Flame Test- Potassium Chloride #2

This is the '08-'09 school year's flame test demonstration. It went better than last year's demonstration (I have 3 videos of those on YouTube), but not as good as my first year's still (I have 7 of those videos [e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJvS4uc4TbU]. The flame test is preformed by burning a metal salt using a flammable liquid. Each chemical (in this case metal ion) gives off a characteristic color (seen here as changes in colors of the flames) when the electrons fall back down from their excited state and emit light at certain wavelengths (colors). This year I decided to do something different and filmed each salt individually.
An alcohol is used to burn all of these salts, this one is potassium chloride (KCl) and has a very faint lilac (purple) flame usually washed out by the alcohol flame.

Category:

Science & Technology

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• sully
• russia
• chem
• chemistry
• lab
• demo
• demonstration
• sci
• science
• flame
• test
• flaming
• burning
• salt
• salts
• 0809
• alcohol
• color
• colored
• fire
• burn
• wavelength
• light
• excited
• electron
• electrons
• potassium
• chloride
• KCl
• faint
• purple
• lilac
• Cl

[lolzftw248]

dosent seem like the salt was burned, or the liquid you used may have to dominant of a yellow colour, try methanol if it is available to you :)

[mrericsully]

@lolzftw248 The salt is only burned a little in this demo. But any way you go the potassium flame is very faint, and most alcohols add some impurity to the flame color.

[333mariemonds]

movie sucks the coloer is blue