Humphry Davy’s Potassium Volcano
During a lecture on his newly
discovered alkali metals, Humphry Davy gave a dramatic
demonstration as to the possible origin of the force of a volcanic eruption. Knighted just the day before,
Sir Humphry gave his lecture to a packed audience right here
in the lecture theatre of the Royal Institution, where a young Michael Faraday
was sat at the back taking notes. Faraday’s notebook, which he
presented to Davy, is an important record since Davy himself did not leave accurate
details of his demonstration lectures. This is Faradays’ account of the lecture
given by Davy on Friday 10th April 1812, where he describes Davy’s experiment
to simulate the volcanic eruption. It consisted of a miniature volcano. He had built upon a square board
a pile of earth and stones in the form of a mountain crater. Openings and fissures were left
in the top and the sides of this mountain in which was put
pieces of the metal potassium. Sir Humphry Davy took a bottle of water and poured some of its
contents into the fissures. The beauty and violence
of this demonstration depends on the incredibly
reactive metal potassium that Davy had discovered
just a few years before. Its reaction with water produces
the flammable gas hydrogen and it also burns in the air
with this beautiful purple flame. Although Davy suggested this might be a possible explanation
for volcanic activity and earthquakes, we now know that this isn’t
due to such chemical reactions. Nevertheless, Davy’s spectacular demonstrations,
illustrating natural phenomena which very few members of the audience
would have seen at the time, would have been extremely impressive
and it’s little wonder that they contributed to his reputation as one of the
most brilliant lecturers of the day.
I was gonna say first but then I realised how dumb that was
Whats up with the tribal music?
2:05 Has the Royal Institution give up on the word inflammable? Are we resigned to the yank corruption?
WE HAVE 300K SUBSCRIBERS BECAUSE OF MEEEE
Thank you for the Portuguese subtitles. Obrigada!
Annoying background music
Holy shit this is amazing. I feel like such a nerd though for watching this by choice and not cuz it's a school assignment 😂 im just a chem geek
Could take a macro shot of that volcano for a volcano effect in a movie maybe
I imagine the lecture theatre would have been less well lit back when Humphy Davy performed his experiment. It probably would have looked cooler.
Is it dangeroud to try at school??!
What was used to form the volcano?
We can use it for our school project
i watched a documentary about Michael Faraday, electric current in a wire will deflect a compass needle.. i was wondering if the volcano also deflects the compass? 🧭 🌋 🤔🤗
Is it really purple, or is it just a color beyond blue?
(To be clear, if it is indeed purple, that means it's a mixture of red and blue.)
Also I noticed on my computer that if I take the color blue (R-0, G-0, B-255) and add equal amounts of red and green to it, essentially just making it brighter, you get a color that appears to be purple but is in fact just light blue. Please explain.
If you say that it's "purple" that means it's got less green than red, and it obviously means there is red in it as well as the obvious blue. Otherwise, we must say that it's just be a color between blue and UV, and is thus not purple at all.