We did this experiment in 7th grade science class! More than 20 years later and it still sticks in my brain as one of my favorite, most memorable science lessons ever!!
Potassium *should* give a faint violet -- but it's almost impossible to get potassium salts that aren't contaminated with a trace of sodium, and the yellow flare of the sodium covers the potassium's faint violet. Look through a piece of cobalt glass, however, and it'll filter out the sodium yellow and allow you to see the potassium violet.
I once got the violet flame burning dried shrooms. Only for a second tho, before the other stuff gets carbonized and then you only get the carbon orange
Sodium lights is how Disney did the special effects for Mary Poppins back in the day as they could use a filter to remove that color from the background and then had another camera that was aimed at a special prism being used with this filter to have only the yellow color showing on that film, making it so there was a map of where the animations for each frame would need to be and unlike with modern green screens this methode also preserved transparant effects from clothing (lace, frills, etc) and from where your hair parts when it moves around. Cool how this same scientific knowledge can be used in such varied applications.
No bs looping* some loops are really creative and are a great use of the platform, but the people that just say "and that's howwww... Fireworks get their colour from different elements," suck.
Li:- Crimson Red Na:- yellow K:- lilac Rb:- voilet-pink Cs:- blue Ca:- brick red Sr:- crimson red Ba:- apple green And so on these are just s block elements!
You still live in the world man, thus still being able to contemplate at daily phenomena. Never is too late to get interested AND learn something, science is useful and fun!
@edwsantos633 I do learn all the time! What I was referring to, is that I wish I had made a career in the sciences. I'm an old lady now. But I do appreciate the pep talk! ❤️
What’s actually happening here is the electrons in ions are able to move through energy levels in their shells releasing excess energy in the form of light with different energies having different places on the wave length , which is also why all the transition metals have various oxidation states and form different colours depending on which ion it is .
Going a bit deeper, this happens because each chemical component is composed of atoms with different numbers of electron layers. When an atom receives energy (in this case, thermal energy provided by the fire), its electrons jump from a lower energy level to a higher one. However, as everything must return to its original state, the electrons will jump back to their original energy levels. This process releases energy in the form of light (the flame). The color of the flame depends on how many energy levels the electron has jumped.
To put it into more detail, when elements are heated or absorb more energy, the electrons of the atoms in those elements start to jump orbitals until they reach the outermost electron shell. Once they reach that, they then cannot absorb more energy so instead, they release energy to return back to their ground state which causes them to emit light in the process. Different elements emit different colored lights due to the different sizes, arrangement, and energy levels the electrons of each element has. the different colors emitted are arranged in the spectrum or rainbow. Lower amount of energy released will emit more of a red color, and higher amount will emit more of a purple color.
In case you missed it, it's because electrons are getting excited, moving to a higher energy level, and then falling back down. The "falling" back down releases photons. The change in energy the electron experiences equates to the wavelength of light emitted. Each element has it's own unique emission spectra.
@@CeRzit’s a good enough explanation for the average Joe. It’s not really necessary to go into the spin orbital coupling and the energy corrections to the Bohr model. Just saying that there are discrete energies that the electrons can occupy is fine
@@johndoe7017 I agree. But I never added any personal values that it was a bad explanation or "unfine" to leave out the fine structures of the atoms. Only because I say that it's a highschool explanation; that implies not any negative connotations. As with everything, nature is more complex as made to be, more times than not. The purpose of my comment was to make a remark, if anyone is interested, to dive deeper into orbitals and the spins of electrons, because there is quite a lot of research.
@@CeRz what's the point of correcting someone just to drop jargon? Provide a deeper explanation or tell people what to google. Otherwise you're just denigrating an explanation with a lot of predictive power.
@@yunggoosbumps215it really didn't kill the possibility for kids to get I to science lmao, giving kids lithium to play with would be a stupid idea, most of those kits were banned because they realised they let kids play with dangerous substances not because people were using it for nefarious schemes
2 (Na, K) of these can bought from any grocery shop, 2 (Li, Cu) are commonly included in chemistry kits and the strontium salt is easily and legally bought online in any western nation. In the UK almost no chemicals are outright banned for educational use, search "Royal Society of Chemistry - Surely that's banned" for a great article talking about it. If they are harder to find in the States, it's likely due to the threat of lawsuits as opposed to actual legislation banning them. The main barrier to kids trying this is overprotective/uninterested parents and teachers.
