Making Nitroaniline (And the Exploding Snake) 

It's such a weird one right? It's one of very few reactions where after it happened I just kinda sat and stared in disbelief. Feels like it shouldn't be possible lol

I totally laughed out loud when I saw the first exploding snake, it is funny but so cool at the same time. Well done! 👏👏👏

Same 😂

Weird how I've felt that with myself before, just the part where I feel tracked, not the part where I cause others harm, even if jest.

I like to remind people from time to time that the government doesn't give a shit what you do in your spare time. They aren't watching closely and are generally reacting rather than pre-empting.

@@alisdairherd9501 the truth is something to be grateful for. That may very well apply the first time. But God forbid you end up on the short leash of close scrutiny.

Come from a free country?

No problem! I used to intentionally cut them out because I didn't think anyone would care to see crystals form. Love hearing that other people find their inclusion as cool as I do!

I just said to myself, "recrystallizations are so pretty".

I love cancer personally

Many nitrogen compounds are colorless. It's not solely the presence of nitrogen that causes the color

@@jogandsp I didn't know that. Is it the NO2 that makes the color or a little more complicated?

Thank you, glad you liked it! I did have a backlight under it, tried every angle and from underneath looked best, it's just a super dark solution so it's really tough to see the crystals

Fascinating! Thank you so much for the idea, I'll have to give that a try and see how it goes

Thank you so much! I'm blown away with how many people care to watch as it is already, so I can complain, but I do very much appreciate the kind words :)

@@integral_chemistry you make truly amazing videos, nilered level

Honestly feels like a magic trick lol

It gets so much cooler if you keep up with it after school, I also didn't exactly love orgo lol

Glad you liked it! (But I'm sorry you can't do it :/ always a shame). Who's the seller? (If you don't mind saying of course). I placed a big order recently from a Poland-based seller recently, and I also picked up 15g p-nitroaniline in the order to compare with the stuff I made here.

​​@@integral_chemistry Sorry, I can't tell you here. But if you ask me via e mail I will surely answer.

@@experimental_chemistry Whats your email? is it on your profile? I've wanted to start keeping up with you via email for a while anyway

Thank you! And yeah I also thought it would have more give to it, but it broke apart fairly easily. I don't know enough about allotropes to say for sure, but my suspicion is that it's some kind of polymer and not pure carbon. I tried dissolving it in water to see what would happen, made the water alkaline which is certainly due to the amine but I don't really have a real explanation yet.

would like to know the same thing

It is extremely fragile yeah, definitely nowhere near as durable or dense as spray foam. Super lightweight so drops the way a balloon does, and it smells slightly like dead fish.. something like methylamine

Thanks man! 😁

“Don’t tell Mr. Lahey about the hash driveway boys”

I did have to block some flow for the hood. I think the key is to heat slowww and cut the eat shortly after it starts smoking.

No problem at all! Glad you enjoyed it

I'm actually not 100% sure, but I do know amides are much tougher to hydrolyze than most other esters. Typically applying heat is required for hydrolysis, so keeping it cool should prevent it for the most part.. also I believe the minimal water present in the nitration mixture could play a part.

3:33 forbidden mint milkshake

Watching the video before commenting would teach you even more!

@@janeczekdeliverservices7831 I watched the entire video.

It's just carbon, puffed up by sulfur dioxide.

I've still got absolutely no idea. Never had it happen before and can't find it in literature..

It's definitely mostly carbon, but also definitely not entirely pure.. it makes water alkaline when I tried to dissolve it, which is surprising given it was saturated in concentrated acid. I'm assuming the amine group is responsible somehow

Huh.. what exactly happened? I feel you could always just reduce down the solution if you used too much solvent or something

@@integral_chemistry I used a Conz NaOH solution and dumped it in and there wasn’t rlly much precipitate than the 1G then I tought I just messed it up and I should have left it stand for some longer. But anyways I will try it again in Futrure and make a new video lol

I'm pretty sure it's mostly just carbon, but definitely filled with some other messy decomposition products

I'm glad you've hung around and continue to enjoy my projects 😁 To be honest it's some of both, I knew a lot of theory that I didn't include in my videos because I didn't think it was the kind of thing people would want to hear about on RU-vid. Figured people would just wanna see cool fire and colors but I've actually found people do enjoy hearing about the science too (which has been a very pleasant surprise). However, I really didn't get much training in actual lab technique in college (especially because of covid), and because my training was in organic chemistry I came into this knowing basically no inorganic. Since I started this channel I've learned so very much on how to actually do science instead of simply learning about it, but obviously the foundational theory was necessary.. I guess the point is that it's some of both, but I love that you're enjoying the journey!

@integral_chemistry awww! CoVID sucks for that! I don't have the excuse. I was a poorly disciplined child of a student at 19 years old, with a slew of personal conflicting identity issues and very poor patience when it came to the math, which makes me sad and truly regretful. So, yes, I drink in the education like a thirsty marlin. The only labs that lit me up back then were the nitric acid days and the acetic anhydride days. However, with time and a lot of self realization I've grown a lot and really enjoy what it is I had said I enjoyed even back then. Keep up the good work. It's actually really cool to see how much has actually changed since back then. I only remember pH scale, not pKa, for example. But that easily could be simply because of was so distracted from school. This was at the turn of the millennium, in fact just before. Btw, what would happen if you reduced the 4-nitro part to amino? To be more clear, what would the chemical be? I've not heard of aminoaniline. Sorry, I Google it and got p-phenylenediamine, which also sounds cool.

@@alllove1754 I had a lot of those same issues early in school, and in my personal opinion I think that 18-22 (typical college age) is way too young for most people to have the mental discipline required to learn most of this kinda stuff. Even though I do believe pKa was already known back then, the limits of what we collectively know about chemistry has expanded so dramatically over the last couple decades that it is honestly overwhelming (especially when it comes to biochemistry). That is a big part of why my own videos are so all over the place, I just want to know it all but there is more to learn than I could ever cover in a hundred lifetimes.

@integral_chemistry soooooo true, the 100 lifetimes comment, inarguably true true true. Having said that, and given you're speaking of biochem, I've grown very interested in enzymes, noting chiggers and how they feed. Did you know they don't chew on our skin like it may feel they do? Their enzyme LIQUEFIES the skin cells, and the cell wraps up into a little straw that they just sip our juices from! Crazy.. and I was thinking enzymes aren't acids, aren't bases (I mean, rather, I should ask, are they acids? are they bases? not stating from assumption like I do so much, apologies there). But from what I've read these really strong ones, like from chiggers, are usually very complex organic molecules, and I'm leaning towards proteins vs other known caustics. I've also been investigating acid ethers or ether acids, given how sulfuric acid seems to be a diacid, if that's even a thing.