Making Thioacetone: The Worst Smelling Substance on Earth…and SMELLING IT | First-Ever Complete Demo
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- Опубликовано: 8 июн 2024
- In the late 1880’s, German chemists produced a substance with a smell so powerful, that it caused city-wide panic and nausea. Less than a hundred years later, British researchers attempted to produce that very same chemical, and ended up clearing a building. The putrid chemical behind all of this hysteria is known as thioacetone, and it is listed as the foulest-smelling substance on Earth. Only a few records detailing human interaction with it exist, and no pictures or videos of it have ever been published…until now!
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0:00 Intro sequence
0:42 What smells?
1:03 Introducing: THIOACETONE
1:54 The synthesis
4:22 The smell of success!
5:08 Trimer smell and appearance
5:48 Extracting the trimer
6:24 What next?
7:00 The big day
7:51 Thioacetone: first impressions
9:19 Smell distance test
10:59 Thioacetone: ACTUALLY SEEING IT!
12:00 Why no gagging or vomit?
13:09 Conclusion: myth confirmed?
13:30 Parting words
13:57 Patron thanks and outro
14:10 Post-credits bonus blurb 
Наука
A big thanks to NileRed for shouting me out! Guess now I have to do selenoacetone: thioacetone's evil selenium-based twin!
Also, since so many of you have tried correcting me on this: yes, I know natural gas is normally odorless. Saying "thioacetone smells like natural gas" is simply less confusing to most people than "thioacetone smells like mercaptan-based flammable gas odorant". As you can see at the beginning of my video when I talked about organosulfur compounds, I already correlated the smell of natural gas to ethanethiol (the mercaptan frequently added to give it a smell).
Yes
Hiiiii !
Hi, came from NileRed, wow you beat him to it
I wish you luck with that lol
@@NileRed ok
doing this indoors without a fume hood while your family is home is so deranged i love it
Same! I subbed immediately after he mentioned forcing his family out of the house with the smell.
@@tylera.2869 y'all are gonna get somebody killed, encouraging this irresponsibility.
Seriously. This dude is sumfin else
@@dougthomson5544 welp he can do what he wants in his property.
@@Jack-ey8kt Bro had a stroke
Imagine spilling a vial of it in a highschool toilet. Noone would ever vape there again and the toilets will finally smell like toilets should. Horribly.
Or the neighbors... like the Karen ones...
Mercaptans work well in high school toilets ( and are easier to synthesize ! ) ...total clearout !
Poor janitors would be there for hours trying to find the source
I wish I had this
it’s not just the toilets that would smell lol
with a sufficiently “large” amount, I’m sure the entire school will smell it. it would be so bad, it’s probably illegal to make (and “accidentally” release) this stuff in a populated area
You know someone is a chemist when that person has a high tolerance to bad smells.
Edit: How did my comment got so far all of a sudden?
Jesus Is King.!!!
The organic chemistry professors at my university had the driest hands on earth. It seemed as if they all collectively chose to explicitly wash their hands with acetone for the past 20years 😂
I'm an organic chemist and I don't actually. According to my wife, I have soft hands too lol.
My sense of humour, now that's pretty dry😀
Yeah, NileRed just did it and he couldn’t really smell it but his friend could.
Nile Red basically jammed his nose into the vial, took a big whiff, and was like "eh, it's not that bad." Gives you an idea of how dead his sense of smell is.
One mad scientist rents an island to create the stinkiest stink bomb. Another stink bombs his own house
NileRed
11:00 "We decided to torch the remaining trithioacetone and see what horrors would result"
I'm convinced chemists and electrical engineers are one morbid curiosity away from becoming supervillains. Looking at you, LabCoatz, NileRed, Michael Reeves and the worst one of all, StyroPyro.
Styropyro is just on a different level than most. I say this while staring at the thumbnail from his "Uranium crayon" video that's currently sitting in my feed :'D
LOL! StyroPyro. I agree on that. He is on a different level.
