so very soon it's going to be April the
first and so we thought it would be
rather nice to talk about a compound
that has the name fool in the title in
its name we're going to talk about
compound iron sulfide that's called
fool's gold because many people think it
looks like gold and you can see I've got
a sample here fool's gold that's it
that's interesting because the kinetic
is out there so I'm I got really excited
because I thought I saw a rather large
lump of gold but unfortunately this is
just fool's gold iron sulphide in the
right light the crystals really do
flicker and look rather like gold looks
very similar to the real gold
unfortunately a fraction of the value
this sample is a great sentimental value
to me because it was bought by my
parents from somebody that my father
described as looking like a pirate when
they were on holiday when I was a child
they were on holiday on the island of
elba in those days of course people
traveled by trains so you could bring
back a whole box of stones without
exceeding your baggage allowance in
those days was before I'd even started
learning chemistry and I was absolutely
fascinated by this material it's very
heavy and it has these beautiful
crystals but I didn't really know what
they were crystals like this are iron
sulphide which are made by the reaction
of iron and sulfur iron as you knows a
silvery black metal and sulfur is a
yellowish powder if you don't know you
can see it on the other videos that
we've got where we showed these elements
this is it's a really quite crazy Joe
it's a small amount of sulphur or suffer
when you heat these up together there's
a reaction and it forms iron sulfide now
the salt you make in the test tube is
normally black but when these reactions
take place in the underground in
geological processes sometimes they can
form this particular crystal form of
iron sulfide which is known as iron
pyrite YZ or fool's gold because many
people have found these crystals and
think that they are gold how would one
how just one tell the difference between
fool's gold and real gold it is not
violating it nervous by examining here
you'd have to do chemical analysis
presumably you can easily distinguish
between gold and and peratis if you
really want to do a chemical test by
putting a small drop of acid on them
because acid or most acids will not
react with gold
whereas acids will react with fool's
gold to give hydrogen sulfide which
smells like rotten eggs so a small drop
of acid and if there's a nasty smell you
know you've been fooled it's not easy to
differentiate yet different chemical
properties and different physical
properties density can you tell the
difference between gold and rose gold by
just by looking yes well the colors are
slightly different fool's gold is the
soul get lower than gold
which has a somewhat naturally a gold
color and also gold is much denser than
fool's gold I mean fool's gold is quite
heavy but this is much heavier than an
ordinary stone but the similar lamp of
gold I might would almost need two hands
to lift it up and a piece of dough this
size would be quite impossible to lift
up probably even with both hands so
piggy if you got excited by that does
that mean you're a fool evidently so but
then again I'm not a mineralogist
I suspect that my parents Pirates tried
to sell it to them as gold but I hope
that they weren't foolish enough to
think they really were buying gold
certainly when I got it they didn't come
home and say look it's gold if you were
into chemistry as a young boy why did
your parents think to bring you this as
a gift well I think that I'd already
shown some interests in science I
suppose they just thought that they'd
look nice and I might like them but
there wasn't much choice of other
souvenirs