The volcanic chemistry of sulfur - with Andrew Szydlo

very very good afternoon very very good afternoon to you, ladies and gentlemen, very good afternoon to you, especially dear children, I have here in my hand one of the most extraordinary substances known to the human race, it is called

sulfur

. Salfa has been known since then. the dawn of humanity from the earliest times, 10 or thousands of years ago, and it was found in

volcanic

regions and that's where people used to congregate, etc., and one of the most notable things they found about this yellow solid here , which they did not find. has a name in those days is that it burns, so I'm going to start with my first experiment and I'm going to show you how this burns, how

sulfur

burns and then I'll explain to you how its name has changed throughout history, so here I have a small sample of sulfur.

Obviously I'm going to use a modern technique to set it on fire, meaning with a blowtorch like this, so please excuse me while I turn on the gas flow, so there we are and whoops, just press it. place, so please watch carefully now as I set this Stone on fire. Could we turn off the lights please? And there you see that it is burning, it is burning with a blue flame that is almost invisible but that emits the most disgusting and precise fumes, and because of that I am going to put out the flame immediately, so if you will excuse me, I will simply pour a little bit of water to make our burnt stone, which in old English was called Brimstone, in fact, it was called Brinston in ancient times.

In German it was called Brenin, the Burning Stone. We have extinguished the Burning Stone now and some of you will be able in a short space of time to detect a very unpleasant odor and that is one of the things associated with sulfur and its compounds. unpleasant smells, so if by the end of today's talk you haven't experienced an unpleasant smell, you will have missed the point of the talk in many ways, so there we have brimstone and then burning stone in Old English, as I said Brimstone. in modern English, a little more recent, Brimstone, the word is still used today and as you see, it burns there after I showed you that and I wanted to tell you that it is found very often in

volcanic

regions, so if we can have the first day. you have a slide, this is a volcano in Guatemala, there are about 50 active volcanoes in the world today and Guatemala is in Central America, just south of Mexico, and there are several volcanoes there, in fact, and if you look at that cloud of smoke, it is a smoke full of sufuria vapors, that type of smell that some of you will be able to detect when sulfur comes out of the ground from the depths of the Earth's interior and that is why it has been associated with all kinds of evils. things very deep underground.

Now I am going to turn to a um to tell you that um in our language we call it sufa but the word sufa has a very interesting origin. In reality, the origin of the word goes back a long way. to one of the oldest civilizations, the Hindu civilization, the Hindu religion of the Indian people dating back over 5,000 years, they had a word for sufa that was actually in the oldest language in the world, which is Sanskrit, and their word was Suvari, now Suvari in Sanskrit means enemy of copper and in fact I have photographed the reaction especially to show you how sulfur destroys copper and why they would have called it enemy of copper.

So you can see in my boiling tube that I have a bonson burner and there's a little bit of yellow alur at the bottom and there's a nice shiny copper foil and as the reaction goes, can we move on to the next slide? Thank you so much. You see it glows red hot. That is the process of destruction of copper by hot sulfur. Vapors and in the end this is what the copper at the top turns to. You see, we have this black solid. It started as copper on the bottom and ended as the solid black on top.

Now in today's language we call it copper sulfide. but in the language, in the experience of ancient people, this actually demonstrated the destruction of copper. Copper is a beautiful shiny metal, but once it reacts with sulfur it turns into a brittle black solid and from that we derive our Latin, the Latin incident. becomes sulphurous and that nowadays, as in modern English they call it sulphur, let us now proceed to a brief investigation of these precise vapours. I'm going to burn some more sulfur for you now. Andes, could I ask you to turn on the burner while Now Andress is one of my several assistants today and I will introduce them one at a time and do so while Andis turns on the burner.

I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take some pieces of sulfur that I have here, it's this beautiful solid, thank you very much and I'm going to set them on fire in my deflowering spoon. This type of spoon that we have here is especially used to burn substances in special containers called gas jars, like this. that Andress is holding the gas jug, you see, and I'm going to set this sulfur on fire, you'll barely see the flame, but then I'll ask them to turn off the light once the Sul has come in so there's no rush by the way, take a little of time initially the sulfur will melt initially it is melting there, you see, it has that orange color there.

I'm going to make it burn in a second, you'll see fumes. coming out of it you will see furious vapors there it is dripping and now the lights go out please thank you very much and there you see sulfur burning beautifully in a gas flask full of oxygen and there we can turn off this burner now and you see that. It is the typical color of sulfur that burns in oxygen, it is a blue flame and you can see the vapors that come off and those vapors are the same vapors that I produced from the beginning and every time you burn sulfur this is what you get, but today We're going to investigate this in a little more modern scientific way now that the sulfur continues to burn there, so now I'm going to put a lid on very carefully because I don't want to smell this and put the sulfur in some cold water you guys saw it went out right away and the flame has already gone out so we can put our spoon down there and we already have a Jar full of strange vapors, dear children, what I am going to do now is show you what happens when I let the water mix with these sulfurous vapors.

I have a special container here that has water and it has been colored green because of the way the water has been colored green with a special indicator called a universal indicator. Now I push and look at what is happening inside. As if by magic, the water has risen inside, it started red and now it has turned yellow and you see, dear children, what that has shown us has shown us that sulfur dioxide, the gas is called sulfur dioxide, could I tell you now these pungent vapors and is actually quite acidic. I will, if you'll excuse me, I'll dip regularly into my supply of goodies that's down there, so I'll wipe my hands so that this sulfur dioxide that you see is the pungent substance that forms is a weak acid in today's world to which By the way, what we call sulfur dioxide is the gas, but when it reacts with water it produces sulfurous acid, so all of this adds to the fact that so far I have shown you the unpleasant side of sulfur.

