The explosive history of hydrogen – with Andrew Szydlo

period of time the gaseous molecules will flow through this gas not only gaseous but also liquid and the ions and molecules of the liquid what we are going to do now is we are going to fill or our Andrés fill this with

hydrogen

once this is full and we will I'm going to do it the other way around, you see, once it's full of

hydrogen

, we won't know, but we'll guess that it's full of hydrogen, well, can we do it here please, Andrés? Move it here. Then I'll place my hydrogen over the porous pot and hopefully what will happen is the hydrogen will diffuse faster than the air and it will start to push the air out because it's moving faster and when I push the air out, hopefully. set a pressure so let's try please Andrew yes a lot more yes this needs to have a very very generous supply of hydrogen and we can't know when it's full but we guess we just have to use our "okay "I think keep going, follow me, keep going.

I, Andrés, right, thank you very much, that's all, now let's see if something happens. I can't see anything. It's just that it has the pressure and you see that it's forcing, it's forcing the liquid up. You see, it's forcing the liquid up because the hydrogen diffuses to through the porous point and is creating a pressure and is forcing the liquid in the pressure gauge to rise. By the way, this is just colored water, so here we have a splendid demonstration of the phenomenon of diffusion. I had an idea and I had it. I remember seeing something about this written somewhere about how to use this idea to have a little fun.

You know, scientists and teachers like to make things up to entertain themselves a little and I'm wondering if any of you can predict what's going to happen here. I'm going to explain to you what I have. I have three small, three small containers here, which are all porous points, they have a large surface area, that's the type of point. that if you have three you have the largest surface area of ​​a large one and I have connected this and now I'm just going to lift it up a little bit, you must excuse me, this has to be adjusted very carefully, it has to be adjusted very carefully for height to a bottle that contains water colored once again and a small area here where we can generate some pressure and there's a tube with a nozzle at the end.

Now I'm going to repeat the experiment. Put the hydrogen filling. this with hydrogen and we are going to repeat the phenomenon, it will diffuse, please, thank you very much for this, let's fill this as much as we can, as much as we can, okay, lower the pressure gradually, that's right, that's right. Okay, now let's look at a source, a diffusion source. You see and this is a remarkable demonstration once again of the way pressure is generated. You see the gas flows, the hydrogen flows from an area of ​​a fast moving area of ​​a high energy molecular motion, the air.

It has less capacity because its molecules are heavier and we have this beautiful fountain. Now you see that once I remove it, the air is sucked back in, so I'll disconnect it there. Now you know what I had thought of this experiment. uh, when I was trying to come up with some kind of interesting forever effect and then I turned to a book I had at home. Couldn't we have the next slide? Please, then this book, the title of the book should be in the following. slide and there it is and it is a very interesting title um air and its relations to life being, with some additions, the substance of a course of lectures delivered in the summer of 1974 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, this is where we find ourselves today my Dear children and look at one of the experiments they did.

Can we have the next slide? Please, dear children and your sir, it is exactly the same experiment, so you are seeing an experiment that you have seen today here at the Fusion Fountain exactly demonstrated. By the way, you might be interested in knowing what this type of bottle with two caps is called, it is called a wolf bottle. Okay, they don't use them today, but you will see that they have a wonderful application and there is a demonstration of their use. Now we're going to be able to, I just have the next slide, I know, ah, there it is, thank you very much, that's exactly what I wanted to tell you.

I've already finished the topic. the idea of ​​particles, molecular movements, movement and so on. Thank you very much Andrés and I and I have explained a little about the three states of matter. to do with matter, but now we are going to something quite different and I am sure you know this and this is the concept of light. I'm sure you know that one of the great discoveries in the

history

of science was Isaac. Newton's experiments in 1761 to split white light into its seven rainbow colors, Newton's prison experiment, the prism experiment. I must say now, I would like to show you Andrés, who is a physics technician, actually, that on the left you see that you have. has a beautiful diagram, Andrew was actually photographed, the actual living being, that's what Newton would have seen, something like that, he took a sun, a sun raised from a distance obviously from the Sun, but through a crack in a room dark, and he got that. rainbow effect that looks beautifully illustrated in the photo, that's what you get in real life, but you see this rainbow effect caused a lot of interest because people started saying well what light is made of and they had several ideas and there were two ideas. one of them is that light is made of small particles with different colors that flow all together and the other idea was that light is made of waves, today we call it electromagnetic radiation and those ideas persisted for a long time and now I would like to have a special flight from Milan is Professor Fabio Parramattiani, who is now going to demonstrate something that humans have known for many thousands of years and that has been used in fireworks.

