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this demonstration here's a little bit more exciting version of the flame test
lab or demo that's normally done.
What I'm doing here, I'm pouring
methyl alcohol across
several different well plates containing different metal salts,
in what my students call a bartending look here, but what I've done is I've pour the alcohol across all the salts.
And when I light just one
all the others catch on fire there real quick. You can see there as they've caught on fire
that we have
several
different colored of flames.
Including down at the end just the blue flame of the alcohol burning. Next, is the
barium salt burning there. The next one there a little hard to see is a green
color that is boron. The next one is strontium. The next one in line
looks like it is the calcium to me the orange flame there. Next one, fairly
faint, lots of impurities in that one, but that is lithium the pink color that you see.
The next one is a yellow flame that is sodium; followed by copper which is
burning green and potassium which is burning purple or lilac.
And so, a beautiful demonstration, of course, [and] although an awesome
demonstration a lot of different applications for these: including signal
flares, including fireworks, as I've mentioned previously this demonstration,
or this process, has been used to identify a lot of previously unknown
elements. While previously unknown elements were identified first
by flame tests or spectral analysis of those elements.
There's also some/many entertainment versions of this including just tossing
metal salts into a campfire, or buying fireplace crystals for your home fireplace to see
these beautiful colors also home.
Also, Hollywood used to use these for colored flames; although nowadays they tend to
use
special effects and computer generation, rather than actual
metal salts to produce these beautiful colors.