Hey, guys! While I’m working on a big video about reactions with white phosphorous,
I decided to make a separate video on how to make a real cool flame out of white phosphorous.
It’s a pretty simple experiment, and if you teach chemistry, you can show it to your students. They will love it.
Anyway, let’s get into it.
So, we need to keep a piece of white phosphorous inside of a ventilation hood and put it either in a test tube with a side tube,
or in some small filter flask with inert gas flow connected to it.
That gas can be argon, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide.
Then we heat the test tube with a spirit lamp or a hot air gun
Molten phosphorous is partially passing to vapor that gets taken away by gas flow through the tube
Leaving the test-tube, white phosphorous vapors contact with the air and light up, forming a cool flame.
The temperature of this flame is so low, that you can touch it with your bare hands without burning them
If we stop gas flow, phosphorous vapours will be burning in the test tube and there will be no beautiful flame
Controlling inert gas flow, we can get both a small and a big flame
Thanks for watching guys! I hope you really enjoyed this video.
And huge thanks to my patrons. Your support motivates me to create more high-quality and unique content.
See ya in the next video.