Could we please turn off the lights or are we ready to not just not yet not yet Fabio please come in now Fabio has Esky helping him she is a student very interested in chemistry and she is one of my assistants and Fabio can I pass you and ask you Please explain to me what you are going to do. Thank you. Thank you very much. We could have turned off the lights for this, which will be a very simple experiment. In fact, we are going to ignite just some solutions of chemicals dissolved in a flammable solvent.

You will see here the flame of the match and the light. produced by those chemicals now, this is actually another sensational experimental fact, it has been known for many, many years, I would say maybe thousands of years, if you put different chemicals in the fire, you can get a different color of the flame, but that in was actually exploited. by two great physicists, Gustav Kirshoff and Robert Bunsen, who is the same inventor of the Bunsen burner, to identify the elements because by observing these different types of lights and passing that light into the spectrum, into the prism that Andrew just showed.

You could break that light down into individual frequencies into individual wavelengths and that gave rise to a lot of useful techniques, analytical applications and ways of identifying the difference between elements because, for example, if you look at these last two flames on my left side. and on their right side they almost look identical to our eye, but they are actually different elements and would produce a different pattern when the light is split, so this is quite beautiful to see, but also the connection with hydrogen is that the Physicists and chemists have studied the atomic emission spectrum of hydrogen and learned a lot about how atoms work, about quantum physics and all kinds of different sciences and technologies, just to let you know that these chemicals are used, some of these elements are They use in fireworks. in pyrotechnics of course for the beautiful colors that they provide to the flame and in order on the right side you have lithium that gives a beautiful crimson magenta color strontium with a red plate more slightly reddish color calcium with orange sodium with the beautiful yellow that we recognize in the barium lanterns with apple green, lime green, which is born beautiful, the deepest grain that you can get in fireworks that is still found in fireworks today, coppery bluish green and then rubidium and potassium, which are very similar in color, almost pinkish violet, and that is what completes the spectrum that We can get colors from different elements and for many of the other elements we do not exactly identify the color with the naked eye, but still these are the most beautiful and I hope it was a pleasant sight to see how colors are made and what hydrogen is. it led us to this color thank you very much uh.

I'm just going to thank you so much for the fabulous idea. I wanted to show the following slides that reiterate what Fabio said, but also a couple of interesting ones. of interesting observations, you see, Isaac Newton did his experiments with the seven colors of the rainbow in 18 1761, but in and but people were very interested in looking at this rainbow of, you know, these colors and various people began to magnify them, the They looked. Through a very careful process, they had optical devices and they were able to observe these lights, the seven colors of the rainbow, and a German physicist whose name was Fraunhofer discovered that there were actually black lines, there were lines in this. spectrum and said of the Sun, the rainbow and there you have a solar spectrum that comes from the Sun and with these supply lines thrown in now he discovered several hundred of them and also noticed their waves or made a precise note of their exact positions in which they occur and this became a source of great interest.

Where do these lines come from? What really causes these lights? Well, the answer is that they are what are known as parts of the absorption spectrum of elements found in the sun in the vapor of the sun's corona elements such as potassium, calcium, sodium, etc., and those elements Later, as Fabio said, it was the German chemists and physicists Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff who in 1848 invented the technology or technique of spectroscopy, which is the analysis of colors that are produced by individual elements in discrete lines. Can we have the following spectrum? Please see here that, as Fabio just told you, two colors that looked identically red, one of them was lithium and the other was strong if he saw it.