I have shown you that it emits horrible, smelly fumes that some Some of you will have already noticed that it produces a gas. Its sulfur dioxide is acidic and dissolves in water, which is also bad for us and, in addition, it comes out of the earth from volcanoes. Now, in various parts of human history, things that come from deep underground have had a very evil colit that was associated in ancient times with dark, dangerous, unpleasant things and evil and during the rise of various religions and in The various ancient cultures in which it was associated, sulfa was associated with evil and especially in Christianity approximately more than two probably more than 2,000 years ago for Christians the hall had a particularly unpleasant effect.

The connotation was um, it had connotations of damnation to hell doing bad things and people going deep into the dark underworld as punishment for their sin, so it had a lot of unpleasant connotations, um, which today, of course, we know that are. not true, but we are human and we think about these things and these unpleasant connotations caused a lot of literature, a lot of people wrote about the evil of sulfur, they used the evil type, the evil aspects of sulfas in various literary works . in painting in sculptures and I would just like to present to you three excerpts from three pieces of very, very well known literature that many of you will have heard of and I will tell you briefly what are the first excerpts that What I will hear here is a very short piece of the poem John Milton's epic Paradise Lost.

John Milton lived about 400 years ago and he was involved with Oliver Cromwell, he was Oliver Cromwell's secretary, he lived in the time of King Charles and Then there was a fight between Cromwell and the royalists and he saw the very bad side of humanity, there was all kinds of problems and wrote an epic poem called Paradise Lost. which was a kind of biblical look at the summary of man's descent into eternal damnation, that will be the first piece you will hear, the second piece will be a quote, only William Shakespeare also used the word sufa in his quotes and there It will be a quote very short from the very well known play Aell in which a companion accidentally misunderstood everything, killed his wife and was so upset about this that he then uttered some words that you will see before committing suicide. in total despair for having killed his beloved wife and finally there is a special fragment of a special story especially for children and it is about some very, very naughty and unpleasant school teachers and I will tell you, dear children, it is a fragment of a poem. in fact, from an NC story by Charles Dickens, the brilliant author and Charles Dickens wrote a book called Nicholas Nickelby that some of you will have read, I hope Nicholas Nickelby, and in this particular passage that you're going to hear, Nicholas wanted to become in school teacher, he was a young teacher and he was training to be a teacher and he went to a boarding school to do his training where he met a very, very unpleasant headmaster called Mr. sque.

Now Mr. squ had a very unpleasant relationship. and unpleasant wife, her name was Mrs. sque and together they tried to make money from poor children and do you know how they did it? It was pretty horrible. They used to see that the children were in boarding school and they all came from poverty. families and what these horrible teachers did, Mr. Squs and his wife, Mrs. Sque, they tried to make money off the children by not feeding them properly, saving money on food and do you know how they did it? They were fed a very unpleasant meal. a very unpleasant medicine that involved Brimstone, which is the old name for sulfas, and the only purpose of giving them that medicine, as they explain, is that the children would feel so sick and so ill that they would not want to eat anything and there, Mr. sque said we can save money because we don't have to buy food now, isn't that so terrible?

I asked my good friend, Mr. Steven Lucas, a professional actor who will read those three passages to you and I very much hope that you enjoy them, first you will listen to John Milton, then you will listen to William Trembles and then you will listen to Charles Dickens and for Charles Dickens, the slide will appear just before Charles' cock, so thank you very much, sir. I give you John Milton. converting our tortures into horrible weapons against the torturer when upon meeting the noise of his Almighty engine he will hear the infernal Thunder and equally light in the Sea black fire and horror shot with equal fury between his angels and his throne itself mixed with tartar sulfur and Strange He shoots his own invented torments, but perhaps the path seems difficult and steep to climb with wing up against a superior enemy of a companion of William Shakespeare oh, damned cursed slave, whip me, devils, for the possession of this heavenly sight, blow me with winds, roast me in Sulfur Wash Me In steep gulfs of liquid fire oh of deona of aona dead no oh oh and finally of Nicholas nickelby of Charles Dickens come in, dear, said sque and the lady sque entered still dressed in the primitive nightgown she had shown the uh symmetry of her figure the night before and also adorned with a beaver hat of some Antique that she wore with great ease and similarity on the top of the nightcap before the aforementioned drop the things said the lady opening the closet I can't find the spoon tool anywhere it doesn't matter my dear he remarked reassuringly it doesn't matter it doesn't matter why how does he talk? replied the lady, press sharply, don't you? uh Brimstone tomorrow, I forgot, dear, rejoin sque yes, it certainly is, uh we purify the Bloods boys from time to time nickelby purify the ends of the fiddle said your lady don't believe, young man, that we're going at the expense of the flow of sulfur and molasses just to purify them because if you think that we carry out the business that way, you will find that you are wrong and I am telling you clearly, dear, said sque, frowning, oh nonsense, replied the lady sque, if the young man comes to be a teacher here, let him understand.

Once we don't want any nonsense about the boys, they have the sulfur and the treatment. partly because if they had not taken something in the form of medicine they would always besick and causing a lot of problems and partly because it kills their appetite and is cheaper than breakfast and dinner, so it's good for them and good for us. at the same time and that's fair enough, I'm sure thank you very much sir, thank you very much sirWell, thank you very much, absolutely brilliant, thank you very much, really, thank you, so there you see, dear children, you have seen the evil side of the sulfa.

Awful. In fact, now I'm going to tell you some good things about sulfas, some slightly different things and people have done it. Ultimately, they always wondered what things are made of. They wanted to enjoy and use the things found in the ground, in the air, in the water and all around them, and one of the interesting things they began to find in ancient times are these too. nuggets like this, you see, what I have here used to be called Falls gold, you see, they look quite golden and people used to simply believe that this is actually some kind of gold, but of course it was called Fool's Gold. because we know it's not real gold and only a fool would believe it and then try to make money with it.

