In this video we see evidence of non-existence of the element boron. At the end of the 11-minute presentation for the separation of elements is shown black powder. This powder is a kind of carbonate produced as a kind of lime scale. When you put the gas burner flame it emits yellow light mixed with light blue gas gives a faint greenish tinge. This color effect is interpreted by experts as the element boron.
Seeing your videos makes me very happy, there is not very much chemistry in the field of pharmacy and I was afraid I would not get to use laboratory methods again after completing my course work. Do you work in industry or the education sector?
"thats from the fragments of pot I used" lol. any way you could use Zn to reduce it? zinc oxide would be easier to vent out. if you could ignite it with minimal priming & sustain it with mainly Zn. could prove beneficial b/c of the eaze with which zn melts intimately together and make up for the lesser activity. try just force roast to completion and gass off waste :) & if low melting alloys work better try ZnNa to spice it up! didn't see other zn comment till now. hope not too redundant
@Damianingus Sure it does, but that wasn't what I was after here. There's better ways to make that particular compound. Plus what I made here probably wouldn't have been suitable for those kinds of experiments.
@Grawr93XD Heh I actually was building one, but neither myself nor my dad are good at carpentry at all so it turned into a pretty big disaster. I'm rethinking it and will try again in the future. I'd love to have one for sure!
@mrhomescientist ah thats great! i wish i can become smart in chemistry like you. I need a good grade in my professors class cuz pharmacy, majority is chemistry.. UGH!
would aluminum or zinc powder work instead of the magnesium powder, and would potassium chlorate/sugar work to light it instead of the potassium permanganate/glycerin?
@UNITA4 I mention why Al isn't a good idea in the video. Zinc may work, but I don't know how it reacts with boron. I doubt copper would work. The advantage of Mg is that everything except the boron dissolves so it's easy separation. Pick your favorite thermite ignition method and it will work here - glycerin, chlorate, sparkler, whatever's convenient.
I used a large metal spoon to heat the boric acid and was quite surprised that it didn't really stick that much to the spoon. I took an iron wire and poked it into the sticky mass and started spinning thick threads that I then dunked in water to cool off. This helped with the crushing step, that didn't take much effort at all.
@mrhomescientist *correction* This worked with my old setup, but I discovered today that when I scale this up it doesn't work nearly as well. My old setup was an alcohol burner that easily reaches 800C and melts the boron oxide into a fluid liquid. Spinning threads was easy, but I tried it out today with 5x as much boric acid and heated it with my electric stove and the results were not nearly as good. You really need to heat this up to a very high temperature to get good results [continued...]
@mrhomescientist ... If it's of any consolation, I tried to make a tough ceramic material by mixing molten B2O3 with CaCO3 and ironically, I got a crumbly solid that was easy to break up. I tried this only yesterday so I don't know if this effect can be duplicated. CaCO3 would work well because it dissolves in HCl and it does not participate in the thermite reaction. Baking soda may also be used, and it might work even better. I didn't make elemental boron yet :\, I first have to make the oxide.
@yellowmetalcyborg Cool, thanks for the insight! That's a really interesting idea to mix it with CaCO3 - you're correct that it would dissolve in the acid and shouldn't do anything in the thermite. I'd be somewhat worried that, if it's acting as an inert filler, it would be harder to initiate and sustain the reaction because it would be acting like a heat sink. Would definitely be interesting to try. Good luck on the rest of the way to boron!
These videos are great! I subscribed and enjoy watching them :) one tip would be to move things from the background that the camera is focusing on instead of seeing the reaction clearly. Great job, keep up the good work and cool expertiments!
@Dalton1357911 Yeah sometimes it can be tricky to get this camera to focus on the right stuff. This was my favorite experiment that I've made a video of so far. Thanks a lot for the support!
@neddy17 I just used a mortar and pestile with my hand covering most of the top, but man was that difficult. A ball mill would be good if you have it, or smashing it between two metal cups (I have small stainless steel condiment cups). Either way, don't try to grind it all at once. Take it a bit at a time or it'll take even longer. Good luck!
@mrhomescientist yeah i ended up putting it between pieces of aluminum from a coke can and hammering it, it worked pretty well, i got about 3 grams of boron from 10 of B2O3
@toothpick93 Yeah that would definitely have been better for the first step heating the boric acid. Teflon doesn't stand up well to extreme heat, so it probably wouldn't have worked for the thermite step. It would be nice to have some teflon gear for sure!
@mrhomescientist yeah im sure you can buy some cheap teflon, yeah, but i think id prefer somthing other then sand for the thermite... thats if i want top quality Boron
to avoid impurity's from the terracotta flower pot, you should try using a dead light bulb (with all of the contents removed) as a cheap disposable round bottom flask. Since the light bulb is made with thin glass it probably won't crack with heat,but i would still be careful because this isn't the use that it was intended for.
