okay so last week the papal conclave met
to elect a new pope what happens is the
Cardinals of the Catholic Church get
locked into the Sistine Chapel and
they're not allowed out they're not
allowed any contact with the outside
world until they've elected a new pope
they have four votes every day after
each vote they burn all of the ballots
but they add some chemicals to make the
smoke either white or black white if we
have a new pope or black if it's
unsuccessful and we have to go through
another vote so we have here all of the
ingredients to make either black or
white papal smoke we have lactose we
have anthracene we have potassium
perchlorate sulfur and we have potassium
chlorate and we've got some pine resin
which is this stuff here which comes out
of a tree so let's start with black
smoke we're going to have an
unsuccessful vote so we need some sulfur
we need some potassium perchlorate and
we need some anthracene you can imagine
we've counted up the ballots we don't
have a majority vote we're going to burn
all the ballots whatever mixture of
chemicals I'll tell the people waiting
outside that we don't have a pope here
it comes
perfect all right beautiful that looks
good there
so in our in our chimney here we've got
some pretty good black smoke in previous
years there's been a little bit of
trouble there's been some doubt about
the color of the smoke I think in the
last Conclave when Pope Benedict was
elected there was a kind of a gray smoke
and nobody was really sure if we had a
pope
joking so we generated so much heat that
we've actually cracked their chimney
here the funnel has cracked I'm going to
leave before Neal gets back that cool
down run a bit of water through it okay
so we're previous boat was unsuccessful
but we just had a second vote to good
news we have a new pope so we need to
tell the outside world and the
traditional way is as I said before
white smoke so we have some potassium
chlorate in this case and a sugar which
is lactose and then finally we have this
stuff which is a resin from a tree
okay so here we go
white smoke
however most pop out so the key
difference is is the source of the
carbon in each of the flames in the
black smoke we had anthracene anthracene
is a ring based molecule it's three
rings stuck together lots of carbon lots
of hydrogen but no oxygen when that
molecule burns when it combines with the
oxygen in the air it produces soot
particles right produces bits of solid
carbon which absorb light if anyone who
has seen charcoal solid carbon is black
right and that's what we're getting in
the black smoke with the white smoke
we have potassium chlorate and lactose
no lactose is slightly smaller than
anthracene it's got carbon and hydrogen
but it's also got a lot of oxygen so
when an through scene combines with the
oxygen from the passive potassium
chlorate and the atmosphere we don't get
these big soot particles we get co2 we
get water vapor we get lots of these
things we might even get a bit of
potassium chloride forming from the
chlorate but the key point is we don't
have these big soot particles that the
anther scene gives us and we end up with
this much cleaner smoke and hopefully
the difference between them the white
smoke and the black smoke is visible
from st. Peter's Square when people are
looking up at the top of the Sistine
Chapel
Pope Francis is the new pope and
interestingly Pope Francis is a chemist
study chemistry when he was younger so
evidently chemistry does prepare you for
lots of different careers we tell our
students this all the time but it can
even a prepare you for the highest
office of the Catholic Church