We have in the world that you've always explored and one of the things, yeah, Andress Andes is now going to light the stove on fire, so thank you very much really and I wanted to show you what's going to happen when we heat up the Falls gold, it's certainly not going to happen. to make gold it will not melt into liquid gold we have the burner down there thank you very much and I want you to observe carefully what is going to happen inside that tube there is something crushed there are some crushed pyes by the way the name is pyes today and I wrote them down away and I pointed the tube away from the audience because there may be a little crackle and a little bit of noise, but the pyes are getting hot and I want you to listen closely, I'm going to adjust the flavor a little bit and you'll listen and watch carefully to see if you can see some gold coming out just turn it down a little bit just turn it down a little bit it takes a couple of minutes this EXP exp just so we keep our fingers crossed and maybe there's a second burner let's turn off another burner let's play on a second burner sorry we want For things to work, it will happen, but we have to improvise.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Dear sir, have you heard that? Yeah, wow, okay, some of the f hanging around is more fun, it looks fun, but it doesn't work as you can see. I don't do this regularly, usually in school we have just one I. I have to leave this, I'm sorry, but I think you can see what's happening and this is what's important. This is what is important. Now it's starting. I want you to look here, dear children, and you can see what this yellow color looks like. You could also, I'm sure you heard a little bit of crackling, ah, you heard that, now you see it has a very special name, that crackling has a very special name and in the world of

chemistry

we call it decrepitation, what that means is which is a mechanical thing, you see the crystals, they were big clumps there, they are breaking into dust now, the reason why that happens is because when you heat things up, you saw that yes, it shoots something else and the reason is that when you heat things up, things, they expand on the outside but not on the inside, it's called the thermal effect and these cakes are very fragile and when they break, they make this loud cracking sound and actually some pieces shoot out through our long tube here at the same time , so there is a physical change which is the rupture, but from our point of view the interesting thing is the yellow thing that you see here now, not only can you see the yellow solid that is now starting to collect here I'm sure you all know what It's sulfur, dear children, we are actually getting sulfur from these cakes.

Can you see that beautiful dark brown vapor that is nothing more than sulfur? Steam, is the real element. This yellow solid that I showed you before is actually coming off as a vapor and the colder part of the tube is actually condensing to form a liquid further down, an orange liquid there and a yellow liquid further up, now I think the demonstration . has been very successful and we can just show you, take this now, excuse me, I'm just going to take it out for you to hold. Thank you very much Andreas, thank you very much so that we can all. quickly, just take a look one more time, so what we have here is that Bren broke into the broken pyes at the same time they changed chemically, they released some sulfur and you could see which one is condensed there and at the same time , they have been transformed, they have been transformed into another type of iron sulfide, but I am not going to go into the details of that for the moment, I will tell you a little more about other minerals. in the earth's crust containing sulfur, it is seen that py s is the most widely distributed sulfur mineral whose chemical name is sulfide ion, it is a type of sulfide ion, it has a formula F S2 and already thousands of years ago people had recognized that when heated, it actually produces sulfur, which I just showed you and I just wanted to show you some other samples of these pyes known as fool's gold.

This beautiful mineral specimen has been loaned to us by the Geological Society of London, which is very close to here and wonderful people have specially LED this and see as I move it you can see the glow of the pyes which are this is called inlay they are embedded in this piece of rock here but not only sulfur appears dear children in iron sulfide because this is the most distributed metal in the earth's crust they are compounds of iron but it also appears in combination with other metals and I just wanted to show you what I have in my special box here that everyone can have.

Check it out later and come see it up close. You see this mineral here. Her name is Galina. It is lead sulfite, so it has another metal associated with it. The metal is lead. Beautiful silver crystals. If you heat it that hard, this will also cause sulfur to come out. and then we have another mineral, there are many other sulfites, but this one is particularly special known in the ancient world as dragon's blood and the reason is that it has this red color, but dear children, when you heated this. strong, strong, this was particularly known in ancient China and also in southern Spain, this particular miral that has this dark red color when this mineral is heated, two very, very notable substances are formed, one of them is the sulfur, which I am holding for you.

In this special bottle here you can see the sulfur that I have shown you, but in this other substance that makes it quite noticeable is the liquid metal that we call Mercury and this metal has a very high density that you will be able to experience. this yourselves, so when you heat that mineral very strongly, it decomposes into Mercury and sulfur. Now this fire ignited the imagination of ancient philosophers because they were asking questions about, ultimately, what all metals are made of. They wanted to find out that they saw that. All metals could bend very well.

They knew the metals had a beautiful shine and ultimately wanted to know how they were constructed. They came out of the ground and a very interesting theory was devised approximately. Oh, this was, this was 2000 years ago. years ago, not exactly 2,000 years ago, but it was initially by the great Arab alchemists in this 8th century, something like the 8th or 9th century AD, and they came up with the idea that ultimately all metals are composed of sulfur and mercury of These two Mercurys had a very special meaning in the ancient world because Mercury is the only metal that is liquid, also it has a very high density when you come and pick up this bottle, wow, this is very heavy, dear children, and they realized, so therefore, it was assumed that these two are the main ingredients, they are the only ingredients of All Metals.

Now this was called The Sulfur and Mercury Theory and their reasoning was straightforward and they said, look, if you mix this with this in the right proportions, you can make any metal you want. Look, I have a gold ring on my finger. Gold has always been recognized as the most perfect metal. It never corroded. It had wonderful gloss properties. Etc., so they said, "Look, this is it, add a little bit of this to that and you'll get this." a beautiful piece of copper pipe that you see nice and shiny and you say: add this a little more of this to that and you'll end up with this that you see now for us today you say well, you know, we know that doesn't work and you joke with those people That cannot be right, dear children, science is very difficult and in the ancient world people used to have a different way of seeing the universe, it was what we call a world of correspondences, that is, if something is seen. like something, then it could well be that it's actually made of things that make it look like something and that way of thinking today says, well, that's pretty stupid, no, that was the smarter way, that was the way people used to see the world.