@hkparker Nice! Glad you got a chance to try it out, how did your finished product look? Are you going to post a video?
A ball mill would be nice for sure. Pretty crazy isn't it? Something I noticed about B2O3 is it very slowly absorbs moisture and turns back into boric acid. So the bits I couldn't get off my dish eventually powdered up and i could brush it off easily!
I actually didn't see much green in mine, I think it was overwhelmed by the bright magnesium. I'm definitely trying this again.
@TheChemlife Well if you're patient enough you could get Mg powder by filing or sanding a magnesium fire starter block. I've gotten manganese out of regular thermites with aluminum, just break up the cake of products and usually you find nice spheres of Mn. Somewhat more work, but a simpler process.
THATS COOL........... BUT I CANT GET MAGNESIUM POWDER OR ANY POWDERED METAL IS THERE ANY OTHER PROCESS TO ISOLATE BORON ELEMENT WITHOUT USING THERMITE PROCESSES.
@Kendrana Borax is normally used in the laundry. so it could be easy to find where abouts it is, but then again i wouldnt know if they sell it in spain, but they should do
Great Video man, is there a way to polish the elemental boron up to show more of the silver look? and i brought some Boron firtilizer a while back thinking it was used in pyrotechnics but its not, how can i turn that boron into elemental? its like a white-ish solid
@toothpick93 Thanks for the comment. The boron I recovered is a pretty fine powder, and the larger pieces are very crumbly so there's really no way to pretty it up. As for your fertilizer, it depends on what's in it. From what I've read it can contain a number of different things. Check the ingredient list to see what you've got, and see if that matches up with any of the reagents I talked about.
Very well done, I dont think this has been done in one video on youtube before. Anyway I would add sodium carbonate to the filtrate for neutralization, it can be bad to let strong alkalies dissociate slowly over glass, and the bubbling would give you an indication of when your done. Anyway cool stuff! I might give this one a try as well.
@hkparker Hey thanks man, I was really excited when I found the method and it was really great to see it work out so nicely. Your suggestion does make more sense, I just have a bunch of KOH so I tend to use it for all my base needs. Though now that I think of it, I've also got a ton of baking soda, and you're right the bubbling would be a nice plus.
@hkparker Nice, sounds great. BBr3 is another one I hadn't heard of, that will be cool to see. Wikipedia gives it a 3 on the health warning, so definitely be careful with that one.
@mrhomescientist Yea I will be sure to. Its something I've seen in the organics section on SM so I though it would be cool to synth, I'm not sure of any specific uses.
@mrhomescientist Yea I will be sure to. Its something I've seen in the organics section on SM so I though it would be cool to show the synth of, I'm not sure of any specific uses.
dude thats awsome...... i saw 30 grams of boron for $50, it dends to be very expensive
pyrotechnics100 1 week ago
HCl reacts with aluminium oxide to form aluminium chloride. Al2Cl3 is soluble in water. so isn't it cheap to use aluminium for thermite..??
pilotasdfghjkl 2 weeks ago in playlist Liked videos
In this video we see evidence of non-existence of the element boron. At the end of the 11-minute presentation for the separation of elements is shown black powder. This powder is a kind of carbonate produced as a kind of lime scale. When you put the gas burner flame it emits yellow light mixed with light blue gas gives a faint greenish tinge. This color effect is interpreted by experts as the element boron.
Bogoizbrania 3 weeks ago
COuld you have used stainless steel instead of ceramic?
wb5rue 1 month ago in playlist More videos from mrhomescientist
Seeing your videos makes me very happy, there is not very much chemistry in the field of pharmacy and I was afraid I would not get to use laboratory methods again after completing my course work. Do you work in industry or the education sector?
dom214 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
"thats from the fragments of pot I used" lol. any way you could use Zn to reduce it? zinc oxide would be easier to vent out. if you could ignite it with minimal priming & sustain it with mainly Zn. could prove beneficial b/c of the eaze with which zn melts intimately together and make up for the lesser activity. try just force roast to completion and gass off waste :) & if low melting alloys work better try ZnNa to spice it up! didn't see other zn comment till now. hope not too redundant
demnlordd666 1 month ago
Comment removed
demnlordd666 1 month ago
this video is so borane
billymayer1000 1 month ago
"fragments of the, Uh... POT, that I used from the last step." I lol'd
CrazyMonkey124 2 months ago
magnesium boride shouldn't have interesting electrical properties to play with?
Damianingus 2 months ago
@Damianingus Sure it does, but that wasn't what I was after here. There's better ways to make that particular compound. Plus what I made here probably wouldn't have been suitable for those kinds of experiments.
mrhomescientist 2 months ago
you should get a fume hood or make one :D!