They were at the end of these beautiful things that we saw, but you see if you analyze those flames and you analyze them and you look at the wavelengths of the frequencies, which is what this was represented. We now understand that waves are electromagnetic radiation. then you see that they have a completely different appearance and yet to the eye they both appear red and that was what was remarkable about the discoveries of this analytical tool, each element, if irradiated properly, will give an emission spectrum. of the energy levels of the um of the electrons and this is the next part I'm going to get to because people said, well, where is this light coming from?

You warm it up, how come you have these beautiful colors? And it wasn't until the late 19th century and early 20th century that people began to understand that the atom was actually made up of three or two particles. Initially it was just protons in that nucleus surrounded by electrons and then Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, but I began to understand that hydrogen is the simplest element, that's the one that would be worth investigating because hydrogen had a proton and an electron and They were wondering what the heck causes these lines when hydrogen is heated. Can we have the following slide please showing? you are a hydrogen atom this is how simplistically we can understand the hydrogen atom with a proton in the middle and an electron orbiting it now when you heat the hydrogen molecules of course hydrogen comes in molecular form when you heat it up and then it starts. to eliminate a radiation, could we turn to the next slide please, and you will see that the emanation occurred in several series of lines, but I am only showing you part of the atomic emission spectrum of hydrogen and you can see literally a few lines there and because There was an electron, these lines lent themselves to mathematical analysis and people were able to relate and there were several sets of lines that occurred in different parts of the spectrum that were not visible and by analyzing these lines a remarkable discovery was made with the spectrum. of hydrogen, could we have the next slide please?

This in a very, very simple way summarizes the discovery and was made by Niels Bohr in 1913, he was a Danish physicist and he recognized the fact that the electron in the hydrogen atom can only occupy certain energy levels with respect to the nucleus and orbits. around as the Earth orbits the sum, but then you can, if you energize the energy of the nucleus, then the electron can jump to a level, it jumps to a higher level and if you energize it more. will fall to another level, but and this was the surprising thing, there was nothing in the middle, an electron could be at one level or another, but not in the middle, and that was the birth of the science of quantum mechanics today , this is thanks to this. idea of ​​the fact that electrons in atoms can only occupy certain energy levels that today we have all information technology computers everything we have mobile phones everything that has to do with information technology depends on our understanding of the fact that electrons in elements can occupy certainlemons? one may not have turned on one may not have turned on let's move on I think I don't think it will go off but let the will never be known sometimes there is a delayed reaction but The thing is we had a little fun, that's the important thing and I hope you understood the scientific principles. because that's still burning that's still burning that one was still burning it would go off down there Fabio it's still burning you'll hear a loud bang in a second now could we clear the debris please yeah Could you clean up the debris? debris I wanted to move on to my favorite topic which is food and you can say well, what does hydrogen have to do with food now?

I'm sure, I'm sure everyone likes lemons and oranges, you see, and one of the things although what I'm sure you've noticed is that lemons and oranges are a little bit bitter a little bit bitter and you see, I wanted to tell you and something that you all know and I have no doubt that you will not argue is that lemons are more sour than oranges now the reason why a sourness this has to do with acid acid what I call what we call acid Behavior The idea of ​​why things are acidic is as old as humanity and this is where hydrogen comes from, as I will explain shortly.

So lemons are more acidic than oranges, we could tell that by the taste, but I have here water with a few drops of this splendid invention of the chemist and that is a universal indicator and dear Andrés, could we move those glasses forward in that sequence because I I'll do it very soon in the same sequence because then we could show that. Thank you very much and I just wanted to show you how we can show very easily that lemons are more acidic than oranges, so if I now take a nice piece of orange here and I spray a little bit of orange juice on my universal indicator, you know, it's like there would be almost that amount there and I give it a little spin to see what color it changes and there you see, you see it's gone, you see it's turned orange now for those of you who know a little bit about the universal indicator colors, that means which is a weekly acid, you see, but now I have it, but you know anyway, because if I put a little lemon juice in this, if I put a little lemon juice in this. one here and that is about the same amount and you give it a little swirl and you will see that it has turned red so this is a very interesting way to see that the chemist has invented splendid waste analytical chemicals and the universal indicator is one of these that allows us to tell the difference between acids alkalis or strength of acids and strength of alkali and what I wanted to show.