In those days and this mercury-sulfur theory was so amazing that people continued to use those two substances to believe in them for a thousand years and then we have a beautiful demonstration here from a book published in 1614 of the mercury-sulfur theory there a the right. The side of the hand is the one where there was a book written especially about 12 of the greatest philosophers of all time. On the right side is Thomas aqu wus, who was a great theologian, a Catholic theologian, and on it he points to a kind of diagram of a volcano and on the left side you see symbols, those alchemical symbols for mercury and sulfur that are actually heating up in the ground and, as the vapors rise, they reach the top of the model volcano.

There is the Alchemist standing on top and he is mixing or combining them. to make Ed metal dear children, how extraordinary is the human imagination, humans are all curious, we want to know how the world works today, we live in a world where we take for granted the achievements of science and technology, we believe that we are intelligent, of course but what you need to understand is that no matter how old or erroneous you may think that the ancient theories were made by people at least as intelligent as we are today and that it is on the basis of those theories that we have the world that we live in.

Today, who knows, in a thousand years people will be able to look back at today's theories, and those who have made considerable progress, that is the nature of progress, my dear friends, so the Sulur Mercury theory it was so impressive to so many people that many philosophers many philosophers wrote about it and I just wanted to ask my friend Steven to read you two more passages because a lot of people wrote about the sulfur and mercury theory. The first passage will be from the English alchemist and natural philosopher Roger Bacon, who lived in the 13th century. century, but the work was published in the 16th century, possibly not his original writing, but nevertheless you will see what he had to say about the S, the theory of mercury and then we will have two readings by the Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius, who is the The only person who dedicated an entire book just to suffering, so, first of all, Roger Bacon, sir, the natural principles in the mines are Mercury and sulfur, all the metals and minerals of which there are Sury and various types are generated of these two, but I must tell you. that nature always intends and strives for the perfection of gold, but many accidents that come in the way change the four metals according to the purity and impurity of the two principles mentioned above.

Mercury and sulfur, pure and impure metals generate sulfur is not the last among the principles because it is part of the metal yay and the main part of the Philosopher's Stone and many wise men have left in writing various and very certain things about sulfur because the blood of Sulfur is that inner virtue and dryness that freezes living silver into gold and imparts health and perfection in all bodies, thank you very much, so there you see you take about sulfa, one more, now you see the philosophy, that is the philosophy, that is the Sufa mercury theory, but Cogis then went on to look at the role of sulfur and in a much greater way.

In his book on sulfas, he closed towards the end and expressed what he thought about sulfas and their contribution to our existence on Earth, so please, sir, the final text now by Sendivogius, can do a thousand things and is the heart of all that can perfect. Metals and minerals impart understanding to animals produce flowers in herbs and trees corrupt and perfect air in short, produce all the smells and paint all the colors of the world. Know, friend, that sulfas are the virtue of the world and, although nature is the second to be born, it is still the oldest. of all things, thank you very much sir, so there you see it, you see it, we have had two different images of Salfa presented, we have presented Salfa as Rel related to evil and now sua the supreme perfection, so dear children and dear friends.

I'm going to continue now with the good side of sulfur because that's really the purpose of this talk is to extol the wonderful properties of sulfur and I think the next topic I have to talk about is sulfuric acid, that's right. the oil of vitriol so I wanted to tell you that I have some beautiful crystals here and I wanted to tell you that these crystals had already been observed, these green ones and the blue ones that you will see down there, had been observed on the side of the lakes of water that evaporates in the side of the lakes where they are close to the volcanoes and they had a kind of glassy and shiny appearancewe'll try to get them to pick it up by rubbing my hand against it or and then actually one of You have some if you had practiced this a little bit and I'll show you how it affects the feathers.

I'm just going to ruffle some feathers on this. Could you watch, carry it between you? Just charge it, yeah, just spin it. quickly turn it quickly thank you very much and now look at me look at what happens while I bring the feathers there is a wind that comes I'm afraid that from somewhere it must have a very slight effect on the feathers, you see, what it does is that it repels them. We can try? It is not an easy experiment and we children can try it again later. You can try it yourselves. You see, it is a very difficult experiment because they need to be very dry. air for this to work static electricity is very sensitive, you know, on a hot dry day, if you touch the handle of a car, the spark jumps well, we are certainly not close.

Sparks fly, but you can see the feathers, there is a slight repulsion. depending on how the spins repel each other like I said I can do this we could practice a little more but I don't want to waste any more time but this ball has been made of sulfur that's the important thing and it was thrown into a flask of volariic autov described it, it's the size from a baby's head, that's the exact term he used in the meantime, and we have been collecting sulfur dioxide which is produced from the reaction between copper and sulfuric acid and that will be our next topic and how many JS do we have? the last one, this is the last one.

Well, here we've had the reaction between copper and sulfuric acid and Andas has been collecting vials of sulfur dioxide and I just wanted to show this remarkable thing. gas that we use so much every day without knowing it, even this gas has some very, very interesting chemical properties. The reason why sulfur dioxide is so interesting and why, in fact, the

chemistry

of sulfur is so interesting is because sulfur is a reactive element not only is it reactive but it can form many different types of chemical combinations and I'll just explain a little bit about that in a little bit more, but first we'll finish collecting this last gas.

Now it's this last gas the way we do it. By the way, the test for a gas that is full of sulfur dioxide is to put a ferrule on and what we have done here is we just put the ferrule there and you see that it has gone out, which means that now this thing is full of sulfur dioxide of sulfur. and since it is full and some sulfur dioxide is still coming out, now we are going to very carefully connect this apparatus to a drying tower and this dry tower is called an absorption tower. It is actually an absorption tower.

