some crude oil that comes out to the
ground is really runny like almost like
water and others is so thick that it's
even thicker than molasses or treacle
this is a sample from the North Sea this
is oil from the United Kingdom and it's
pretty runny concealed you can squirt it
out and it's really very runny here's an
experiment that anyone can do it's using
household materials it's using things
you can buy off the shelf from
supermarket and the great thing about it
is that I go into schools and show the
teachers and the school kids how to do
it and then they can actually do it for
themselves in their own homes
we're using plastic where we've got some
cooking oil here in a rather grubby
looking bottle and some cocoa powder
like so and here is some booth blue food
coloring so what I'm going to show you
now is first of all how we make our
tropical see in this container and then
how we're going to make crude oil using
these two things so we'll start off with
the food coloring to give us a nice blue
sea so we'll use a spoon give it a
gentle stir so this is really very
viscous and sticky and the reason why
this is much more viscous than the North
Sea oil one is because it has higher
molecular weight compounds heavier
molecules and all of them have an
extraordinarily complicated mixture of
different components so what we're going
to do now is create our ecological and
environmental disaster using our fake
crude oil now the reason why we make
this using these materials because
obviously if you're going into a school
you can't take real crude oil in it's
quite nasty stuff and from what I've
seen of it you know it's smell was bad
it feels bad and it's definitely not
something you want little kids to handle
so what we're going to do is use spoon
and squirt the oil
you can't put any of this oil in your
car to drive and in the oil refinery the
chemical composition is completely
altered by catalysts by heating by
distillation so you end up with
something that can look almost like
water and this one here is so-called
petroleum ether which is a mixture of
various carbon compounds hydrocarbons
chains of carbon and hydrogen and it's
pretty simple similar to the petrol or
gas that you put in your car and so but
this is not what comes out to the ground
with this oil you can see that it's a
nice light yellow color it's cooking oil
it's it's vegetable oil so it's just
what we'd normally use at the home to to
fry things in and we add the cocoa to
give it the color and also slightly the
consistency as well of crude oil I think
it's important to realize that all this
oil is not under the ground like in a
big lake but it's in rocks that are
rather like sponges and in fact if you
see a piece of oil bearing rock it looks
just like any other bit of rock but
there's suggest some tiny Brown flecks
where the oil is in but because of the
pressure and the temperature under the
ground the oil when you release the
pressure will come out as a liquid
rather like squeezing the sponge and
sometimes if you pump down high-pressure
water or sometimes high-pressure gas you
can get more of the oil to come out all
the kids say that all of them say that
they once they smell the chocolate and
then they work they put it in and then
they actually say yeah can we eat this
if you can cause you can eat it it's
cooking oil and cocoa powder but
normally you wouldn't mix the two in
your kitchen and eat it
so why you would want to do that in a
lab or in a classroom I don't know but
I've got the benefit of smelling this
now and the combination of chocolate
with what smells like chips is not a
nice combination
it's weird no it's not yeah it's not
nice is it it's just a weird combination
so we now have our fake crude oil there
so I left my spatula in the oil and it
sank to the bottom you can see it's
standing up it's really quite rigid
let's see what happens when I take it
out you can see the oil going down and
it's really quite gooey next step in it
goes so imagine this is our sea we're
out at sea there it's a remarkably still
see I know but for the purposes of this
of showing you this we're going to have
our container here as the oil tanker
here's our sea now the oil tanker is not
hovering up here out of shot it's
actually on the surface of the liquid so
we have a very steady hand and slow
pouring I can show you what happens so
what we do now is I can actually show
you what we do in the classroom and we
use all kinds of different household
materials to try and clean this spill up
what makes oil black what gives it its
dark colour the dark color is mostly due
to so-called aromatic compounds these
are compounds with rings of carbon atoms
rather like benzene that we made the
video about but if you have several of
these rings joined together they absorb
visible light benzene absorbs UV light
but as you put more and more rings the
material becomes blacker and blacker and
blacker until eventually you get
graphite which is the lead in lead
pencils it's not really LED it's carbon
but it looks black and shiny almost like
a metal the point I'm trying to make you
know doing this kind of experiment is
that it's not as straightforward as just
oh you can suck it out or you can soak
it up or whatever depending on what you
use some things are more effective than
others let's let's do a cotton wall now
normally thick cotton wool oh well you
use it to clean yourself up cuts and
grazes that Safi it's good at soaking up
blood how about soaking up oil and
what's going to happen is it is going to
start soaking up the oil but it's also
going to start soaking up the water as
well and as it gets heavy it starts to
sink this is the sort of material that
is used to make bitumen for road
surfaces and so on and I believe that in
Trinidad there is actually a lake where
this bubbles right up to the surface now
we'll try something else let's try some
string and what they do in real life
they don't use string obviously they use
giant ropes so these huge ropes coated
in foam like a polystyrene foam or
saying like that so that it floats on
the surface of the water they'll
actually use that encircle the boom
around the oil damage limitation that's
always there for damage limitation I
think we're going to have to leave this
for Sam O'Neil to clear up what about
saying with a bigger surface area now
why don't we try saying like a piece of
cloth okay so already that's looking
pretty good
again it's staying on the surface and
that's great
trying to get massive sheets of fabric
to cover the ocean which is constantly
moving would be an absolutely you know
nightmare so maybe that's not the way
forward thing with the sponge material
is unlike the cotton wool if I decided
to try and plunge it under the surface
and try and catch some more of that oil
there it'll spring straight back up so
that's actually easier to retrieve the
final piece I've got is a huge piece of
paper towel so if I lift it up there's a
lot of water coming off of it but
fortunately some of the oil has been
retained as well we've got real sympathy
for our friends and fans in America for
this terrible thing that's happening to
the coastline and we really hope that
it's going to be cleaned up quickly so
all of us can start thinking how in the
future we can cope with less oil and new
sources of energy