Geissler Tubes - Periodic Table of Videos
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
- The Professor digs out some Geissler Tubes which belonged to his grandfather, Joseph Poliakoff.
Extra footage about Joseph: • The Professor's Grandf...
Featuring Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff.
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Would love to hear more about your grandfather in future videos. Sounds like he was an amazing guy.
James Noble wow, saw u on Clive's channel moments ago
What can I say, I'm more fond of learning since I left school 10 years ago. Haha.
I think that is true for most people watching bradys videos
There is an extra video on the Nottingham science channel, if you click on the i in the top right
+
This particular set of Geissler tubes appears to be from the 1870s to 1880s. They could be as late as the 1890s. Usually they included d asmall amount of mercury vapour, and uranium oxide in the glass. The internal tubes are usually quartz glass, the liquids can be any number of liquids from quinine to various alanines. The electrodes were usually made of platinum. The styles shown here are generally found in French manufacture, and may contain rhodamine (for red fluorescence) quinine, for blue, or various combinations thereof. Some were engineered to deliberately show stratification in the plasma with distinctive banding (dependent on internal leakage), others contained powders to recharge or reduce the pressure, and absorb contaminants. There was a run of production int he 30s as well, if I remember correctly, but these appear to potentially be quite a bit older.
The most unusual geissler tubes were actually mechanical/physical electrical valves, which would divert the energy to one side of the tube or the other, dependent on the electrical 'flow' direction, using the formation of the glass itself to make the rectifying effect.
The ones with red glass in the sealing surfaces (around the electrodes) are probably pre-1900.
Interesting you mentioned electrical flow as his father was working on circuits. Also back then vacuum tubes are common and today replaced with ICs.
You clearly know what you are talking about and thank you for that informative post. I am curious to know how someone learns about something that seems, at least to me, to be so obscure. How did you become interested in Geissler tubes?
ooo uranium glass. pretty cool. stopped making it except in some place in switzerland i think
The one with characteristic glow of uranium glass lit by uv radiation was my favorite 🥰
I think gramps would be even more impressed that we viewers are sitting at every and all corners of the Earth. Shoutout from Singapore.
Russia here \o/
Livanskoy cool photo
and Austria!
Zimbabwe here.....love this chanel
and India!
your grandfather invented the volume knob?
Tesla bless your grandfather
Louder I CAN'T HEAR YOUUU ;)
@juggliar That's like how Steve Jobs invented fonts.. if he hadn't someone would have 2 years later. The early form of a transistor sounds interesting though
@@kestasjk Did you just reply to a joke with a dig at the original video to the effect that J. Poliakoff's invention of some thing is no big deal because someone would have done it eventually?
I hope not. That is the kind of thing an asshole would say. Did you invent that same thing first and have an axe to grind? It is easy to claim that a thing that a person has devised and put out into the world would have been devised. It is less easy to prove it or prove that the claim is interesting or important.
It seems a bit like how you minimize Jobs's influence on font implementation on computers. No-one who knows anything about it would claim that Jobs invented typefaces. He did, however, push for the implementation of fonts that closely matched between computer and print.
Mark M I understand a volume knob is just a variable resistor. if he invented the variable resistor okay thats impressive i guess, but otherwise hes just taking a variable resistor and finding another use for it, sorry I dont think thats a big deal. Based on your reply i thought maybe an analog volume knob was more than that, but no thats all a volume knob is
@@kestasjk I don't know the whole history of Mr. Poliakoff's claimed patent. However, the quote by you that I was replying to reads," That's like how Steve Jobs invented fonts.. if he hadn't someone would have 2 years later. The early form of a transistor sounds interesting though."
Your claim basically devalues the entire point of the patent system. You claim that, yeah, that's interesting, but now that you mention it, it could work. But *You* never mentioned the original invention previously. It does not matter whether it is obvious after the fact. Did you patent the use of a variable resistor for volume control?? That is your claim? Where is your patent? People come up with great ideas every day. Sometimes they are "obvious". The way the system works is that the first person to claim the "obvious" is the inventor.
Your father invented the hearing loop? That's awesome! As a deaf person (Been deaf since my birth) with Cochlear Implants I'm very thankfull for all the aid, thanks to that, I can almost hear like a normal person. Loves from Belgium!
Felix Fevol *Grandfather.
So you've been a cyborg since birth? Cool!
BlackEpyon Kind of! c:
I use hearing aids. Can I be a cyborg too?? 3:
@@fevol_ what do you mean like a normal person there is no such thing as normal we are all different that's what makes you... You. So happy you can hear big yourself up cause alot of people are trying to keep you down.
What a wonderful heritage. The tubes might contain uranium, used for a green or yellow colour since the late 19th century. Uranium glass is fluorescent under UV. The one on the far right at 1:50 looks a little like "Vaseline glass "which typically contains uranium and is slightly cloudy. Negligibly radioactive.