In this case, it is seen here. It is a tower that has soda lime, which is an alkaline substance, which absorbs and reacts with the sulfur dioxide that has been released there, which means that it will not escape into the atmosphere. I mean, we can smell it a little. here maybe they can, but as you see, it's not much to talk about, it's just a little irritating, but it doesn't hurt at all, dear children. Now I'm going to show you some experiments with sulfur dioxide just to show you how splendidly reactive this substance is. and you have already seen that the rose, as I say, is definitely bleaching, it will take a while, maybe that's all it will do, but the fact, as you can see, it has definitely turned pink from red and I just wanted to show you a couple more experiments.

Now here I have another gas that contains sulfur. This gas comes out of volcanoes in addition to sulfur dioxide and is called hydrogen sulfide. It is the gas that used to be called rotten egg gas. It has a phenomenally unpleasant smell of rotten eggs, other than that it is incredibly poisonous, so it is something to handle with great respect, but it undergoes an extraordinarily interesting reaction with sulfur dioxide, so we have sulfur dioxide here , here we have hydrogen sulfide, these two come out frequently. of volcanoes together I'm going to show you what happens when they come out of the volcanoes and when they mix and the way we do it is by simply removing the two lids here and this will take a few minutes there we are.

I removed the two lids and immediately you can see what is starting to happen dear children, you are starting to see that the bottom jar is turning yellow and the reason it is turning yellow is because a new substance is being produced. I hope they can. everyone guess what yellow is dear children and if you can't now then you haven't heard quickly dear children of course we have made sulfur here we have made sulfur now this is one of the most extraordinary reactions I am going to have To turn it around I want to make a little more Sul for your children and in addition to making sulfur, this is also done with a little bit of water, it actually produces water and I'm not going to take the risk of holding both. flasks um and allowing because there is a partial vacuum there, but I'm not going to allow the temptation to let one hold the other, but this is a very interesting reaction from many points of view to start with two gases.

They have reacted together to form a solid and a liquid, the liquid, by the way, being water. You can see some water droplets floating, so two gases have reacted to form a solid and a liquid. Secondly, two sulfur compounds have formed the element sulfur, which I personally also find surprisingly interesting, plus it is a very interesting example of a Redux reaction in which sulfur is reduced in one of them and oxidized. in the other, so the most important thing is that many geologists believe that these two gases come out of the volcanoes together and make huge sulfur deposits that are found in the mouths of the volcanoes today, for example, people still mine sulfur in some countries, especially in Indonesia, for example, they climb up the side of the volcano and carry huge chunks of sulfur down and that's, um, it's actually a very dangerous thing, but it's the way some people have it. to make a living and therefore today, of course, we do not extract sulfur from volcanoes.

Sulfur is generally obtained today mainly from the extraction of fossil fuels. coal from gas and crude oil we extract sulfur using several extraordinary chemical processes and that is our main source of sulfur today dear children, let me show you this, this is a jar full of sulfur dioxide, look what happens when we pour a solution of Potassium permanganate, which is purple, see if you can observe something happening and see that it has lost its color. Let's try another one. Here this is a potassium dichromate solution, dear children. Look carefully at what is happening. Magic is not chemistry, dear children.

And once again we have two notable notable examples this is potassium permanganate this is potassium dichromate and in this particular case the sulfur dioxide acts as a reducing agent and has caused them to change color due to the change in the oxidation state of the mangans from plus 7 to plus two chromium from plus 6 to plus three, that's a level of chemistry, don't worry if you don't know it yet, dear children, but I think it's incredibly interesting and also, I wanted to do my final experiment with sulfur dioxide now. Thank you very much, sir, and that's it. burn a piece of magnesium tape now look carefully I'm going to do it I hope everyone can see I can see everyone I think everyone can see that will be easier thank you very much dear Andreas Andreas is very mine You could see my right hand M, so there is magnesium burning and now we lower it to sulfur dioxide and the surprising thing is that it continues burning.

Could we put the division on top? It continued to burn for a while and what happens is sulfur into sulfur dioxide. The magnesium actually breaks the bonds between the sulfur and the oxygen to produce a little bit that actually probably wasn't completely full of sulfur dioxide, but you saw the principle: it continued to burn and separates the oxygen from the sulfur itself becoming uh um. it turns into magnesium oxide which falls to the bottom and releases some sulfur along the way, so that's an example of sulfur dioxide as an oxidizing agent. Now, as I mentioned earlier, sulfur dioxide has many uses and the use that I personally find.

The most important thing is that it is actually present in many wines and I have a bottle of wine here, which actually and some of you may not believe me, but let's look at the label with a super camera that I have here and I wanted to show you that the label actually says sulfur dioxide, so shortly I look at it very carefully and usually, by the way, sulfur dioxide is used as a food preservative, but they usually call it sulfites, which is the sulfite ion so32 less. Are we getting a little further away? Maybe and yes, that's all.

I think we might contain sulfur dioxide. Can you see, dear children, it is not so surprising? I'll do it as soon as I finish this talk, if I get to the end I'll do it. I'll be drinking a bottle of sulfur dioxide in your honor, so we'll save this for later, dear children, but wait, no, no, we'll do that, let's do it, because I'm in a hurry, we have a lot more chemistry to share, dear children. now let's go back now we can turn this off now I'm going to go back and for this very day this will be the most dangerous experiment of the day today we're going to see what happened to The Copper you see, there is no I have shown you a dioxide, but what happened to The Copper is that it turned into copper sulfate, which a lot of people might think now, Andre, very carefully, is this still okay, okay, we have to hold it down now, now take the top off and disconnect what's on it ? to be firmly attached, now I'm going to perform the most dangerous experiment of the day, so let me very carefully move the apparatus a little bit because you'll see, I hope everyone can see by the way it's black on the bottom, we can go.