Grawr93XD 2 months ago
@Grawr93XD Heh I actually was building one, but neither myself nor my dad are good at carpentry at all so it turned into a pretty big disaster. I'm rethinking it and will try again in the future. I'd love to have one for sure!
mrhomescientist 2 months ago
@mrhomescientist ah thats great! i wish i can become smart in chemistry like you. I need a good grade in my professors class cuz pharmacy, majority is chemistry.. UGH!
Grawr93XD 2 months ago
or copper powder?
UNITA4 2 months ago
would aluminum or zinc powder work instead of the magnesium powder, and would potassium chlorate/sugar work to light it instead of the potassium permanganate/glycerin?
UNITA4 2 months ago
@UNITA4 I mention why Al isn't a good idea in the video. Zinc may work, but I don't know how it reacts with boron. I doubt copper would work. The advantage of Mg is that everything except the boron dissolves so it's easy separation. Pick your favorite thermite ignition method and it will work here - glycerin, chlorate, sparkler, whatever's convenient.
mrhomescientist 2 months ago
I used a large metal spoon to heat the boric acid and was quite surprised that it didn't really stick that much to the spoon. I took an iron wire and poked it into the sticky mass and started spinning thick threads that I then dunked in water to cool off. This helped with the crushing step, that didn't take much effort at all.
yellowmetalcyborg 3 months ago
@yellowmetalcyborg Good idea! I'll have to try that if I ever do this one again. Did you end up at elemental boron?
mrhomescientist 3 months ago
@mrhomescientist *correction* This worked with my old setup, but I discovered today that when I scale this up it doesn't work nearly as well. My old setup was an alcohol burner that easily reaches 800C and melts the boron oxide into a fluid liquid. Spinning threads was easy, but I tried it out today with 5x as much boric acid and heated it with my electric stove and the results were not nearly as good. You really need to heat this up to a very high temperature to get good results [continued...]
yellowmetalcyborg 3 months ago
@mrhomescientist ... If it's of any consolation, I tried to make a tough ceramic material by mixing molten B2O3 with CaCO3 and ironically, I got a crumbly solid that was easy to break up. I tried this only yesterday so I don't know if this effect can be duplicated. CaCO3 would work well because it dissolves in HCl and it does not participate in the thermite reaction. Baking soda may also be used, and it might work even better. I didn't make elemental boron yet :\, I first have to make the oxide.
yellowmetalcyborg 3 months ago
@yellowmetalcyborg Cool, thanks for the insight! That's a really interesting idea to mix it with CaCO3 - you're correct that it would dissolve in the acid and shouldn't do anything in the thermite. I'd be somewhat worried that, if it's acting as an inert filler, it would be harder to initiate and sustain the reaction because it would be acting like a heat sink. Would definitely be interesting to try. Good luck on the rest of the way to boron!
mrhomescientist 3 months ago
does anyone know someway to test something for boron?
HUsoldier171 4 months ago
These videos are great! I subscribed and enjoy watching them :) one tip would be to move things from the background that the camera is focusing on instead of seeing the reaction clearly. Great job, keep up the good work and cool expertiments!
Dalton1357911 5 months ago in playlist Videos from mrhomescientist
@Dalton1357911 Yeah sometimes it can be tricky to get this camera to focus on the right stuff. This was my favorite experiment that I've made a video of so far. Thanks a lot for the support!
mrhomescientist 5 months ago
I think the discoloration came from the molten boric acid "eating" bits of your scoop, or from the black on the flower pot.
peonatre 5 months ago in playlist More videos from mrhomescientist
you may have a very small amount silicon as a side product because of the sand??
Fe0n 5 months ago
Comment removed
melliott3707 10 months ago
@melliott3707
Why did you bother watching it then?
98JMA 8 months ago
i'm halfway through this, any suggestions on how to grind the B2O3 without it just flying everywhere?
neddy17 10 months ago
@neddy17 I just used a mortar and pestile with my hand covering most of the top, but man was that difficult. A ball mill would be good if you have it, or smashing it between two metal cups (I have small stainless steel condiment cups). Either way, don't try to grind it all at once. Take it a bit at a time or it'll take even longer. Good luck!
mrhomescientist 10 months ago
@mrhomescientist yeah i ended up putting it between pieces of aluminum from a coke can and hammering it, it worked pretty well, i got about 3 grams of boron from 10 of B2O3
neddy17 10 months ago
Good job on all your videos I hope to see more videos in the future I can't wait to see what your gonna do next
GCeballos131 10 months ago
@GCeballos131 Thanks for the encouragement! I really appreciate everyone's support :)
mrhomescientist 10 months ago
hey instead of the ceramic bowl, why dont you have a teflon coated pot, would that work?
toothpick93 10 months ago
@toothpick93 Yeah that would definitely have been better for the first step heating the boric acid. Teflon doesn't stand up well to extreme heat, so it probably wouldn't have worked for the thermite step. It would be nice to have some teflon gear for sure!
mrhomescientist 10 months ago
@mrhomescientist yeah im sure you can buy some cheap teflon, yeah, but i think id prefer somthing other then sand for the thermite... thats if i want top quality Boron
toothpick93 10 months ago
thank you!!! this video is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!
elementguy27 11 months ago
to avoid impurity's from the terracotta flower pot, you should try using a dead light bulb (with all of the contents removed) as a cheap disposable round bottom flask. Since the light bulb is made with thin glass it probably won't crack with heat,but i would still be careful because this isn't the use that it was intended for.
