Nickel - Periodic Table of Videos 

These videos are made by Brady Haran - check out his "Unmade Podcast" here: bit.ly/UnmadePlaylist

We work for years to have, $1million while some people I know put thousands of dollars in some meme coins and they are millionaire

Neil laughed! MOM GET THE CAMERA!

We are the scientists who say Ni!

Can't believe I only just discovered this channel. As soon as I saw the hair I subscribed.

I always love the few times he mentions Canada in his videos. Makes me feel like our country exists to some extent on the scientific world stage.

Is the professor immortal?

Can we get an interview with Neil? He often saves the day with his practical insights.

im 3600 ft underground in a nickel mine in sudbury ontario right now. love the periodic videos, definitely helps pass the time on standby down here.

11:00 americans call bumpers bumpers as well. Fenders are on the sides, above the tires.

If I a dime every time neil laughed I would have a nickel.

list of elements neil reacts to, until now: - helium - sodium - sulfur - potassium - chromium - iron - nickel

Raney nickel quite reliably sets fire to flammable organic solvent vapors when it dries out...this is a problem when using these organic solvents with Raney nickel in hydrogenations (quite often methanol). Once the reaction is complete you filter off the Raney nickel, which glows orange if allowed to dry (as shown in the experiment in the video). This can ignite methanol vapors if present, and methanol fires are particularly bad because you quite often can't see the blue flame it produces! You can prevent this by not allowing the catalyst to dry out, or keep everything under an inert atmosphere such as nitrogen or argon. Very nice video as always, thanks!

7:12 Neil can laugh ! It's official ! :'D

2:31 had to pause the video, go to the comment section... i was sure there would be a ton of jokes. But no, this channel has the most mature audience of all of youtube... and i don't count among that :-P

"And eventually, it glowed slightly" Well, that escalated slowly.

Two more very important (perhaps most important) roles for Nickel: First as a part in most stainless steels, not what makes it stainless but to make it machinable and usable (makes the steel stay in austenitic phase and not ferritic). Second as a base metal in it's own category, Nickel alloys (also called Super alloys, one example is the Hastalloy sorts). Very strong and resistant to oxidation.

Hi professor. Thanks for the great video. Here's a little bit about chrome plating (but not about bumpers and fenders - the US and Britain use "bumper" to describe the same part of the car. What we call a fender, British people call a wing.) Chrome plating is a three-step process. First is a layer of copper plating. This provides a solid surface for the rest of the system to stick to. Next is a layer of nickel. It's used for two reasons - it's the right color, and it's very easy to polish to a high shine. After the nickel is polished, a layer of hard chromium protects the nickel from scratches and oxidation.

Had some experience working in a canola oil plant that used Raney Nickel catalyst for hydrogenation. On more than a few occasions, the spent catalyst bins would spontaneously combust, but it also contained small quantities of vegetable oil, aiding the process.

H.I. sent me here, to re-booted videos, and I'm so glad they did! You're doing a great work, thanks!

12:10 funny how he thinks he outsmarted his students while youtube probably has 100 videos about that process/experiment

This is in my top 10 channels on RU-vid. Absolutely fantastic channel.

[Music + experiment sounds] Always nice to come back to this channel now and again.

6:25 I can't imagine how exciting that must have been for Raney when he realized he found a new catalyst!

I find interesting that nickel much more effectively sank down to the earths core than iron. Effectively depleting nickle in earths crust. The chemical reasons (from both the perspective of nickel and iron) behind that difference in behaviour would be interesting to hear. ... Related to that: ... I recently found out that the very heavy elements thorium (and uranium) are highly concentrated in earth crust but depleted in all of earths interior. This is (as I understand currently) what results of relatively recent neutrino experiments suggest. Generally: Chemistry vs planetary level gravity on large time-scales seem to be an interesting and little investigated topic.

"And eventually.." "It glowed slightly" xD

FINALLY I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR A NEW NICKEL VIDEO FOR 5 YEARS!!! :D

Found a new favorite channel.

Love your videos! Love from Sweden.

