Greetings and brief intro

[andrewtretiakov]

Hello everyone,

My name is Andres and I'm a chemist by training but work as a physics technician in a secondary school in London, England.

I'm very interested in chemistry, physics, ENGINEERING, materials science, science communication and building apparatus and equipment and especially the history of science to name a few. I also do a bit of beekeeping.

Part of the science communication I do is by volunteering, participating and collaborating in different public events, workshops, conferences, open days and public lectures. Occasionally, I assist my friend and expert chemist Andrew Szydlo in his lecture demonstrations at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. There are quite a few videos already in the Ri YouTube channel. I highly recommend watching them:
https://youtu.be/1Qi4rrQoruQ

Thank you very much,
A

[mgritsch]

Occasionally, I assist my friend and expert chemist Andrew Szydlo in his lecture demonstrations at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Hey, wow, great! The RI and the videos with Andrew Szydlo are world famous! He is a genius teacher, his lectures are so powerful and encouraging! To spend a day with him in the lab would be a dream! Warm greetings and our highest respect from continental Europe!

[lemmi]

Hi Andrew, once more welcome to Illumina!

We also consider science communication as one of the goals of our forum. Our intention ist to provide a space of reliable information, and exchange for amateur scientists.

Personally, I'm very interested in the history of science (look at the "Historische Experimente"-section ). I actually assisted a public lecture on high-voltage physics in the RI some 6 weeks ago! Did you do specific work on history of science? On which subject(s)?
My other favourite fields are phytochemistry (as I'm a physician, especially pharmacologically active plant constituents - on my trip to London I also visited Kew Gardens) and analytics.

[MarbsLab]

I welcome you from my side as well. The Döbereiner's lamp would be a nice addition to the hydrogen lecture. I share with you my passion for building apparatus. I guess you built the boiler in the hydrogen lecture.

Cheers

Markus

[andrewtretiakov]

Thank you for this and that section is fantastic. I'm taking my time to have a look and read more in depth when I have some free time. There are so many treasures.
I try to recreate old experiments and demos in chemistry and physics mainly because history of science is not taught or mentioned anywhere anymore in schools and very rarely at university. So my aim is to show and tell students of the origins of certain discoveries and early usually rudimentary experiments and how knowledge built up over decades and centuries.

Personally, I'm very interested in the history of science (look at the "Historische Experimente"-section ). I actually assisted a public lecture on high-voltage physics in the RI some 6 weeks ago! Did you do specific work on history of science? On which subject(s)?
My other favourite fields are phytochemistry (as I'm a physician, especially pharmacologically active plant constituents - on my trip to London I also visited Kew Gardens) and analytics.

I must have missed your public lecture at the Ri Has it been posted online yet? If so, could I please have the link? Thanks very much.
I visited Kew Gardens many times and I always discover and learn something new. It is a great place.

[andrewtretiakov]

Thank you for the welcome Markus.

I made a basic Döbereiner's lamp years ago but it was not nearly as good as yours (sorry no photo). I only had a very small piece of platinum wire (so not much of surface area) a plastic container with a clip lock and a piece of column chromatography tube which I inserted upside down through the lid and used the stopcock to let the hydrogen out. It worked just about. My skills are not that great. Yours is incredible!
Anyway, the copper boiler which generates steam was rescued because someone wanted to through it away (it happens a lot... people just throwing things away without knowing their use or value). I built the more basic apparatus with the porous cup on top to show diffusion of hydrogen through the cup and the pressure it exerts on a liquid.

Best wishes,
A

[MarbsLab]

Hi Andrew,

if a special custom apparatus is ever needed for Andrew Szydlo's lectures, I would be very happy to build it and send it to you, FOC of course.

Cheers

Markus

[mgritsch]

I try to recreate old experiments and demos in chemistry and physics mainly because history of science is not taught or mentioned anywhere anymore in schools and very rarely at university. So my aim is to show and tell students of the origins of certain discoveries and early usually rudimentary experiments and how knowledge built up over decades and centuries.

This is a fascinating field in many ways. In the early 1800s and before it was more about getting a basic understanding, sometimes more of alchemy and cooking than science in the late 1800s and maybe until the 1930s it is fascinating to witness the shear explosion of knowledge. This period probably doesn’t lend itself so well for lecture demonstrations, but it offers a rich field for the amateur as the things that were rocket science then are today easy to reproduce with modern equipment and knowledge.