Styropyro and Nile should really get together to do a video at some point.
And Mr Green with his I tried to make a sodium duck, and replicated electroboom twice while breaking multiple power tools.
you forgot electroboom
NileRed sent me. That's some cool stuff, very nice that the papers about it are still around so you were able to find how to make it, and that it seems like the legends weren't entirely false.
Not entirely false, but they do seem a bit exaggerated in my opinion (although probably not in the opinion of Nigel's friend). I'm hoping selenoacetone proves far worse! If not...telluroacetone, here I come!
You madman!
Am always glad to see smaller science channels get a boost, I'm gonna enjoy binge watching your stuff!
Hope you enjoy the content (although my new stuff is typically filmed in better quality)! Be sure to stick around for selenoacetone: thioacetone's more evil selenium-based twin!
i just subscribed and liked the video before i even watched. came from Nilered and i know how hard it is to get there. bug up to all
Seconded
@@LabCoatz_Science I love garage science!
One of the coolest dads in the world, for being part of the experiment! 👍
My only suggestion is that the "distance smell test" should've been done inversely. That is, coming from a far distance and trying to find the the point when the smell can be just detected. The problem with starting nearby is that the high concentration of the substance desensitizes the nose, similarly to how when walking from strong sun into a dark room, the eyes are not as sensitive. The same thing happens to our olfactory senses.
True! Additionally, we were using the mostly-depleted bottle that we had already torched, so we might've gone farther with the large sample. I should've had my Dad hangout about 500 feet downwind while I torched the large sample to see if he could smell it...
Given your reaction, I have to conclude that nilereds nose is only there for decoration and serves no actual purpose like smelling things :D
Greetings from Germany, and a happy new year :)
Nile Red just gave you a shoutout in his video on thioacetone! Great to see more crazy science content for the sake of curiosity
yeah but the URL in the description is wrong...
@@Armadurapersonal boo hoo cry harder
@@Armadurapersonal nope - i got here by his url
@@marcinwitkowski217 same but it is possible that after someone pointed this out initially, he changed it. I'm assuming he mismatched the links to the description of the links.
Imagine spilling this in a space station. I don't know why, but that's the first thing that came to mind: At some point, some bored teenagers are going to brew this up in their middle school lab, and force an evacuation of an entire habitation module.
I suddenly have intense claustrophobia
just open a window and the smell would be gone.
How would it get from their middle school lab to the space station? Are you talking about a hypothetical time in the future when people regularly live in space stations?
It happened almost that way in a friends school when someone smashed a bottle of butyric acid in a hallway.
@@duke7803 Really?
We had a guy named Larry where I used to work. When he would take a dump in the rest room the stink was absolutely gagging! You literally couldn't breathe in the room!
225 feet with just that little amount!!!
in the original experiment carried out years ago they used 100g of that final substance.....that was a catastrophe!!!!
NileRed either has a super power or there is something wrong with him.
I must have to same power, it wasn't that bad to me! If you hate sulfury smells like natural gas though, you'll probably take it much worse: the smell goes EVERYWHERE!
Brought here by the shoutout in nile's thioacetone video. Good work!
It's great that you reference NileRed (well, Blue, but still) in this video and he references you in his video on thioacetone.
do you remember when in the video?
edit: found it at 12:40 for those interested
❤️ from Nile, what's with you chemists having no smell!
Btw really enjoying your vids, you have a new sub
Kudos to Dad for raising a curious child and even helping him with his stinky projects.
Here come the NileRed views. I love that your dad's wearing his dosimetry badge. You got my sub, gotta watch this RTX video.
Thanks man! Hope I can keep you entertained, I'm making selenoacetone here soon! Should be much worse than thioacetone, if the legends are true!
Now I'm going to binge watch your videos just like Nigel's. Amazing work, sir.
