is approaching the limit to what you can achieve with aqueous solutions.
I think in the next video on the subject I'm actually going to go for a little bit lighter solution
And one that's not nearly so toxic.
So hope you'll stay tuned for that, hope you enjoyed this video, and I'll see you next time.
Subtitles by Cody'slab fans!!!