How to make colored fire at home (2020)
sciencenotes.org
sciencenotes.org
Sodium chloride, lithium chloride, copper chloride, and boric acid give the most intense colors. But sodium chloride's orange-yellow color is a bit boring compared to the others.
A few milliliters of the alcohol mixture can be ignited in a shallow stainless steel dish with relative safety and there will be no color interference from carbonaceous fuels yellowing the flame via soot.
If I had to pick just one to try, I'd suggest boric acid. The green flames it produces are unlike any "ordinary" fire and boric acid is easy to find. Here's a short video with a good view of how the flames look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1jHVk6oqjU
The first night that my now-wife met me in person, I showed her colored fire like this in the fire pit at my apartment complex. She originally meant to visit for just a few days but we've now spent 21 years together. I'd say that the demonstration was a success.
I thought of this because the list includes magnesium sulfate. IIRC, burning magnesium tape generates enough UV that you should have eye protection.
Is the idea that there's no highly energetic reaction, and so nothing to produce the energy levels needed for intense UV?
The issue with magnesium burning is that both the UV light is way more energetic, and it tends to also be very intense.
I only later learned about spectrometry: roughly, the flame's light is split into a rainbow with a diffraction grating and the colours become a barcode for the chemicals that burn.
This should be at the beginning of the article, rather than the end. People have suffered severe burns on multiple occasions from doing the "rainbow fire experiment" and adding alcohol directly to the flame.
alcohol is great for this kind of thing for several reasons:
- you can extinguish a spill with water
- its low boiling point protects your skin and other materials from high heat, but only when they are wet with it
- you can mix a little water into it to enhance this surface-protecting effect
- unlike many organic solvents, its toxicity is quite low (ethanol and isopropanol, not methanol)
- it produces very little carbon monoxide or soot
that said, it can still spread fire quite far quite fast, and a house fire can go from the size of a small campfire to deadly flashover in under a minute, so be very careful
If you are into this sort of thing, any experiments you’d hope to see in the set?
I like chemteacherphil on YT, who does a lot of visually fun experiments, many involving fire, and I would definitely buy packaged products of some of those, instead of trying to source chemicals/metals/tools for home (not having access to our own lab).
The problem with the more exciting/interesting experiments is that play has a larger potential blast radius. And understandably adults impose more limits which then leads to less actual experimenting. And that actually makes it less fun.
Because the best experiment is to start with random chemicals and seeing what happens. Not a carefully curated set with predictable results. The boring failure and the unexpected result are all part of the fun.
I had chemistry sets as a kid, and I think I agree with this. As an adult I understand why these sets are boring, and honestly I'd be more likely to play with these sets as an adult. The instructions and guides weren't really very creative and they weren't engaging.
At the same time, the chemistry sets of the (for example) 1950s were absolutely batshit insane and are rightfully taken off the shelves.
It's a shame there isn't much of a middle ground other than finding YouTube demonstrations. Then again I haven't looked for a chemistry set lately...
- colored flames
- LEGO orrey
- add a proton to platinum
start your own medieval alchemist cult!