Great video! I always wanted to know what this chemical smells like. Very interesting to see it tested!
Thanks, glad I could help satisfy your curiosity!
Different people can sometimes smell things differently. You better make some of your own and then you really know what it smells like to you :D
What does it smell like?
Looking at the rest of your content and a couple page refreshes makes me think this channel is about to go through a very large growth spurt.
NileRed sent me. great work!
Here from Nile Red. You rock dude. First one to do it in many many years.
awesome
I love this new shift towards chemistry videos keep up the great work!
Awe im so happy for your shout out, you deserve the subs and likes, you give good details and what the chemical is and how to make it, also warning signs too! Congratulations!
Dude!!!!! Fantastic job! Way to keep it real !!!! Thank you for taking the time to post this!!!
Brought here by Nilered but gonna sub your vids have a much different feel and now I have yet another very enjoyable chemistry channel to keep up with.
Came here from Nile Red's Thioacetone video. He mentioned you'd done it first and tried to link your video. Unfortunately, his link to your video, sends you to a video of baby pandas.
You have a new fan and sub. I really enjoy the comment section. You truly do communicate with people who follow you. You give shouts for appreciating other RUclipsrs, and the comments are mature, helpful, no trolls. Everyone here has my respect
Excellent job my friend. I like how you and Nigel ended up coming at the reaction from opposite sides.
I heard about this recently and was so disappointed that there weren't any videos. Very interesting.
11:25 "It added this kind of oniony garlic stuff to it".......
Makes me wonder if thioacetone in these conditions is able to oxidize to dimethyl sulfate, which is basically thioacetone with 4 added oxygen atoms.
And dimethyl sulfate does have an onion-like odor....although smelling that odor already poses a threat as dimethyl sulfate is extremely toxic......and carcinogenic....and mutagenic....etc, etc.
So, be careful with what you smell...... 😉
I don't think a pathway readily exists to DMSO4 from thioacetone.
Here from NileRed. I'm glad he mentioned your channel. It's a gold mine.
Glad you think so, I look forward to producing more unique content for people like you!
I came over from Nile Red's channel. Looking forward to watching more of your videos. I partially dreaded having to take chemistry for my biology degree but, when I actually took the classes, especially the labs, I loved it! Keep up the good work!
How you don't have millions of subscribers is beyond me. Keep doing your thing and il be watching great interesting stuff. 👍
Sweet glad Nile Red showed me a new place to watch!
I love your content! I've been binge watching your videos today. Also, you're very active with your comments.I can see you getting millions of subs in the future just like nilered. Keep it up!
That’s super interesting! I came from nilered’s video but mostly because i wanted to hear a second opinion on this. And its cool you both gave each other a shoutout
If books describing those times, written in those times are any indication, people fainted even upon hearing slightly bad news.
Yeah, the odor really was a bit exaggerated (for me at least...not so much Nigel's friend). Although the stink did spread EVERYWHERE!
The only two people on youtube to make Thioacetone: LabCoatz and Nilered
Great video! So cool that you and nile giving each other a shout out
Hope there are more likes to this video. Real hard work involved here not to mention risks 👏
I love chemists. "Everything I've read on this chemical is terrible, but I've never synthesized this myself, so let's send it"
Also, synthesizing in a private space with no PPE (especially your parent's house) is dangerous. Please take care.
1880's Germany residents living next to a lab were probably already extremely suspicious and superstitious of the lab. So maybe they overexaggerated.
But accounts from later incidents back it up. One thing to consider is the one common thing in these storys. People initially exposed by the more concetrated release didn´t react as bad, but the people further away got hit badly. And so far we only have seen people close by to the initial release react.
NileRed sent me. Subscribed. Really enjoyed watching this straight after Niles!
Had to watch your video after Nile’s, subscribed!
Greetings from Nile :D
Great video! I can see this getting a lot of views.
If this get shared and posted around the internet it'll drive quite a bit of traffic to it I'd say!