Well, let's take it off. I hope everyone can see that it is black at the bottom. That's what's important. That black stuff. Where does it come from? It comes from copper. See, what kind of copper became that? of the substance it is, does it contain sulfur? because we started with sulfuric acid, that is what we are going to investigate right now, dear children, now to do this I have to access copper. Now I'm going to pour some um into it. Now where is it? So before we do it, where is the water? Is that water that is too big?

A FL is this water here. I will, so I have to be very careful that we are using the right device, dear children. I'm going to pour a concentrated ammonia solution here. Now ammonia is a strong alkali and also has a very potent odor and neutralizes. You saw in that hood, we're all going to produce those same fumes here, but when you add this very carefully, you'll hear little explosions inside and you'll see a lot of white smoke coming out, that's because the alkaline ammonia will neutralize the acid. in a very violent reaction and as you will see a lot of white smoke, a lot of noise now I have to be very careful to do this gently we are almost there we are not even close to there dear children I have added enough ammonia I have added enough ammonia, you can certainly see that it is neutralizing the acid and we're still Interestingly, what's at the bottom, that's what caught your attention after you've added ammonia to partially neutralize the acid or all of the acid.

Now I need to pick this up in my hand and I will. I have special gloves here somewhere that I am going to put on there thank you very much Andreas I am going to pour the water very carefully now this will also boil the purpose of adding the water is to cool it and dilute it and I have to do this very carefully and shortly, when stop bubbling, that means we've reached a stage where it's relatively safe to handle, which is now and now at this stage, dear children, I'm going to see that it's black, there's a solid there. there is a mess there I want to separate the black solid from the liquid so that everyone can see what color the solution is and to do that dear children we are going to use a filter paper we are going to filter it but I have to do it very carefully now I have to hold it very carefully hold the flask which is actually very hot because the water has just boiled and I would like you to see what the color of the liquid that comes out is this is the important thing so now we are filtering, we are just giving a little swirl around, You see a lot of white smoke and we are seeing what color the solution comes out and there you see, dear children, a beautiful blue color, a beautiful blue color, that's all.

We need we have enough for the experiment now that beautiful blue color dear children is due to copper sulfate we have made blue vitriol here which is what we expected however there is a surprise dear children there is a surprise because what is it? that Black Stu that you see on the filter paper there is a black residue now what I'm going to do is remove the filter paper and place it in this beaker here I think now we can pretty much tell you what we're going to do First of all, add more water to dilute it.

By the way, we're just diluting this now and we're going to put this here. Thank you very much Andress. Now we'll look at that filter paper in a minute. so let him continue and you will see this beautiful blue kids there is a test that we do for copper compounds and that is to add an ammonia solution and if this really is copper let me add a little more water let's dilute it because I want the color is really faint because what you are going to see will be quite surprising and verybeautiful, as it had a strong ammonia solution.

Look closely at the color and you will see the appearance of an intense deep blue. color, you see, oh, it's gone, that's strange, that's very strange, let's keep thinking that I had seen it, but obviously I hadn't, so I'm sorry, let's try a little more and then look, I'm sure now it's blue. So let's give it a little twist and there you will see. Well I thought I had seen it but you know what I have I have a deep blue color now dear children this is the special test that we do for copper compounds and the blue color that we have there It is called complex copper tetramine, it is incredibly sensitive to even the smallest amounts of copper and we managed to demonstrate it extremely efficiently in this excellent demonstration that Andrés, by the way, did it all by himself, you realize Andrés, thank you very much dear children, although this is This is the part that is really strange.

I tell you what, let me take off my gloves. Let me take off my gloves because I don't need them for this. I wanted to show you what is left inside, dear children, inside there is a black man. The solid there is still not completely, you know, there's still a little bit of filtering, but you can see on the side, so what is that black solid? That's very complicated and I have to tell you that chemistry teachers and chemists have long been intrigued to know what copper sulfide is, it's a very unusual substance and it's a product Pro um certainly unexpected here and it just serves to show you how when we do chemical experiments very often there are substances or reactions that are not so obvious, immediately obvious and copper sulfide is certainly not one of them and when I read I found out that there are many copper sulfides C and cu2s are just two of them them, but there are many others and they form depending on the temperature. and the concentration and everything else, no, we finished this topic, although very successfully, and we have shown you not only the sulfur dioxide, but also what happened to the copper.

Now we are moving forward a little. a little bit more could we give us the next slide please, which should be a periodic table? Thank you very much, dear children, it is not possible to give a talk about sulfur, the most extraordinary substance known to humanity, without showing it as an element. Now, this is a periodic table. of the elements, I know some of you know it by heart because I have seen it before, but if you look at sulfur, it is element number 16, it is in the upper right corner and it has a symbol S as you see there S. represents sulfur , so that's the symbol there and I just wanted to tell you that sulfur is incredibly reactive.

I think I've demonstrated it, but one substance I haven't talked about today is another type of bond. Sulfur can form four hooks. two hooks minus two oxidation states plus 4 + 6 and min-2 zero in the oxidation in the element, but I have a very interesting substance here that I wanted to talk to you about and it is sodium thiosulfate solution. Sodium thiosulfate contains the s232 ion. less sulfur is on a periodic table that will stay there until the end, it is very reactive and here I have a solution of sodium thiosulfate that has the s232 ion less, which is quite unusual and if I now add some hydrochloric acid to it, I will show you a very common effect, so I'm going to add hydrochloric acid here in a few doses and I'm going to hold it up for everyone to see and I'm going to turn it around now this reaction is going to take.