My periodic table sense was tingling so I checked RU-vid

Most Americans I know prefer bumper, as well. There's a term 'fender bender' that refers to an accident that isn't likely to have done any damage to the integrity of the car, but other than that it's mostly people in(older) commercials that utter the term 'fender' at least in the Mid-West.

Beautiful! And congrats on being 98.3% of the way to a 1 million subscriber award ;)

I live about 1 hr from Sudbury Ontario. .. and you seem to know more about the area then I do! Thanks for the lesson!

I used nickel for my chemistry internal assessment back in high school. I also used other transition metals like chromium, manganese, etc. I'll be honest, I took a little of them all home as samples.

Once again the professor is the best. Outtake was great and Neil keeps going

I used to package Raney Nickel at Aldrich, we would put a little bit on the floor and about 20-30 later, it would go off. The bottle you have is from the early to mid 90s, those are old Sigma Aldrich labels. I actually have a video on my cell phone of us messing around with it. I also have video of us messing around with aluminum chloride, when we would rinse the funnels off, it would create clouds of HCl. Anyway, I remember the Raney Nickel coming in these black metal pails, like 5 gallon paint pails with the covers crimped on. It was only about 1/3 Raney Nickel and the rest D.I. water on top. Stuff is a bitch to weigh and package, sticks to everything.

You know, I've always wondered how catalysts actually work. It would be great if you could do a video on that! Thanks😊

Highly informative as usual.

This one of the most explained videos for this series, showing uses, history and some experiences. Thank you for all this!

Guys! You done it again. Yet another brilliant video.

"I was assued that it was probably alright" > Probably alright.

You've made me fall in love with chemistry. Wow!

I've been waiting for a new video for so long! Thank you Brady Haran and Martyn Poliakoff, also the rest of the team.

I've been playing a game with some fan-made modifications, that add various machines you can make, and ores that you can mine. And one thing it added was the ability to alloy certain things together. One of those alloys is Invar, which, in the game, has the recipe of 2 parts iron to 1 part nickel. This was where I first heard of this alloy, so I found it an interesting coincidence that a similar (if not the same) alloy is mentioned here, as being used for battleship armour. I know that alloys don't usually have such a neat and tidy ratio of components, as what's used by the game, but I think they simplify it so it's not a chore to make alloys; the game should remain fun, is what I think their aim was.

Americans call bumpers "bumpers" as far as I know.

We Canadians are very proud of our Nickel indeed, We display our Beaver on them

From now on I will exclusively accept help from this lovely man.

Outstanding video, even by your standards. Thankyou.

7:13 You've broken your Neal. He is laughing!

Alchemists never die

The classy bits of youtube (such as this) are really so cool.

Love your videos they bring pure bliss

Weird! I woke up this morning thinking about nickel and its high coefficient of friction and then this was posted

You guys are awesome. Love from America 👍

These periodic table videos are amazing. I'm in.

I saw you in Melbourne on the 27th best school trip ever now I get more. Subscribed

2:51 "Hello, my name's NiNO!!!"

Omg, look how many icons are on his desktop 0.0

I hope we live forever...I would love to work with this professor forever!

One correction. The nickel in the Sudbury basin was not delivered by the meteorite, but rather the meteor made large fissures in the earth's crust and the nickel (and copper and precious metals) came up from the mantle. That's why so much of the ore is deep. Several mines are going to start drilling deeper shafts: 2kms plus.

With the Rainey nickel are you sure that the oxidisation didn't take place slowly over time as the water evaporated because in the thermal camera it was hotter than the surrounding surfaces

"I was assured it was probably ok" Amazing

I'm from the Atlanta, GA area and we've always called bumpers, bumpers. We call the side part of the car around the wheels, fenders.

