Phosphorus can exist in several different forms which are known as allotropes
Unlike other elements, phosphorus doesn't like to exist as free atoms,
so it makes different structures and depending on which structures it makes with itself,
you get the different types of phosphorus
The photos I have for the structures of phosphorus, are the greatest,
but I hope from them you can see that there is a difference
The common forms are white and red,
and violet and black phosphorus are much rarer
In this video we're focusing on the white allotrope
and it's really the most dangerous of them all
Most of the other ones are pretty stable under air and they're not very toxic actually
Whereas white phosphorus is quite toxic and ignites spontaneously under air
The big thing that the white phosphorus does to you if you're exposed a lot to it,
is it gives you something called phossy jaw
The white phosphorus accumulates in your jaw,
and as you'll see later in this video, white phosphorus glows in the dark
so if you get enough, your jaw could actually glow
Well that can be cool, it also causes necrosis of the jaw and the surrounding tissue which is less fun
The major controversial use of white phosphorus which gets it into the news sometimes
is it's used as an incendiary weapon
First, I get a sample of white phosphorus which is safely stored under a little bit of water
And then to remove a small piece, I use my knife
When I start to cut it, it looks like it's soft, but suddenly it cracks and pieces fly everywhere
From all of the shattered pieces of phosphorus
you can see white fumes of phosphorus pentoxide coming off
The phosphorus pentoxide forms when the white phosphorus reacts with oxygen in the air
Phosphorus pentoxide itself is dangerous, because when it comes into contact with water,
it forms phosphoric acid
Normally when white phosphorus is exposed to light,
it actually becomes a yellow color
It's pretty easy to see that my white phosphorus is actually reddish orange and not yellow
I assume my white phosphorus is discolored like this because it's extremely old
Anyway, now for the fun part of lighting it on fire
Using a barbecue lighter, I let it on fire, and you can see that it quickly gets going
To put it out, I simply place another crystallizing dish on top to cut out it's oxygen supply
And now to show you the scary part of white phosphorus
You see right when the crystallizing dish is removed, immediately it starts burning again
This is because it can spontaneously ignite at temperatures as low as 30 degrees Celcius
So you can imagine how hard it is to extinguish any white phosporus if you ever were to get any on you
To extinguish it, I put a little bit of water in, so when the crystallizing dish is removed,
it will immediately be covered
So you can see that's successful and when it's removed, there's no burning white phosphorus
And now I pour out the water to expose the wet white phosphorus below
You can see that immediately when it's not underwater, it starts to fume again
This is from a second run but you can see that just after several minutes of sitting out,
It's fuming a lot
And eventually, it will heat up enough to spontaneously ignite itself
So you can see what makes white phosphorus so scary
If you get it on you, you can't extinguish it, you actually have to completely get rid of it
And then also as I mentioned earlier, the phosphorus is poisonous, so even when it's extinguished,
it's still going to be leaching into your body
I apologize for this shot being a little unfocused, but the point of it is still pretty clear
When the phosphorus burns and lets off a lot of smoke,
which makes sense why it's often used to make smoke screens
This is just to show that it can be a little hard to put out the phosphorus,
and you see that I spray it with a little bit of water from the hose,
and it causes burning phosphorus to splash everywhere
If the fire was much larger and there's a lot more phosphorus,
you can see us spraying it like that could actually just spread it more
As a final test, I place a small amount of white phosphorus on a piece of meat
And then just like before, we light it on fire and let it burn
And then to extinguish it, I put a crystallizing dish on top just like before
And then I take it away to see that again just like when it was on the glass, it reignites
I let it burn for a while but it was producing a lot of smoke
and I was worried that somebody would call the police
I extinguished the phosphorus and removed it and there's still a lot left that hadn't burned
The white phosphorus burned for about a minute, and it burned away about a fifth of the thickness of the meat
I don't show it here, but the underside of the pork even after a minute was still uncooked
I don't have any real conclusions to draw from this experiment,
but I was honestly surprised because I thought the white phosphorus was going to do a lot more damage
And this is just the final demonstration to show how white phosphorus exhibits chemiluminescence
When exposed to moist air, the white phosphorus is oxidized and it lets off a very faint green glow
In person it's actually pretty distinct but on camera it was very hard to pick up
So that about wraps up everything I had to show about white phosphorus
Fortunately I didn't have any carbon disulfide that I could use to show the solubility of the white phosphorus,
but if there's anything else that I missed that you'd like to see, leave a comment below
Also, if there's anything else that you would like to see in general, also leave a comment
and I'll try to get to it
And just for the meantime, above is a list of the stuff that I'm either currently working on,
or have completed filming and just need to edit
So those videos will be uploaded eventually