 I am going to turn it over to two of our in-car science wizards, Jeff and Cecile, and let them take it from here. Hey, everybody. My name is Cecile. And I'm so excited to share with you our movie called It's Just a Reaction. And in this movie, you will learn how to make elephant toothpaste. And you will also hear the sound of a farting bag. And you witness the eruption of a chemical volcano. My name is Jeff. All of the experiments we're going to do are about chemical reactions. Of the chemical reactions we show you today, you can do the farting bag at home. However, you'd have to be in a real lab environment to do the other experiments. So Cecile and I have our cool chemistry masks with us. So we're going to put them on and transport into the lab. Enjoy the show. Hey, everybody. My name is Cecile. And I work at NCAR in the climate science. And I'm also an NCAR wizard. Hi, everybody. I'm Jeff. I'm a chemist. And I work at NCAR in the chemistry lab. And I'm also an NCAR wizard. But as you can see today, we're here in my lab to do some chemical reactions for you. Yes. And these chemical reactions are coming from the NCAR wizard recipe book. And then you can see that today, because we are working together in a lab, we have to have masks. Yeah, if we didn't have the masks, we'd have to be six feet apart, which would make it kind of difficult. Oh, wow. It's very far away. But fortunately, I took my binocular. And I can still see you. Hey, Cecile. Oh, Jeff, you look so big. In this demonstration, we are going to do elephant toothpaste. Then you know our big elephant horn. And then when they brush their teeth, they need a lot of toothpaste. And you don't want to keep their teeth really clean, because you don't want them to run around with toothache or cavity. That's right. But do you know where elephants go to the dentist system? No, no, I didn't know where. They have to go all the way to Tuscaloosa. This is a good one. OK. OK, then if you look at our book here, this is a reaction where we are mixing hydrogen peroxide with soap, potassium iodide, and some food coloring to do the toothpaste. And we have already put in the bottom some hydrogen peroxide and some dish soap. The dish soap is just to make some form and also to keep the teeth of the elephant really clean. Then you see also here the reaction is releasing some heat. Then we should measure the temperature. Do you have a thermometer somewhere in your lab? I do, right here, actually, yes. So the temperature in the tube is now 69 degrees before the reaction. OK, OK, this is perfect. We are going to put some food coloring just for the effect. Right here. Oh, so I have red and blue stripes, just like real toothpaste. This is going to look really good. And now I'm going to put the potassium iodide slowly here. Oh, nice. Oh my gosh, look at this measure the temperature. Quick, 50, 150 degrees. This is really close. Oh, that's a good size brush. Yeah. Perfect. It's shining. It didn't really understand why we needed to put the potassium iodide. Yeah, so the reaction really just involves hydrogen peroxide decomposing. But we know a hydrogen peroxide is stable. It will stay in the bottle for a long time. So the potassium iodide is a catalyst. So it helps it to decompose. But it doesn't really get used up in the reaction. So it just keeps regenerating. Oh, very interesting. So it's a great reaction. Do you think the kids can try this at home now? Yeah, unfortunately not. Because the peroxide that I have used is very concentrated. And you cannot find this at the store. But indeed, I have another reaction that they can do at home. Great, let's see it. OK. I'm going to show you an experiment that you can easily do at home. That you just need baking soda and vinegar. Here I am taking apple cider vinegar because it has a color and I like it. But you can use any type of vinegar. And I'm taking a paper towel. And I'm going to put baking soda. 3 tablespoons too. Closing, I'm doing a little wrap here with the baking soda inside the paper towel. Then you see I have a little wrap here. Now I'm taking a zip lock bag. And then I'm going to put half a cup of vinegar. The baking soda. And I'm putting it in the bag. And I'm going to close very carefully the bag. But I'm holding the baking soda at the top. That it's not falling in the vinegar yet. And it's very important that you close very well the bag. It should be very well closed. And there is nothing that can get in or out. Okay? Okay, then my bag is really well closed. And now I'm dropping and I'm shaking. And then what you see, you have a lot of bubble coming and the bag is becoming bigger. And this is basically CO2 that's escaping. And you see the bag. There is a lot of pressure building inside the bag. Then you see you have the bag explode with the pressure of the CO2 inside. Then it's a fun experiment to do at home. Then I recommend that you do this in the garden because you can make a mess inside. I hope you enjoy it and thanks for watching. This reaction demonstrates a very exothermic decomposition reaction. We call it a volcano reaction. We start with a bright orange powder that looks like lava and we heat it. Once the reaction starts, it creates a second compound that looks like volcano ash. And it's really impressive. And this is the reaction that we're going to do. Oh yeah, I have it in my book that you can see this reaction only involves one chemical. It's not a reaction between two different chemicals like the elephant two spurs. If we can get a little bit of it hot enough, it will start to decompose and give off heat. And then it's enough to keep the reaction going on its own. The