Hey, guys! Some time ago I came across the article
that claimed, that the interreaction of alkaline earth metal oxides with oleum results in chemiluminescence.
It means that, if we add a few drops of oleum to magnesium oxide, strontium oxide or barium oxide, we should be able to notice some kind of a glow.
And if you know chemistry, this might sound bizarre to you.
But really, you’re adding oleum to magnesium oxide. What do you expect to glow?
I mean, it would make some sense,
If we added either elemental strontium or elemental barium to oleum, maybe then we could expect to see some glow… But oxides? Really?
Well, I decided to put it to the test myself.
To get magnesium oxide, I burned magnesium powder in oxygen flow.
If you think, that magnesium reacted all the way through, you’re wrong. Actually, only less than a half of it reacted.
To get some fresh barium oxide, I took a piece of barium.
In the next few seconds you can observe a shining surface of barium, free of both oxide and nitride.
Setting barium on fire in air wouldn’t be possible,
because it melts quickly, covering itself in layers of oxide and nitride, that would prevent it from further oxidation.
To get strontium oxide, I did everything the same, but used strontium instead of barium.
So, now that we have all three oxides, we could try to perform a reaction with oleum.
To be honest, I noticed a tiny flash only in barium oxide and magnesium oxide reactions, and the latter is the only one I managed to get right on camera
When magnesium oxide cooled down, I turned off the lights and added a few drops of oleum to it
This way I confirm, that some glow does occur as the result of the reaction between oleum and alkaline earth metal oxides.
But why does this happen? I can’t tell you for sure, but if you have any ideas about it, feel free to share them with me in the comments.
Thanks for watching guys! And So many thanks for my patrons for their continued support! See ya next video.