What I am interested in more than the actual knowledge or principles is more the means how to come to a conclusion and the reasoning behind it. How could they even identify structures of sometimes complex molecules without any understanding of electrons or bonds, let alone something like an NMR? How could one clearly identify the result of a new synthesis or measure a molecular mass? Elementary analysis is sometimes not much more than a rough estimate of composition…

And I find it particularly interesting to find mistakes or wrong conclusions in old publications, I think you can learn even more from when they were wrong

Until the 1940s Germany and Austria were very important centres of chemical research, therefore you have a lot of German publications (Chemische Berichte, Justus Liebigs Annalen, just to mention some of the big ones). This is a bit of an advantage for us being native speakers gives us easy access to this wealth. And we can still use RSC and ACS If you ever need support with those older German sources just let us know.

[andrewtretiakov]

Hi Markus,

This is incredibly generous from your part. I'm sure Andrew Szydlo will be delighted. I'll pass this along to him.

Cheers,
A

[MarbsLab]

I can for example offer my bombardier beetle functional model. I would love to see it in one of the lectures.

Cheers

Markus

[andrewtretiakov]

This is magnificent Markus!

And I'm sure Andrew Szydlo would love it! Our next lecture demonstration at the Ri (I'll be assisting) in December is all about sulphur. We've been trying to reproduce Otto von Guericke's first electrostatic machine on a small scale using sulphur but we only have small rolls of sulphur. It works, just about, when rubbed with cotton or wool to pick up a few small pieces of paper. I believe Otto von Guericke build a massive sphere that was able to rotate using a hand crank and was able to attract (once charged by rotating the sphere and holding a piece of cloth under it) bird feathers.

I personally, would love to have your Döbereiner's lamp to demonstrate at the secondary school I work in London. I do have one of those hand warmers already, so I could use the same catalyst. Of course I'll be willing to pay for it and for shipping.

Many thanks again for sharing your fabulous creations!
Andres

[MarbsLab]

You will get the Döbereiner's lamp free, as promised (including the catalyst). It would be loving if your lecture would be filmed, but is of course not a requirement. Just PM me the shipping address. And I will look into Guericke's electrostatic machine.

Replica of the University of Oldenburg
I think I can build it. The sulfur can be cast using a mold. Then it needs to be polished.

Cheers

Markus

[Glaskocher]

Wellcome here in the forum!

Your job sounds very interesting. I understand exactly, what you are doing there. My professor asked me to help him again with the experiments in his lecture "Introduction into general and inorganic chemistry", this winter semester. We will have the experiments to ilustrate the theoretical talk. He is talking about having a "Christmas Lecture" as the last day before the winter break.

I can provide a photograph of "Döbereiner's Lighter" as it is called in our house. The outer container and the inner container are made from glass. The inner part and the hanging copper basket are screwed into the acrylic lid. On top of the loose lid is the valve with an orifice and the screw to hold the catalyst (here missing). To start it the "basket" needs to be loaded with zinc granules and the outer cylinder is filled with one liter of half concentrated hydrochloric acid. The first volume of gas is released without catalyst and testing. The next gas portions are tested to be free of oxygen with the classic ignition test. As soon as you hear just a slight plopp from lighting the hydrogen gas you can put the catalyst into the gas jet and open the valve. The (almost invisible) flame should ignit within few seconds. Show the burning flame by lighting a strip of paper.

Do you know Drummond's Limelight? It was shown first time by Faraday in one of his christmas lectures. Heat a pice of fine grained limestone (chalc from Dover cliffs) with a hydrogen-oxy-torch and expect a very bright light. You can use it to project a B&W slide on the wall.

Döbereiner-Feuerzeug (leer)

[andrewtretiakov]

Hi and thanks for the welcome!

I do know about the Döbereiner's Lighter or lamp but I have never seen one in the flesh. I tried to make one years ago with modern materials and spare parts with mixed results (mostly end in failure).

Having done a few lecture demonstrations over the years I can tell you that they are extremely well attended and received and people will really appreciate them. What they do not know is all the hard work, effort and time it takes to prepare them!

I do know about heating a piece of chalk with oxy-acetylene torch or propane torch to create an extremely bright light from the lime left behind. Hence the expression ''in the limelight'' because it was quite popular to illuminate actors on stage in the theatres. They used bladders filled with hydrogen and oxygen (to produce a very high temperature flame to heat up the limestone) I believe which tended to explode

Many thanks again,
A

[andrewtretiakov]

Fantastic Markus!

I just sent you a PM. The Royal Institution demonstration lectures are always filmed so as soon as they post it online (usually takes about a month) I'll send you a link.

Many thanks again for your help,

Andres