I remember burning a Pepsi container while camping years ago and it burned green. I told my chemistry teacher when I went back to school and he taught us about all the different colors you get from burning different elements. One of my favorite teachers
Yeah, it's a toss-up between Lithium Chloride and Copper for me. Those _crazy_ shades of emerald greens from the copper and the wild, pinkish reds from the Lithium Chloride are just mesmerizing. What would happen if you mixed them? Do you think they would react seperately from each other causing two distinctly different colored flames or could they be mixed to produce what I would guess to be a kind of darker, orangish/brownish color? Do you think you might be able to test that out for us? Pretty please with whipped cream and sprinkles and a cherry on top? You could try mixing all sorts of different combinations, it would be so much fun!
I mean they shouldn’t react together as that’s not a reversible reaction (only CuCl2 + Li works, not the other way) so I imagine it would be two distinct colours, just a bit messy looking so it would probably appear a bit brownish/murky. That’s just a guess off pure theoreticals though.
@@nemesheesh897 I believe what he meant isnt about potassium color. It is about inconsistency of theory and actual result. Which most scientist could relate (In which that also their field). Well, I am not saying HS student could not relate, but I hope you got what I meant.
@@somebodysson227 what a weird response to someone saying they wished they would've learned a specific thing in school. Why's it so shameful to you that they weren't taught this?
@@jadedragon8548 it’s not shameful. As someone who didn’t make use of everything that was offered to me in school, I find excuses like that childish. Just learn it if you want to learn it. Don’t bash your teachers who most definitely taught such a basic concept more than once. It’s all about accountability
Thank you highschool.... I had an amazing science teacher, this was the last project he was allowed to teach us until these kind of projects got shut down at my school for reasons. Was really cool.
This science, spectroscopy is used in astronomy to find out the composition of stars. For example Sun glows orangish yellow is because of helium and hydrogen.
This is because when you expose these salts to energy like fire the elektrons move up from their positions and returns back, when they return back they emitt the energy that they received previously and depending on how strong the energy is it makes different colors
No he is Dr walter white he's a chemistry teacher and a drug maker (not actually this guy he's from breaking bad series) not Dr stone he's just a young man tho😅
Yellow and blue don't make green. At least, not with light, and with true blue. Yellow and blue make white. Yellow dye (like a marker) and CYAN (like the sky) dye do make green, because yellow dye absorbs blue light, and cyan dye absorbs red light, leaving the green.
Like @DJ_Force explained we're talking about different ways to combine color here. Schools never teach you this but combining light colors (like on a screen or a colored flashlight) is totally different than combining pigment colors (like with paints, which is what they teach at schools).
I remember doing this in middle school! I remember magnesium is white and we had to turn the lights off to see it. Magnesium I think is mixed with everything to make the bright white flashes
Various dyes give fireworks color while items like feather, gold nugget, diamond etc give them special effects like burst , star shaped and trail.. thank you !
Fun fact: other metals burn green too, and you can find them sometimes in the ink used on rolling papers that have fancy designs (if they aren't a good source)
Most metal oxides are white/colorless, while the flames have different colors. Some metals have more than one possible oxides. Cu(I)O for example is yellow-brownish, Cu(II)O is black, while the flamecolor of Cu is always green. Fe has multiple possible oxides ranging from black to red or even yellow (hydrate), while the flame is always bright orange. So no, no connection between oxide color and flame color (if thats what you mean).
When i was a kid, I thought fireworks, the colored part, were inside something that looked kinda like an unfrosted Pop Tart and they threw them in the air then exploded.
If im not mistaken the temperature of each flame is different too. Heince why burning magnesium (i think) goes white which is the hottest flame. Which sounds similar to different colours of light having different temperatures with infrared being hotter than all of them
Could you please tell me how i can execute the experiment? I mean where can i find the materials and how exactly i use them inside fire? I would like to present that also in class in the future. ❤❤❤
I’ve learn that that depending on the temperature of the flame it changes the color of it (red-hot, blue-very hot) Does it mean when the flame is in contact with one these elements that changes the color of it, does it also modifie its initial temperature? (Plz tell me if tou didn’t understand, ill try to reformulate the best i can)
Someone on Reddit the other day posted some article saying people who make and light fireworks are psychopathic. Had a good laugh about it and told them to meet a pyro tech because they’re usually really down to earth and smart from what I’ve seen.
It’s to do with the difference between energy levels that the excited electrons travel between. The difference between these levels is unique for every element
@@eddiedelgado7725It is bruv. Flame tests rely on the energy required for the valence electrons of said element to go into the excited state. That high energy from the flame on it makes them emit light in the coloured spectrum as in the visible region.
