Hello! Welcome to Beals Science I'm Craig Beals. I want to show you
an experiment that I love to do around Valentine's Day and I call it "Fire and Ice" and
you'll see why I like it on Valentine's Day but really this is good any time of the year because
there are a whole bunch of reactions happening... There in one test tube. In this experiment we're
going to see three different reactions happen. We're going to use calcium metal
phenolphthalein. Isn't that great! That's a great spelling word in my chemistry class.
We're going to use hydrochloric acid. 3 molar tells the concentration. I've got some warm water and
then just some chemistry supplies, some pipettes, wood splint, a large test tube, erlenmeyer flask,
a couple graduated cylinders. I'm going to start off with about 15 milliliters of warm water, the
exact amount doesn't matter and the temperature doesn't matter but you want warm water because the
reaction will be too slow otherwise. And then what I'm gonna do is add some calcium metal.
Look at that! Huh?! Hydrogen gas! As it reacts with the water to produce hydrogen gas it's
also making calcium hydroxide. Calcium hydroxide is basic, so I've got some
clear phenolphthalein. This is an indicator solution that changes color as the pH changes.
Let's see what happens when it hits a basic solution. Huh?! Yeah?! Now you're starting to see why
I like to do this on Valentine's Day because, well, okay all the colors of course,
are Valentine's Day-ey. So this is a very basic solution the opposite of acidic. This is nice
but if we're producing hydrogen gas that hydrogen gas should be flammable! Let's look at this
again. This time I'll add the phenolphthalein indicator ahead of time, so here goes nothing
oh!
Yeah ready!
Did you see it?! Whoa! Let's turn the lights off!
Oh!
You see it?!
Oh! If this is "Fire and Ice" experiment, well there's our fire,
where's our ice? I'm going to use some hydrochloric acid so we're going to get a reaction now
where the acid from this is going to react with the base, the calcium hydroxide, in here. Let's see.
Whoa! Wait, what?!
Look!
The whole thing we just made is gone!
Except for some little teeny tiny
pink snow crystals in the bottom. We've made our little snow globe here by a whole series of
reactions. Now we can make this thing. Should we keep it going? Produce more hydrogen gas? Huh?!
Oh! Oh! Wait a minute...wait just a moment. Can you see that? Can you see the snow falling? Whoa!
There we go.
We've got so many things going on and now it's starting to turn pink again.
We're getting snow crystals that are falling down. Look at this, should we add some fire?
There's so much to learn from this little tiny test tube and really whatever it takes to convince
you to get excited about science, to get excited about learning! It's little things like this
that I think makes it fun! So thanks for watching and keep on learning!