I am 35 I'm still working on a masters in social work, probably because I'm a natural social worker.... Im also partially blind so I'm also a dancer (DnB ;)) and a photographer... I'm a rebel ha. I was in advanced learning in middle school but went to one with not many resources and over worked teachers. I loved science when i look back to it, and fell behind fast when we got to such open answers and a big chemical table, which seemed so small on the overhead projector. Now i get excited to see chemistry come my screen again. I don't feel this daunting guilt about not getting it and everything falling behind. Which is pretty easy when you live in inner city Miami in the 90's haha. I am inspired now because I am thankful I get to go check out the eclipse on the lawns of MIT and Can hear cool lectures at harvard now because I love Cambridge (Boston)... I'm truly great full for you guys and gals. What's up with those cool Bismuth extras???I gotta admit I make nerdy pretty cool looking ha #noshame

We (Americans) call it a bumper as well. The fender is the part of the body that sits over the wheel. It's primarily a splash and debris guard.

nickel Rick

Nickel is used in my flute, it's made of silver plated nickel except I've got a more expensive flute that has a solid silver head joint which changes the sound completely

i hope everyone on the team had a great summer vacation

Kudos to Neil for thinking about the Raney Nickel reaction in sufficient detail in order to get us a nice whoosh!

I once heard a tale of Knights who say "Ni" ....

In the future whenever I will eat margarine this guy's explanation gonna come in my mind every time, just can't help it. THANKS SIR

Seeing Neil happy brings me joy.

2:30 I don't even want to know why you have 4 of them

"Assured it was PROBABLY ok...so i grabbed Neil..."

Love the Professor and Vids! Thanks!

Brilliant vid! Love this channel :D

We are the knights who say.... Ni!

I could be wrong on this, but when he was talking about the hydrogenation of oils, the professor kept mentioning that the hydrogen 'absorbs' onto the surface of the nickel. Is my terminology wrong or should he be using the word 'adsorb' instead?

These newer video are fantastic.

When I was a boy & my family visited Sudbury Canada there was a huge statue of a (Canadian) nickel at the entrance to town. I was impressed.

We are the chemists who say "Ni!"

The knight who say NIckel

I used to do organic synthesis in a research lab, and occasionally needed to use Raney nickel (RaNi) in my experiments. To insure I had really active RaNi reagent I’d take a small amount of the prepared material (stored under water) from the reagent bottle, wash it 2 - 3X with absolute (i.e. dry) ethanol, then put a spatula tip full of it onto a piece filter paper in my hood. As soon as the ethanol had evaporated, active RaNi would burst into sparks & flames, just as Neil’s did after vacuum drying & subsequent air exposure! IF that test failed, I’d either need to open a fresh bottle of the reagent, or prepare it directly from the Al-Ni alloy as was mentioned in this video.

awesome video, I come in to contact every day with Raney Nickel, now I know how it's made !!!!

Ammonia atoms! Oops professor

Never clicked off another website so fast.

Wow, scrolling down I was expected nice comments but humanity proved me wrong. Just wanted to say great video, I always enjoy them. Thanks for the knowledge.

Thanks for the great video! We call bumpers "healthcare isn't for poor people," and fenders are actually called "the rich don't pay taxes here."

Eh Americans call bumpers... Bumpers. Fenders are the parts of the body that surround the wheel wells

We are the knights who say, "Ni!"

Thank you for the knowledge of nickel.

I love this channel!

Why no Nickelback in the back?

I liked Nickel back when it was cool.

As the steel in bumpers, etc., has microscopic porosity in the surface (called pitting), & to achieve a mirror smooth chrome finish it's usually nickel-plated 3-5 times & polished afterwards each time, & only then after a final nickel-plating (if smooth enough) is the item chrome-plated! On vehicles built today chrome-trim is usually just mylar with a clear polymer over the top!

Keep up the fantastic work! Been watching your channel for quite some time and always excited to see new content. I don't study or work in the chemical field but always find it fascinating and I love to learn, even if it's outside of my general field of knowledge. It feeds my curiosity haha

I’m vaping on nickel coils am I going to die?

isn´t nickel also a ferromagnetic element?

Magnificent how scale can change the reaction so much. Even ordinary food products can cause destruction if improperly stored long term through gas buildup or oxidation, on a large scale.

Atomic Weight 58.6934, density 8.908: Nickel is also a component of stainless steels, and more exotically it is a key ingredient in the nickel-iron superalloys used in jet engines.