A Colorful Magic Trick with Acids and Bases

Let me show you a

magic

trick

. It may look like a normal teapot, but it is a

magic

teapot and it is magical because it will pour any color you ask it to. Oh, you don't believe me. Look at this. Pink. Hey, it's not so good. Blue. Red. Okay, how about green? No, no, I mean yellow and, well, and then green, so there we go, a rainbow of colors. I bet you're wondering how I did it. It's not magic, but it is a very interesting science. My name is Tyler and I. I'm a student at MIT and I'm going to teach you the science behind this magic

trick

and show you how you can do it yourself at home, but first we have to go to the lab and learn a little. about some chemicals called

acids

and some chemicals called

bases

, so let's look at them.

Welcome to my lab, this is where I have all my chemicals that I use for these side experiments that I do every day and I also brought some of these chemicals here. From home I also have a bunch of beakers here and I filled them with a liquid called an indicator. You can see that indicator, this indicator that I'm using has a kind of purplish blue color and that will be an important indicator that tells us if a chemical is acidic, base or neutral, let me show you what I mean. I'm going to take a chemical here and add little drops to the indicator.

I want you to look carefully at the color change because it's really cool, it looks so cool, so chemical. I'm going to shake this indicator as I drop it. See, these drops turn a very light purple color and form little pinkish bits when I drop them and there's some pink and some more pink and it gets pinker and pinker. the more I add and now it gets darker and darker and finally I get a very deep bright red it's not that good so if we can add a chemical to this indicator and it makes it redder and redder and redder it starts with purple and keep going. to pink and it turns red we call it an acid so this chemical here is an acid let's take a look at another example here is a new beaker with indicator and again you can see it starts off a very light violet blue color now I'm going to take this other one chemical and I will add it to the indicator.

Let's see what happens now. So few drops as I shake and you can see little green bits on the gauge as I start to drop this in and now. We go to a very beautiful blue color, a very bright blue and then it becomes a kind of aquamarine. Here it's getting greener and now the indicator turns green and I'll show you what happens if we add even more, so watch what happens. this gets more and more yellow until we have a yellow solution and its really bright cold yellow color, so if we can add a chemical to an indicator and it turns it darker blue or that brighter blue, that really nice blue and then greener and finally yellow if it can produce any of those colors when we add it to the indicator we call it base so

acids

turn it red then pink then red and

bases

make it blue then green then yellow if we add many of them, okay, let's see.

In another example, I have a third chemical here. I'm going to add a little. Let's see what we get by dropping it here in many drops and I don't really see any change. The color remains the same. As you will see. I can add as much of this as I want and the colors will still be this purplish blue, that's because this compound, this chemical, we call it neutral, it's not an acid or a base, so it doesn't change the color of the indicator that we use. . We can add as much as we want and the indicator will just stay the same color, so those are our three categories of acidic and base chemicals and then those that are neutral, you can tell if something is acidic, basic or neutral by the color Now it makes an indicator.

These color changes are really cool. The indicators are very fun. You may think that this indicator is some fancy chemical that I only have in the lab, but I actually made this indicator in my kitchen at home and you can do it. Do the same, we're going to need some indicator for the magic trick we're discovering and I'm going to show you how to make this type of indicator in your kitchen, so let's take a look at it, okay? So here we are in my kitchen and I want to show you how to make this acid-base indicator that we've been using so you can do these color changes yourself so you can do the magic trick, so I'll say it's pretty.

Easy, but you'll need to boil some water and use a stove, so make sure you have an adult nearby to help you with that step. Here are the things you will need. First of all, you will need a red. cabbage you should be able to find something like this in any supermarket and then you'll need a pot to boil some water and then you'll need a strainer and that's it it's pretty simple so what you want to do is you want to take the pot and you want to fill it half full with water and then you want to take the cabbage and start removing parts of the leaves and put them in the pan and you want to fill it almost full. the cabbage is covered with water so this is a pretty good amount right here and then what you want to do is turn up the heat and bring the water to a boil, let it boil for four or five minutes and then turn off the heat. and let it sit for fifteen minutes, ten to fifteen minutes, and after you do that, what you will see is that the cabbage here will lose its color, it will turn almost white and you will end up with purple cabbage. cabbage juice, all that dye, all that purple dye that was in the cabbage leaves, it's going to come out into the water and then the last thing you want to do is take this and using a strainer, pour the juice off the top. in some kind of glass and now you have the cabbage juice indicator ready to go, so now let's go see what we can do with this indicator and then let's find out how we can do this magic trick.

Okay, now that you've done it. your cabbage juice, you're ready to start testing things around the house to see if they're acidic neutral or basic and see those cool color changes. I have some examples here of things you can try at home, but really anything that's a liquid or powder you should be able to try, just check with your parents first to make sure you're not using anything that's dangerous or toxic or whatever is fine, everything with them first, but let's do a quick example here. Let's say you want to try some glass cleaner here, you can spray just a little bit on the bottom of the glass and then add the indicator ooh and it turns kind of a bluish green, so we know it's a base. or let's say we wanted to try a little bit of hot sauce here, add a little bit of hot sauce, a couple drops in there and then all we have to do is add a little bit of the indicator when we get a nice red color. pinkish in color, so we know this is an acid, so now let's talk about the magic trick.

So how did I get it right? You may have been discovering parts. I took my teapot from here and I filled it with indicator and As you know, the indicator changes color depending on whether I add an acid or a base, so what I did was I took glasses like this and I added a little bit of acid or base to the bottom . I try to find clear liquids, there were acids and bases, so let's do an example here, let's say I wanted a red color, what I do is I take some vinegar and I would use vinegar because I know that vinegar is an acid so it will give me a red color and I'll add a little bit of this in the background here now if you're doing this magic trick you'll be able to see the clear liquid in the background but trust me no one else will see it especially if you make sure they stay a little bit away, especially if you're using a clear glass, a clear glass like this, they won't be able to see it if you have it on a table, so you say it's empty or you don't say anything and people will assume that you're empty and then go ahead and grab your teapot. or the gauge image and you pour it and you'll get a nice red or pink color, okay, so there's a wide range of colors you can get.

You can get reds and you can't get pinks, blues, purples and greens, and what I want you to do is experiment to find out which of these chemicals in your house give you these different colors and then put in a little bit of that chemical that gives it the color at the bottom and pour the indicator to get that color. Now you may find that different amounts of these chemicals give you different colors, so maybe a little glass cleaner will give you a bright blue, but a little more. Glass cleaner will give you a green color, so experiment with all of these things.

There is one thing I want to tell you, although you can get a very pretty yellow color using a little bleach, but bleach can be dangerous, so make sure you work. with an adult if you're going to do this but a few drops of bleach in the bottom of a glass like this adds an indicator and it turns green and then turns yellow and that's how I did that at first when it started green and then turned yellow, so I hope you enjoyed watching this video, we learned a little about acids and bases, we learned about indicators and we learned how to do this cool magic trick that you can now use to impress your friends and family