products of the reaction are chromium oxide, nitrogen gas and water. The chromium oxide has a dark green color. So dark it almost looks black unless we can get the camera in close. It's also a lot less dense than the dichromate. So there's a big increase in volume. So the volcano grows and really looks like it's erupting. Also, the nitrogen that's produced is a gas. So it helps with the effect of an eruption. But I have a question. I see here that the reaction produce H2O, it's water. What happened to the water? It doesn't seems wet at all. Well, it's pretty hot in there. So the water comes off as water vapor or steam. And that adds to the effect of the eruption. One really impressive thing about this reaction is the color scheme. We start with an orange powder and end up with very dark green flakes. Chromium is particularly versatile and its compounds can show up in many of the rainbow colors. For example, red, orange, yellow, green, violet. And I have a fun fact for you. The name Chromium is coming from ancient Greek. The word chroma means color in Greek. Isn't it interesting? Thanks for watching and we hope to see you in person next year. Let's turn the light. One, two, three. It was such a cool string of reactions and so much cool stuff all in one from elephants to farts to Greek and volcanoes. There was so much fun stuff in there. Thanks for sharing all of that, Jeff and Cecile. I think we have a couple of questions if you're ready. And if anybody else wants to, go ahead and share any other questions. The first question is, why was the elephant toothpaste so hot? Yeah, so that's what we call also an exothermic reaction. So when the hydrogen peroxide decomposes, it gives off heat because the products you make, water and oxygen are more stable than the hydrogen peroxide that you started with. So the difference comes out as heat that goes into the heating the bubbles. Yeah, you probably saw some steam as well coming out of the top. Yeah, absolutely. And Dan had said just that this was really cool and also made a joke about elephants getting cavities. Do elephants get cavities? But I have to think, well, no, that because of elephant toothpaste, right? Yeah, I would say that, I don't know, I'm not a dentist for elephant, but I think that we get cavities because of sugar. And I don't think elephants eat sugar. Then I think probably elephants don't get cavities. That is true. It's my guess. Good point. So here's a question from someone whose name is entered in a cumulus, which just obviously cumulus needs some of my cumulus cloud earrings that I'm sporting today. And cumulus wonders, can we do the volcano experiment at home? When to answer this, Jeff? Yeah, sure. Yeah, not the last one that we did, the dichromate volcano in the, that's pretty toxic stuff. We were doing it actually inside a fume hood and we were wearing face shields and glasses and goggles. And so you really have to get that stuff from a chemical supplier and be a trained professional to do the reaction as we are, obviously. You just have to become an MCAR scientist and get your own lab. That's all you have to do. And then you can do a volcano like that. Here's a good question. Jeremy's wondering, would I be able to extinguish the volcano with water? And also, why does it become green instead of a different color? Yeah, I don't think, I think you need a lot of water to put it out. It's pretty hot in there. I don't actually know the temperature. I couldn't get a thermometer in there to check it, but that is pretty hot, I would think. And the green is just the nature of the compound you get, the chromium and the oxidation state, if you know a little bit about chemistry. So it goes from being like a more oxidized, which is orange to a little less oxidized, which is the green color. And that's the color of the compound we make, the trioxide just happens to be green. And that's just to do with the energy of the compound or the energy levels inside it. Great, thank you. Dan is asking what we're probably all wondering, does the fart bag smell bad? Yeah, and it doesn't really smell bad. It's a reaction between vinegar and baking soda. And basically when the back farts, you smell a little bit of vinegar. Then it doesn't smell really bad. And I want to add something about this experiment because you should try this at home. You should ask your parents first, but you should really try this at home. But you should know that it doesn't work every time as well than to do the recording here. I did probably three movies and I took the one that worked the best. Sometimes the bag will become really big and it will take a long time to fart. It will take a long time. And also if you don't close the bag very carefully or if you have a little hole, then it will not explode because what will happen, you will have the gas that will be allowed to get out of the bag. And you will not have enough pressure than being inside the bag. Okay, tips, tips for home fart bag making, very important. Oh, this is an interesting question. So, Leif and John are wondering, they say this is very cool. And they're wondering, what's your favorite chemical reaction? Well, I get to deal with a lot of chemical reactions in my everyday work and I'm in the lab. So I do see a lot, but you know that elephant toothpaste reaction is pretty cool because it illustrates a lot of things. It gives off heat, it changes color a little bit and I get lots of gas given off and pretty dramatic. So I think I still like that one, like of all the ones I get to do. Yeah, I would say it's my favorite one. Well, and one more thing, we have Vivian who is age seven and joining us