I hope so!
Got it in my recommended lol
Congrats on the NileRed shout-out!
Man, this video was way better than the dude's who has like 4+ million subs. Didn't even have to rent an island to make good content.
Great job! Very brave! Looking forward to it.
Cant wait for this guy to get big like Nilered so i can say "Yeah, i watched labcoatz back in the day at 3k subs"
This is awesome. Really glad nilered shared it, you totally earned the new subscribers (myself among them)
Thanks, glad to have you aboard! Hopefully I can continue to make your stay worthwhile!
great stuff mate!!
Very cool video!
And nice to see the tests of distance you could smell outside.
Nice cameo of your dad. (Does he work with or around radiation? Looks like a dosimeter on his collar.)
Thanks, and yes, my father is a mobile x-ray tech (he was actually on call that day, hence the scrubs). Come to think of it, I really should be taking advantage of the fact that we have a $20,000 worth of x-ray equipment lying around...maybe I'll do a future video featuring it!
@@LabCoatz_Science if you can, that would be very interesting to learn about
came here from nile red's video , he gave you credit of making thioacetone before he knew
Nice one. Fascinating. Geometry, mathematics, chemistry......the basis of everything
Nile Red sent me, now subbed, educational content that is still entertaining is always welcomed
Gonna be lots of traffic here with NileRed posting…
I'm curious just how bad this is but then I remember I'm extremely sensitive to smells so I hope I never find out.
If you want an idea, get a propane or natural gas line and take a quick whiff of the gas while chopping green onions and eating day-old hard boiled eggs. That's basically thioacetone!
Nice presentation!
Need to see someone else's reaction to this. NileRed has a broken sense of smell.
I do too, not gonna lie. Must be a chemist thing!
"There is a very curious analogy between the odorising properties of this thio-acetone and other substances of great scenting power, for instance, otto of roses - of course, in a very opposite direction as far as the pleasantness is concerned." 🤣
Awesome video!
I think it's worth noting that we need to take into account that the original story originated in the Victorian era. If there ever was a time in Europe where things were blown out of proportion and people had a tendency to overreact, it was that time.
I have made it like you have a few times, and it is absolutely rank, but I don't believe any of the old stories.
Reality is that there are a million silly stories in chemistry. Just look at the story behind the name Magic Acid. It has been debunked numerous times. When it comes to chemistry, people like silly stories.
Check out NileRed's video. The cameraman, unlike NileRed and LabCoatz, was not noseblind to chemicals. I can definitely see vomiting and fainting happening. Also, 100GRAMS of Acetone were used to synthesize the thioacetone in the 1889 incident. I can tell that it gets worse with volume, so it is plausible.
There is more modern whitness accounts to it, they share the same phenomen. The people getting directly exposed to it can seemingly tolerate it very well, while everyone further away is hit by the rankest, worst smell they ever experienced. To note is the anecdote of the people reeking of it seemingly not really noticing it, but people around them being absolutely disgusted by the residual smell. It leds to the possibility, that it just plainly shuts your nose down if exposed too much.
I dunno, the Victorians were familiar with some pretty awful smells. Industrial pollutants and raw sewage dumped into rivers. Chamber pots and outhouses. Horse shit everywhere…
@@theexchipmunk Yeah the more familiar H2S has that desensitizing effect too (which makes it so dangerous).
I have had a similar effect with other organosulphur compounds in the lab once I got a drop of benzyl mercaptan on my glove (and didn't notice). Basically instantly, people in the lab started complaining. I barely smelled any of it, so I thought they were overreacting. A guy from an office like 20-30m away in the building, came into the lab asking if anyone was working with any sulphur bullshit.
Took the gloves off, put it in bleach, when I went to have lunch, I was having pizza, and when I got my hand close to my face to eat it, my hand reeked of benzyl mercaptan, that had gone through the glove.
