The bath salt mystery

I'm guessing it makes worse business sense to just sell lighter mono hydrate!

Mike Hanley

still waiting on the magnet ;)

Hey Nile, can you please show how to make diamonds out of carbon in one of your next videos?

Yes, I was going to comment that I thought the chemistry here was analogous to plaster of paris, so the monohydrate characteristics seemed to be what I would have expected.

Paul Anguiano

You thought this was going to be easy didn't you

So this may sound a little odd and really belonged after you burnt up all your beakers but when you place a beaker in front of the camera you always have it turned around so the lettering and marking is in the rear. It makes sense since when in the foreground it just wouldn't shoot well on camera. My suggestion is that the next time you get beakers see if you could get them printed in reverse. That way your logo and all the markings appear correct on camera. Plus it would be a unique feature to you glassware. Which btw you should be marketing if your'e not already. Beakers and flasks make for neat merch . Just sayin

Russ Lewis

Watching you break all those appliances was pretty funny, but you should check out a ball mill. It's for this kind of thing exactly.

Matt

Learned watching Tysy that food-grade oil is used to protect food-grade metal cookware from moisture. Restoration channels use a process of heating steel to ~300C and dipping it in oil to get a nice anti rust coating, and it works as well with canola oil as mineral oil. And that's a lot like what you're doing when you season a cast-iron pan too.

Stephen Gillie

Man, I kinda wish you distilled some of the water after you collected it to get an idea of how much stuff was dissolved into it. I doubt there was a lot in there, since the whole collection process was basically distilling it, but clearly enough of Something could make it through during the third run, and I wonder what else was in there.

Mark

what? Yet another you-tuber selling bathwater? (HA!)

Joseph Goins

By the way, what a nice brand new heating mantle. You've gone a long way from the beginning, haven't you? :p

Mono Keras

I made sure to clean them well. However, I still won't use the powder in any reactions or to dry solvents.

Nile Red

As it picks up water, it eventually will turn back to the heptahydrate. It would turn into a huge chunk because the heptahydrate would crystallize together.

Nile Red

That was a really interesting video. At the end, when you were showing how hard it got when water was added, if you continued to add water would it eventually turn back into the heptahydrate? And, if it did, would it then just be a huge chunk of magnesium sulfate or would it still be a powder?

Al Myracle-Martin

Magnesium sulfate monohydrate is used as a desiccant. You can pull water off ether or other organic liquids using it. It’s fairly efficient, precisely because it can capture so much water, though not as much as sieves. It was a bit silly to try and extract the water in a single batch. As for tasting it… No aftermath? No collywobbles? :)

Mono Keras

If you didn't know already, galvanized and black iron pipe tend to have oil on/in them to protect them from moisture, might be a problem with contamination in the future.

yup!

Nile Red

Interesting, I never found anything like that. It could be true tho

Nile Red

Hmm interesting getting water from that chemical. When i do chrome plating I use Magnesium Sulfate with Sodium dichromate to plate steel.

Daniel Blake Shoemaker

Ancient water!

Your flask probably survived the second cooking because the contents remained in powder form and so could shift to accommodate the contracting flask.

Kevin Martin

Now I understand what may be the difficulty with using a salt as heat storage medium. Would be a nice experiment to see how much energie you could get out of the dried salt when you add water to it.

Hubert Hoefsloot

That effect of hardening after adding water, right at the end, is very much like what happens with plaster of Paris (calcium sulfate).

Kevin Martin

I always get weird looks irl and blocked online when I ask strangers to sell me their used bathwater. I should have known to ask you first!

The Gayest Person on Patreon

What do you plan on using the magnesium sulphate for?

Paul Fisher

Hey, Great video as always. NB @20.18 your two larger volume labels are the wrong way round ;-)

This reminds me of one of my earliest chemistry demos in school, showing that Sodium Thiosulphate incorporated enough water in it's hydrated crystal structure to actually dissolve the salt. Was very fun, because the resulting solution readily supercooled, and would suddenly recrystallize rapidly.

Monsyne Dragon

Some long time ago, I read somewhere, that MgSO4 starts decomposing very slowly at 400°C and the decomposition speeds up as the temperature is increased until 1124°C where decomposition essentially becomes a runaway reaction. Wish I knew where I read that.

Michael Aichlmayr

Fascinating! I honestly wonder if the water has a laxative effect, like the salt it was taken from.

Marta

Ah, if I may correct you, Nigel himself termed it "Chemist Boy Bath Water".

Alexander Kirk

Chemist Bathₛₐₗₜ Water

Do patrons get a different drawing for the water?

Unexpected, but still good I hope!

Nile Red

This was not what I was expecting when I got the notification

Yeah, that's probably true. I wanted it done fast though and I didn't want to wait for the ball mill. I also didn't want it to be too powderized because I was worried it would fuse again in the flask.

Nile Red

That's true, I just didn't expect it to be such a pain.

Nile Red

And you could make a DIY ball mill out of stuff you could get at the hardware store for less than you paid for the food processor.

Jacob Osgood

@12:15 Oh NR, you should know better to send a chemist to do an engineer's job. Drill in a few relief holes, and sink in an expanding bit, a heavy taper screw, heck even a punch would direct tons (literally) more force on a much smaller area than your whack-a-mol stick.

Jacob Osgood

Jeez, you really needed a jaw crusher there! 😂

Nicholas Fletcher

oh crap, I forgot to make the link. Ill post it here tomorrow. Also, please don't drink it if you win!!

Nile Red

That was really cool! To think that much H2O is locked in epson salt!! 🤯👍✌️

André Forcier

Where's the link, I want to try some bath salt water lol

AtHeartEngineer

Oh Nigel, how I've missed your handsome self and genius mind 😣 I shall savor this post.

Alexander Kirk