today. Is wondering a little bit more about why does the elephant toothpaste explode out of the tube like that? Then what's happening when you have this reaction, you have put some dish soap at the bottom of the tube and then you are going to release gas, then you have liquid that become gas and gas take much more room than liquid when it's why it's exploding like this. Okay. Do you want to add something Jeff? Yeah, there's also some heat as well. So the gas expands, but yeah, basically gases are about what? A thousand times less dense than liquid. And so when you start with a little bit of liquid like that, you get a thousand times bigger volume with the gas when it expands and add the heat into that, then it gets pretty dramatic. Great. Thank you. And we have a question from Juniver about the orange powder that you used for the volcano. Is it used for anything else? Don't know about that one specifically. I mean, as Cecil says, the word chromium comes from color. So a lot of chromium compounds are used in paints, for example. So I wouldn't be surprised if it won't use, how many negatives is that? But I think it is used. Different chromium compounds, yeah. Great. And Danny's wondering, can you do a really big volcano with those same, I'm guessing with those same ingredients? Okay, so yeah, if we have enough stuff then yeah. Don't see why not, yeah. Probably not as big as the Himalaya or something like this, but if you have enough material, you can do a big one. But you have to be careful that you need to put it in, it release a toxic product then you want to make it outside or in a place where you can get all the toxic product out of the volcano. Sure, because the bigger it is then the more toxic product it's gonna produce, right? Yes. Okay. So we have a few more good questions. Chetcho, Kai and Amaya are wondering if you could explain a little bit more about what actually made the farting bag fart. Yeah, that we saw in our chemistry book that the reaction when you mix vinegar and baking soda is releasing CO2. And CO2 is a gas and then you will have the bag that's becoming bigger and bigger because it's very tightly closed and the bag is becoming bigger and bigger and at some point the bag explode. And it's basically the CO2 coming out of the reaction that make the bag fart. Great. So try that at home, Chetcho and Kai and Amaya. See if it works for you. So here's a good question. These are cool experiments. And Alice is wondering how are these used or how are they relevant in the real world? These kinds of reactions. Yeah, I don't know if you'd necessarily see some of these and oddly enough, I think maybe the farting bag is the most relevant because it involves acidifying carbonate, which is what's going on in the oceans a little bit and CO2 uptake kind of the reverse of this. But yeah, I mean, that whole system of carbonate and CO2 and bicarbonate is very relevant in the upper levels of the ocean and trying to take up acidifying the shells of mollus and things like that and decomposing when they get very thin when it's too acidic. So I guess that one is actually somewhat relevant, believe it or not. So we're getting a glimpse into the, what the scientists do on their off days when they're not doing directly real experiments all the time, they get to have a little bit of fun with some fun experiments too, right? Yeah, yes. So, oh, Danny is wondering about your actual lab. How many people work in your lab? Is it just the two of you? And are you, yeah, I guess Danny is asking about the chemistry lab or is it the old building? And indeed, I don't work in the lab. I came to do the experiments, Jeff. And Jeff, you can answer the questions. Is it just you, General? Oh, there are a couple of us. My colleague, John and I work in the lab together. And so there's basically two of us in the lab plus we often get student visitors coming to help us. And some of them have come over from CU or from other universities, sometimes for a couple of weeks or sometimes for a year or something like that to work on projects. So, yeah, we're always happy you can get people to come and work with us. But usually the two of us and there are about 80 people in the chemistry division all together, chemistry lab, per se. And so there are the... Are they all chemists? Not all, no. Some of them are physicists, some of them are chemists and some mathematicians because we also do like computer modeling of the atmosphere, the chemicals in the atmosphere, not just the weather. And so we do have the mathematicians also working in our section as well, yeah. Great. And we're just about to wrap up but there's one more good question from Leith and John. You've been talking a little bit about gas versus liquid and actually some of the past presentations did as well. And they're wondering, is there more gas or more liquid water on earth? You mean water vapor or liquid water? I guess so, yeah. That's what I'm guessing, the gas phase of water, water vapor. Yeah, I think there was more liquid water than water vapor. Yeah, all the ocean of them. The ocean, definitely. Well, it's just about time to wrap up. We have yet another fun experiment, demonstration coming up. So I just wanna say thank you so much to our science wizards, Jeff and Cecile for joining us today from your homes and from your lab in the video. And thanks to everybody who has joined us for this presentation and we will be back in just a couple of minutes for the next one which I believe is what's up with weather. We're talking about a lot of weather this afternoon. So thanks, Jeff and Cecile and thanks everybody for joining us. Thanks everybody, bye. Bye-bye.