The smell stayed in my hand for almost a week, even after washing it with hydrogen peroxide.
I’m here from NileRed nice to meet you!
Meanwhile, reports are coming in that a particular grille in that park makes the worst burgers ever.
It's weird how I convinced myself I smelled skunk at some point watching this. Like getting itchy hearing about someone covered in ants.
Cool video, but generating H2S (100 ppm = immediate danger) in your garage, even with the bleach trap, is just reckless.
I've been gassed by about 100 ppm H2S. It's not an experience I care to repeat. Took about two weeks for my lungs to heal.
LabCoatz also needs some LabGlovez.
I absolutely love how knowledge yet completely unhinged you are lol. Casually making deadly chemicals in the garage and running outside for breaths of fresh air so you don’t die? No problem! Leaving a blow torch on a vial to crack the worst known smell on earth whilst you causally stroll 100meters away? Too easy! You’re beautifully insane and it’s fantastic.
Having a family that not only allows it all and just leaves if things get stinky, but actually does along to experience it all with you is awesome. I’m glad that they support your experiments and i Love you and your father.
So glad Nile shared this channel & I’m looking forward to checking out your other videos!
Ive wanted someone to do this since reading about it as an undergrad; thank you for your work!
Glad I could resolve your curiosity! If you've heard the horror tales of organoselenium compounds (selenols), I'll be making selenoacetone next...hopefully it is far worse!
Good job.
If you are looking for ideas,
Try to replace the Sulfur atom with selenium/thallium.
It is said that thallium/selenium analogues of organosulfur compounds smell worse.
I would, but unlike the sulfur-based ones, selenium and tellurium based ones are much more toxic and less stable. Maybe someday though, if I can do it easily and safely...
@@LabCoatz_Science You should try making benzeneselenol, aka selenophenol, the selenium analog of phenol. In Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" series, one of the chemicals he describes is selenophenol. I'm paraphrasing here, but he says that, according to the researchers working with it, it smelled like putting a bunch of skunks in rubber tubing, then setting the whole thing ablaze. It would be interesting to see you synthesize it.
Liked and subbed for making a molecule that I've always been curious about :)
Well done man! :-)
NeilRed / Blue did a similar solution. I didn't know there was another channel like his until now.
Any low molecular weight sulfur compound is going to be pretty foul; thioacetone being no exception. But I've heard of a couple other compounds that might exceed them:
1. n-butyl isocyanide
2. Benzeneselenol
Very true, although when it comes to toxicity, thioacetone is the least concerning. Selenium compounds are notoriously poisonous, and the isocyanide has cyanide in the name (it might not actually be too toxic, iirc, but cyanide would almost certainly be required for the prep).
@@LabCoatz_Science isocyanides are prepared by reaction of amines with haloforns under basic conditions iirc. Check the isocyanide test. No cyanide needed.
Your dad looks like Jamie from Mythbusters (without the beret) This gives him the right amount of authority to evaluate the result of this experiment lol.
Keep on learning and experimenting.
When no vomiting took place, the effective concentration of thioacetone in the air was far below 1 ppt (parts per trillion) by volume. The problem with this monomer as a kind of olfactory nuke is its fast re-polimerization at room temperature. This prevents high concentrations in the air - particularly, when dropplets are too big. Military grade thioacetone generators (e.g. for incapacitating a whole airbase, aircraft-carrier, or even a city) work in different manner. These use a tubular vacuum chamber with glass windows at both ends, equipped with slapper detonators. Inside this reaction chamber, trithioacetione is heated to about 550°…750°C by a PTC-heating element (as used in many Chinese air-heaters today). Additionally, there is e TEC-stack (Peltier Thermo-Electric Cooler) that keeps a temperature of about -35°C. As the trimer gets cracked, the monomer condenses on the cold surface of the TEC-stack - without polimerization. By triggering the detonators, the implosion shockwave disperses the monomer as very fine, molecular droplets into the air, where it can do its nasty olfactory job in people's noses. WARNING: According to OPCW, such a devices is considered as a full-fledged chemical weapon, since it incapacitates humans on a wide area for hours, or even days.