I've done a very simple demonstration here is that I have in these six beakers, very small amounts of different indicators that chemists have allowed us to invent all kinds of remarkable substances and indicators are always a lot of fun because they change color, now they all have a few drops of a different indicator and they all have a small amount of very dilute hydrochloric acid, it is very weakly acidic. enough to make it colorless, but here in this jar I have the opposite type of substance to an acid and that is called alkali and everyone in school learns that acid plus alkali produces salt plus water in a reaction . what we call neutralization and we can detect if we do a titration experiment, the color of the indicator will change when the solution is exactly neutral, so I'm going to this.

I have the exact same liquid here exactly the same, but I have different indicators, that's the smart part and they all have slightly different colors and I hope that when I pour my alkali, these indicator colors become evident and you see, there's the first one and as I I pour is the The same liquid, but each time we produce a different color, you see, and that's the remarkable thing that, hopefully, a different color, maybe I have a scream, I ran out and now I do have. Andrés, could you bring me the sodium hydroxide? sodium hydroxide there is a jar somewhere.

I apologize, I'm running out of these things a little bit, but the point is that these indicators have these wonderful different colors and just for your information, I have three indicators here, um phenolphthalein, which you may have heard of thymophthalan and paraffin or paranitrophenol. Thank you very much, so this is less elegant, but hopefully it will get the job done. Now let's see what color we get this and there you see it and we have this one here. We have a very good selection of colors. Sorry, the green isn't too bright, but now you can see the point.

I didn't invent these experiments. They are wonderful chemistry teachers and people who plan experiments to make them interesting and they and They have developed such an experiment, so why is it acidic? This is the point that actually produces acidity and there were many theories, people wondered what it is about an acid that makes it acidic. Humphrey Davey in 1817 thought it was just hydrogen. gas of some kind love was here the great French chemist Lavoisier said it was oxygen in fact the word oxygen comes from the ancient Greek words Oxys and Genesis means The Giver of Life to acids um in German today oxygen is called acid Acidic things means acidic things, so still at the root of that comes this idea of ​​acidity now, um, the debate ultimately about what actually causes was developed by a great Swedish chemist and his name was Santi Arinos.

Can we have the next slide please, real quick? Now Svante Arenas got the Nobel Prize in 1903 once again when he did his doctoral thesis and he suggested that um, um, and he suggested that, uh, um, water can be split into electrically charged particles, people just thought. That was ridiculous, they didn't believe him, they couldn't understand how a neutral particle could be divided into two electrically charged particles, but he was proven right, he was proven right, that's where he got the Nobel Prize and today we understand that water molecules can be divide in half. Can we have this not very identical half?

They can be split into hydrogen ions and hydroxide ions and pure water has equal concentrations of these, but water with an acid has acidic water with a substance that causes acidity. will have a higher concentration of hydrogen ions than hydroxide and vice versa with alkalis and that was brilliantly this concentration of the actual concentration was brilliantly interpreted by the Danish chemist uh Sauron sorens and could we have the next slide please? Soren Sorensen invented the pH scale and He defined pH as a base 10 logarithm of the reciprocal of the concentration of hydrogen ions. That's pretty complicated, but I've found in the past that if you have friends and you want to impress them at a party, how will your science skills improve?

They are good, you should tell them: do you know what PH is? and they say: oh, it's that boring three-wheeler. I said no, it is the base 10 logarithm of the reciprocal of the hydrogenin concentration, although they will be dazzled by your scientific experience. I'll just be there to sit us down and say, Oh, can you tell us more about this wonderful thing? So there's the definition, go and learn kids, not only will you get marks in an A level exam, but you will also be able to dazzle your friends. next one please, and I think now, oh, and there's the pH scale, those of you that have indicators and there's a pH from 1 to 14, they're all numbers calculated from that formula that I gave you, which is quite remarkable and those are the Universal indicators indicated and now can we have the next slide please and here we have the final we are already reaching the grand final my dear friends one of the things of the great honor of coming to the Royal Institution a place with a great tradition And hydrogen is certainly not the first time it has been debated today.