I don't know how long, but you can see it's already happening this look, can you see it's getting cloudy, going to cloud and cloudier and cloudier what color is that yellow boy is yellow now if someone said blue you are and you are You have I have a surprise for you. I have a surprise for you because it was a very good answer, but the moment we could see it, I think we will all agree that it is yellow. And what substance is there? That's yellow sulfur. done oh I'm very happy that someone has learned something so that's through the main not if everyone remembers after this talk the word sulfa would be absolutely amazing so sulfur there it is and dear children in This reaction we have sulfur that is produced inside. the solution can no longer be seen through it and this issue, this specific reaction was the focus of one of the most interesting experiments that used to be demonstrated by Professor John Tindle at the Royal Institution precisely in this room, back in the decade 1860, this was 150 160 years ago Jacob and Andes will now prepare and demonstrate this experiment for you and dear Andes, are you ready to take charge?

Well thank you very much. Andress will now explain to you what is happening in this reaction here that has been demonstrated especially by Professor John Tindle about 160 years ago in this room, so let's do the U Tindle effect, what that is, is what Andrew was doing here, but on a very slow scale, at a slow, slow pace, we're going to make colloidal sulfur, which is very, very small particles of sulfur and for this to work, I just need to add a little bit of dilute to the thiosulfate solution very diluted to make those very small sulfur particles.

Let's note in a few moments, hopefully, if we can turn off the lights please, the beam should be clearly visible and we should also expect to see a color change because those little sulfur particles scatter the light, especially the blue part of the light white. add a little more acid not yet, is that a beam of white light you are shining? Yes, it's a torch in the corner. Well, the interesting thing is that we can see that the color actually appears to be blue, right? is the color that appears to be blue and it is the same reaction that I demonstrated in this flask here, but if it is done to take a little bit longer, it is to allow the little sulfur particles to grow very, very slowly and as they do , they interact with The beam of light and the tiny sulfur particles are called colloidal sulfur and they are too small to be seen with the naked eye and that's why you can't see them, but the light is definitely starting to show and you can see the glowing effect now.

Appearing, can I hand it to you again? Andes is telling everyone what happened right now, so now if I don't know if you can see it, it's getting bluer and bluer and you can also see more clearly the ray of light that's spreading out. because of the little tin sulfur particles that increase in quantity and also in size at the same time, so hopefully you'll see that you can see a blue light, a bluish light and that's why the sky is blue, we call it Riley. scattering, so those particles are about 400 nanometers in size, which is the length of blue light in the color spectrum, but what's exciting to me, about Andress, is the fact that it comes out yellow on the other extreme.

I find it absolutely amazing. If I turn this around, you will see that the transmitted light, which is the light that passes through, turns orange-red and this again explains why sunrises and sunsets are orange-yellow, absolutely amazing, so once more, dear children, the use of sulfur to demonstrate something that happens. in our atmosphere, which is the scattering of Light by small dust particles and ice particles high in the atmosphere, that's why we see a blue sky, eh, Andes, thank you a million for a splendid demonstration, thank you very much, In fact, dear children, we are now moving.

Now we come back to the sulfides and can we have the thing, dear children, metal sulfides, metal sulfides, if you know which one this was, I that was the second one, metal sulfides are almost all insoluble in water and I just this, this experiment takes literally 30 seconds, but it allows us to prepare for our next experiment, which we are now nearing the end, in this bottle, dear children, I have a solution of sodium sulfide which is a soluble sulfide and what am I going to do? I'm going to pour it into in turn this is copper sulfate this is tin this is a copper compound it doesn't matter if it is sulfate copper tin lead and antimony and look at the beautiful colors of the insoluble sulfites as they are formed, so we pour this in and watch the color change.

Sorry, I'm going to pour it another way so you can see a little bit of leftover blue and there you see, it turns black if we pour a little tin now. Look at the beautiful color that is produced and there it is, it is a beautiful orange color. Now look at lead, so this is copper sulfide, tin sulfide, here we have mercury sulfide or lead sulfide, yes, I think it is lead sulfide and finally we have antimony, a substance that We don't learn much about this in schools , but let's take a look and see what this antimony is known for.

Well, there it is, it turned orange. In fact, it is soluble but has a beautiful orange color. Those are just a few examples I could show. many more, but now we move on to the penultimate experiment, dear children, which refers to a very, very dramatic experiment and this involves the reaction between a metal and sulfur and the truth is that metals react very, very violently with sulfur and what we are going to do in this experiment, now we are going to react zinc with sulfur, that will produce zinc sulfide, everyone will know it and here I have a mixture of zinc and sulfur, but in this particular experiment I have mixed them. together in such a way that they do much more than simply react together.

Thank you very much and if we have it, we will be able to give it to you, dear children. I have to warn you that this is a very violent experiment. Can you see how? little dust there is, it is a dust that is a mixture of 12 G of zinc with 2 G of sulfur when they react together it is going to be quite an event and that is why we have to protect them all with this special cage that Andress is going to put. on top and now we are going to put some potassium permanganate, which is slow, which will give me results.

Actually, I don't need these glasses for all this. I'll tell you why, because I'm not going to be around this experiment when it's happening, you're going to be closer than I am, so there we are. I'm just making sure to do this very carefully, by the way. I must appreciate that we have to be very careful with these experiments and the cage, which is a specially designed cage that I have built for this experiment, will be placed very carefully over this mixture once I have used my delayed action wick. I am using a mixture of potassium permanganate and glycerin which is well known to produce a fire spontaneously with a delayed action.

I'm going to sprinkle a few drops of water on it first, so here we go, is there water on hand if not? It doesn't need water, but it just speeds it up a little bit, so there's my glycerol and just a few drops of water and then we're going to ask for the lights to be turned off, so please put the lid on now, sir. very carefully and watch the reaction, now turn off the lights, thank you very much, in fact, look at this kids, and what you see is the magnificent reaction between zinc and sulfur to produce zinc sulfide and a large amount of carbon dioxide. sulfur, so let's ask.