Interesting idea, but as far as I know, thioacetone has never been used by the military, mostly because it would be terribly ineffective. It is easy to stop with a gas mask, and similar to most poison gases that were phased out (like chlorine), it spreads in all directions which making its use near "friendly forces" undesirable. Besides all this, it really isn't all that offensive to many people (myself and NileRed among them). It would take a VERY sensitive person to be truly incapacitated by this substance (and even then, they could just hold their nose).
I search thioacetones synthesis it's the first one I see ty for this .
So far, it's the only video on the Internet with real thioacetone in it, glad you found it!
Just came to watch from NileRed just posting himself doing the same thing! He made a bit more than that though, and had to rent an entire island to make sure no one calls 911!
I might need an island too here soon...I'm doing selenoacetone, thioacetone's much more evil, selenium-based twin!
This can't smell worse than when the drains were opened up in a hotel kitchen I worked in once
I really enjoy how you present your work and how thorough you are!
a guy in my village almost emptied the pub with one of his SBD farts 😜, maybe he was naturally producing similar substance 😁
People do sometimes have disorders that lead them to produce excessive amounts of a related chemical: dimethyl trisulfide. I've heard it smells pretty bad, and I might be making some pretty soon, since one of my patrons has this disorder and asked if I could!
Nilered brought me here
Nigel sent me. Awesome experiment! Nice work.
No disrespect to NileRed, but your video is much better. Not tedious, got straight to the point, and well explained. Excellent work. Subbed!
Here from Nile red's Video. 🙂
Here they come
Wow, legendary. Another great science channel to subscribe to.
3:17 “Erlenmeyer Flask”
Labcoatz, we have to cook
cool to see a dad and son both interested in science
Have you considered using a modified natural gas burner to dispose of the H2S waste gas? As in, make a flare that burns lots of natural gas with air by default, and you can just dump your waste gases into the air used by the flame. You would still get smelly sulfur dioxide, but that is still way better than H2S and organosulfur compounds. It would have also destroyed the thioacetone.
Good suggestion! If was planning on working with thiols and H2S more frequently, then I would, but after my family smelled what I was up to...this turned into a one-shot deal, lol. I did ignite the H2S in the flasks after the reaction though, so plenty of it did end up burning (and with a cool blue flame too! Wish I caught that on video...)
Wondering if the flare can be improved in efficiency by directing into like an upside down crucible or maybe like better yet heated to glowing temp microwave kiln like designs that can even be DIY'd with silica glass coated refractory fiber. At first I was thinking a glass tube filled with steel wool heated, though had the duh moment where like might improve if blown air through as an input... or has my caffeine not kicked in yet?
Nile Red mentioned your channel ✌️✨
This channel should have million views
I imagine the reason this caused panic back then was because people weren't used to smelling chemicals at least not nearly as much as modern day people smell.
On the other hand, sewage systems and general sanitation (garbage collection etc.) in the victorian era were still in their infancy. People back then were probably A LOT more used to sewage and rotting things than we are today.
@@hailstevemcqueen Mmm the charming and smell of the public toilet. That distinct stench that says: should be an amusement park around. Mixed with every kind of strange body odder known to man that says: oh good god what hell is that stench? it's soo floral and beer stained smelling. Why yes that's smell of the Rose theater, and mmm yummy!
I didn’t know NileRed and Cody’s Lab had a baby! Congrats! In all seriousness, cool channel, but you totally sound like Nile and Cody combined.
I remember when at the end of the last class of cosmetic chemistry the professor brought a sharpened tip of a match dipped in a drop of thioacetone in an eppendorf, when it was opened the entire room was full of the smell.
Awesome video! Very interesting.