The first time I showed you was the diffusion of hydrogen in 1874. In 1910, Sir James Dua did a special. It was brilliant in the Dua flask. Vacuum dental floss. Duo gave a demonstration. Of the liquid hydrogen that he was, he was an expert in cryogenics and had produced liquid hydrogen. There is a wonderful painting of him outside with the apparatus there and in 1935 the brilliant organic chemistry professor John Reed lectured him here. It was in November 1935 and John, the thing about John Reed is that he was not just a chemist, he spoke in the summer, he spoke, he gave lectures in Italian, in German, he got his doctorate in Zurich, he was a chemist in Australia and he did research fantastic on plant materials. one of the most extraordinary calories and a brilliant specialist in alchemy and the

history

of chemistry now in 1935 and John Reed was also obsessed with the explosion of hydrogen balloons now he had to find an excuse he gave a lecture titled uh he gave a lecture titled um the musical Alchemist there was a Friday night, I think it was November 11, 1935 and the musical results and decided that he had Michael Meyer was the person in question who composed some cannons and fugues for which Alchemist used to sing, but John Reed had to find a way to include music in some way because he loved music and poetry and everything, so what he did was he got his um, the musical Alchemist.

AL's works were analyzed by one of his colleagues at the University of Aberdeen and he specially wrote a special piece for a choir to sing as the hydrogen and oxygen balloons exploded and this is what, um, um, the lyrics of the song of our pre Could I have the next slide please, the lyrics to the song were called hydrogenesis, there it is. and what I thought to myself and what he did was he had one of his musical colleagues from the University of Aberdeen to write the song and he had one of his and he had um and he had the choir he had the choir from the University of Aberdeen who were called kimik choir now I thought it would be wonderful to try to repeat something like that, so I invited a choir from Highgate School, the Highgate School consoles, to come and sing for us today while and the composition you are going to hear has been composed especially by a very, very good friend of mine uh former people from Highgate school Dr.

Gray and Waterhouse he has written music especially to accompany the explosion of hydrogen balloons not one two but you can count I have lost count but there are a large number of them , then, what are we going to do? Can I ask the choir under the direction of Catherine Harrison, who is the director of our choral music at Highgate School, to line up quickly because time is running out and I will be very grateful and what we are going to do is, if Could you please line up, I need to get my main accessory. I have an important accessory here that I'm going to lift as I should. hammer somewhere oh if I don't have a hammer it doesn't matter I'll just use this one oh look the nails are falling out now so you can come and inspect the nails later but this one will be ours.

Oops, Daisy, please excuse me. I, ah, you have Andrés, you can do the lighting, okay, you can, I'll tell you when I'll tell you when you can do the lighting, so listen, where is the candle that's lit? Oh, can we bring her? here Esky, thank you very much, in fact the choir will start shortly, where is our director? Ah, here we are now, let's just remind me, composer, Dr. Gray Waterhouse, Highgate School, consort, hydrogenesis, now, David, you're sitting very close to what this is. I'm going to make a very loud pop if anyone is afraid, this is going to be very loud and I will definitely cover both.

If you're scared, if you're not, then you'll like a fool for being like me. See ya, just take what comes, but the thing is, hopefully, uh, I think this one will stick around, I think this one will trigger this one, there's a lot of buildup to this, but I'm really hoping it works out. , so I. do this when they finish this and then, and then Andrés will do what they do when they do it, okay, the moment they covered their ears with their hands, that's what you liked, okay, hydrogenesis, 2022 edition, shh HHH hhhhh s foreigner. foreigner foreigner good evening very generous no yes thank you very much thank you very much indeed ladies and gentlemen thank you very much indeed a big round of applause thank you very much everyone come forward please help us thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much attention thank you very much