That, dear children, I hope I have thanked you very much. I hope I have given you. I hope I have given you. I hope I have given you enough evidence and demonstrations today for you to agree with me that sulfur is indeed quite an extraordinary substance. Now it's so extraordinary that one of my very good friends, Jed Mahovsky, was so impressed when I told him about these Expos and said, Can I write you a poem? Can I write a poem for the children? And he in fact he has done it. I wrote a poem for all of you.

He has written a poem called OD to sulfa and I'm going to ask Stepen to read this poem to you now because it will summarize what we all think about sulfur because of sulfur by Jed from mahovsky in foul. four fathoms deep in years long ago the Alchemists were working where our darkest Secrets flow from hydrothermal vents they drew their Inspirations fire to make their dark discoveries bring light to man's desire for science it is an art of experiments and tests of total dedication of intelligence and while we take for granted the things we have today, it is science that asks questions to illuminate and lead the way, now let us shine its light on an element of fire, sulfur burning sulfur, raised from the mire of centuries of ignorance of the elementary need, now it is us. we have the answers, now we can manage to give explanations about how things work and our attention is focused on sulfur and many brilliant facts, it is now well known that sulfur generates profits and great wealth, it contributes to economies, to our joys and to our health. but how did all this happen?

What should we learn? Each generation must study in turn. The sulfur Its atoms are of subtle depth. Its molecules are like dots that join other things and create a world of riches, not just riches that we can see. but those of thought and wonder, from the way we know volcanoes work to lightning and thunder, recede and light the fuse now burning in your mind, urging you to discover more and value what you find through the senses and observation, we examine what we see and Humanity has done just that throughout history, the Egyptians also used their sulfur to bleach the paper of fabrics and when we write our stories, we write about what they knew, the Greeks made disinfectants with sulfur and staged their tragedies as burning flamesthat reach our time. the chinese used it cany for good and bad things from fireworks nice for parties to explosives very sad in many bad times the doctors recommended it for worms and people thought they tried it but they regretted it it burns now in our more recent times sulfur It touches everything in our days, from rubber tires to batteries, it reacts in a useful way, fertilizers, pesticides in oils and fabrics, sulfur also binds with many things and the burns are a bright blue, its melting point is quite low, 5 degrees and when its form is acidic, it sustains entire industries we know it is. essential to make plants and food to grow purifies oil to make traffic flow Even in our bodies it feeds our DNA and when it is missing in our hair its thickness decreases found in fish, beans and nuts in vegetables, sulfur is a element that sustains our life on earth now, let's go Return to Dr.

Andrew and his science and his knowledge. Don't you feel inspired to go straight to college to learn about the sulfur chemistry we love? Yes, let's all go back to school, my friends, and study it some more. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, can I ask the author? Jed mahovsky, the author, please introduce yourself. Jed, can you introduce yourself? Just talk about this. It's Jed, the author of the poem, so Jed, thanks a million again. Thank you very much for having been studying. Thank you. In fact, dear ladies and gentlemen, we are now moving forward as you heard in the poem, uh, the expression illuminates Theus, so that is exactly what we are going to do, dear children, just a couple of points, I forgot to mention one thing that the poem mentioned and that rubber is used in vulcanization, vulcanization consists of adding small amounts of sulfur to rubber to make it much more rigid.

I don't have hoses in cars and so on, in fact the world would be very different. Vulcanization was invented by Charles Goodier in 1840, one of the most important uses of sulfur today, sulfur in gunpowder, that's the final experiment, dear children, sulfur you see here. Know which ones you can, everyone can say it, but these are the three ingredients of gunpowder that the Chinese knew more than a thousand years ago, sulfur charcoal and potassium nitrate, now they are used in explosives and fireworks and especially for the end of today. I have made four small firecrackers like this and we are going to shoot them all simultaneously, the four of us will light one firecracker each.

Now at this stage they make very loud explosions, dear children, so this will be the last experiment and if we are still standing and sitting, then we will have considered this a success, so you are the ones who wait, if you don't want to listen the bangs, children have to cover their ears with their hands in this way and if adults want. do it too, please feel free, we have hearing defenders, we have hearing defenders and we have, um, let's, we have to, in fact, I'm going to put mine last because I have to know what to tell everyone, like this So let's let me tell you what's going to happen.

These are the Mark for Banger cages. This is the third in my evolution of these cages and I have made these little firecrackers from two sheets of A4 paper wrapped in wrapped paper. As you can see, yellow means coal, black for coal, and yellow for sulfur. You see, this is color coded so you know what's inside is not that amazing and there's a little fuse, so we put them in here, what we're going to do. What we need to do is have a little bit of fuse sticking out like this, you see, then we're going to splint each one, we're going to light the fuse and then we're going to stand in a staggered manner because the sparks are going to fly. and you will also notice these ages by the way they are very safe, they are made of steel and they will protect us, obviously, but some sparks may fly, so let's rehearse where we are going to stand.

If I stay here, Jacob is there, Andre is there and um, so we're staggered so your sparks don't because you see the sparks could fly out and hit people so I'm going to stay here so we all have Jacob a little, perhaps. later on they shouldn't fly that far anyway right we're already spinning around let me put on my hearing protectors now I'm so sorry I just have to put these on now um right there we are so everyone take a light now so everyone has to take a light this requires quite a bit of skill as everyone can see and we have to keep the light on at the same time we have to put the ok let's keep the light on by holding it lightly like this very nice is that everyone still has a flame how we all have a flame and we are Ready, everyone is fine, are we ready? okay 3 2 1 on so everything is success ladies and gentlemen and thank you very much, thank you very much really thank you, let's get in line Let's take a bow, thank you very much, in fact, come on, we have Steven in front, Jed, Jed, please , Steven, everyone in attendance, thank you very, very much, thank you very much, in fact, everyone, thank you for your kind help. arc one 2 three arc thank you very much we really wish you all the best thank you very much thank you very much Long live Sala very good to all thank you very much I give you br