NagaJolokiafied 1 year ago
Well I finished with Boron today. Everything went well except ill; try to be more stoichiometric with the thermite next time.
Anyway you wernt kidding when you said B2O3 was hard to grind... wow. I think its time I put my old ball mill back together.
Also, doesnt the thermite have such a pretty green to it? yay for boron's flame color....
hkparker 1 year ago
@hkparker Nice! Glad you got a chance to try it out, how did your finished product look? Are you going to post a video?
A ball mill would be nice for sure. Pretty crazy isn't it? Something I noticed about B2O3 is it very slowly absorbs moisture and turns back into boric acid. So the bits I couldn't get off my dish eventually powdered up and i could brush it off easily!
I actually didn't see much green in mine, I think it was overwhelmed by the bright magnesium. I'm definitely trying this again.
mrhomescientist 1 year ago
@mrhomescientist Its still in some HCl, ill filter it tomorrow and take a look at my product.
I might make a video on it, my process was the same as your except I started with borax and mad to make my boric acid.
Good to know about getting rid of the B2O3, ill let my pan sit on some water.
I'll be trying it again soon too!
hkparker 1 year ago
useful but magnesium powder is rather hard t get. i used this same process for manganese.
TheChemlife 1 year ago
@TheChemlife Well if you're patient enough you could get Mg powder by filing or sanding a magnesium fire starter block. I've gotten manganese out of regular thermites with aluminum, just break up the cake of products and usually you find nice spheres of Mn. Somewhat more work, but a simpler process.
mrhomescientist 1 year ago
THATS COOL........... BUT I CANT GET MAGNESIUM POWDER OR ANY POWDERED METAL IS THERE ANY OTHER PROCESS TO ISOLATE BORON ELEMENT WITHOUT USING THERMITE PROCESSES.
asmathyder 1 year ago 2
This is actually a really nice experiment, too bad I havn't seen borax or boric acid here in Spain.
Kendrana 1 year ago
@Kendrana Borax is normally used in the laundry. so it could be easy to find where abouts it is, but then again i wouldnt know if they sell it in spain, but they should do
toothpick93 1 year ago
great video.
plante1999 1 year ago
Great Video man, is there a way to polish the elemental boron up to show more of the silver look? and i brought some Boron firtilizer a while back thinking it was used in pyrotechnics but its not, how can i turn that boron into elemental? its like a white-ish solid
toothpick93 1 year ago
@toothpick93 Thanks for the comment. The boron I recovered is a pretty fine powder, and the larger pieces are very crumbly so there's really no way to pretty it up. As for your fertilizer, it depends on what's in it. From what I've read it can contain a number of different things. Check the ingredient list to see what you've got, and see if that matches up with any of the reagents I talked about.
mrhomescientist 1 year ago
Very well done, I dont think this has been done in one video on youtube before. Anyway I would add sodium carbonate to the filtrate for neutralization, it can be bad to let strong alkalies dissociate slowly over glass, and the bubbling would give you an indication of when your done. Anyway cool stuff! I might give this one a try as well.
hkparker 1 year ago
@hkparker Hey thanks man, I was really excited when I found the method and it was really great to see it work out so nicely. Your suggestion does make more sense, I just have a bunch of KOH so I tend to use it for all my base needs. Though now that I think of it, I've also got a ton of baking soda, and you're right the bubbling would be a nice plus.
mrhomescientist 1 year ago
@mrhomescientist Cool. I might be doing a video on BBr3 so if I do it ill be making boron and doing a link to this video
hkparker 1 year ago
@hkparker Nice, sounds great. BBr3 is another one I hadn't heard of, that will be cool to see. Wikipedia gives it a 3 on the health warning, so definitely be careful with that one.
mrhomescientist 1 year ago
@mrhomescientist Yea I will be sure to. Its something I've seen in the organics section on SM so I though it would be cool to synth, I'm not sure of any specific uses.
hkparker 1 year ago
@mrhomescientist Yea I will be sure to. Its something I've seen in the organics section on SM so I though it would be cool to show the synth of, I'm not sure of any specific uses.
hkparker 1 year ago
Fantastic video and discription.
coolliger 1 year ago