+1 on the uranium glass.
I'm pretty sure you're right. It has the characteristic glow, especially in the one scene you mention.
"Martyn's Historic Discharge" PHRASING.
Enter a name here in a box no less
Jonas Meyer
A BIG box!
Yes, could have been phrased slightly differently. He admits he was a school boy
*_BEWM !!!_*
"Don't touch"
Every time a video comes out on this channel I get very excited.
This man is such a legend.
he reminds me of a british chemist genius version of Einstein
Your grandfather must have been an amazing man, and so are you. He could have never imagined you talking and showing this to so many people, and in fact talking about science to this many people. Take pride in what you do, it's well deserved!
Dear Professor I really appreciate you sharing this about your grandfather. Please tell us more about him!
Nice to get a bit of family history combined with such a neat little object. Lovely video.
show this to people who don't understand science. they're all like "YEAH, SCIENCE! what does it do??" you: "nothing.. it makes pretty colors"
yeah, your rgiht
What his grandfather used this for was experimenting with plasma to etch circuit traces into silicon. How do you create and hook up a few million transistors on an IC the size of a CPU? Plasma. Do a search for something called a "Plasma Etcher". I helped fix one of these in college back in the 90's that Intel had donated to the school. I've fixed everything from model T's to 28 GHz microwave systems - getting that machine to fire up and see electrical plasma flow like liquid was the most satisfying. To think his Grandfather was playing with this back in the 20's is just amazing.
1Howdy1 I helped build a plasma etcher for a lab I used to work in 😊
Very non-specific channel anti vaxers are fact and science deniers
A very interesting piece of equipment! It was very generous of the professor to bring these out to demonstrate them, considering they are special to him and must be quite fragile.
I feel honoured and also lucky to be given the chance to take part in this interesting remembrance.
Look, here's the deal. It's absolutely magnificent that this man teaches so many people so many amazing things, but.... and here's the biggie... I absolutely love him so much because he makes me smile. It's cool when someone makes learning fun. Yes yes, is there a cooler Prof on the planet? I think not. I'm sure you've heard it a million times, but Martyn Poliakoff is the epitome and complete embodiment of the art of awesome teaching.
Finally my long search came to an end...this man is 66 years old!
I read about Josef Poliakoff, a grandfather you can be proud of! Awesome! Now I even like our Prof even more!
Your grandfather would be proud that you have shown some of his equipment to over 300k people. Great videos! 👍
i could listen to the prof all day. Very informative, and very entertaining.. Which is a very rare combination.
Thank you, Sir Martyn, for sharing with us something from your family history that is special to you, your grandfather, and your family. I am very grateful to you for keeping these memories alive and also for your work in educating us about chemistry and other sciences.
Sir Martyn, thank you for sharing the story of someone who means so much to you, and indeed, to so many people around the world. Not only are his Geissler tubes fascinating, but just imagine if he could know how many lives have been touched by his genius. My utmost respect to you. In you, his genius and enthusiasm for the world about you are quite evident!
I felt a sudden connection to you right now. I work at a healthcare center here in Norway, and one of the areas I am in duty of, is hearing aid. I requisitioned a hearing loop the other day. In norwegian it is called a "teleslynge". I love Periodic Videos, and the ones featuring you, are the best of them all. Thanks.
Thanks to you Professor and all the team in Periodic Videos :-)
Excerpt from NYRB: Tony Judt - Meritocrats "But I only ever became closely acquainted with one such person-my neighbor Martyn Poliakoff, great-grandnephew of the Poliakoff who built the Russian railways, a spiky-haired eccentric out of Westminster School who went on to secure a CBE, Fellowship of the Royal Society, and deserved renown as a popularizer of chemistry to young people. Hardly your typical toff."
...a very poignant and heartwarming ending. Not only are the Geissler Tubes being shared with a larger audience than he could have ever imagined through means he would see as magic...they're serving as tinder for a knew generation of inventors and chemists
The videos you make will always be popular to most of us, the quality is perfect on every video from this channel.
Excellent video! You are the best Prof. I watch this channel mainly to hear you and your (awesome) stories!
Favorite video so far! Isn't it memorizing how far technology has brought us, and how quickly!
Reverse engineering the apparatus might prove as many questions and answers as the Faraday candle lecture. I'd love to hear Sir Martyn do an episode on just this. BTW I'm sure his late grandfather is as excited about the youtube audience as he was for his grandson's CBE and other titles.
Isn't it uranium glass ? It looks greeninsh and it glows under UV light with this faint green
And it would be easy to test with a geiger counter
Most certainly uranium glass. I agree!
Uranium glass would certainly fit with the time frame, and was the first thing I thought of when seeing it glow.
First rule of unboxing science equipment of the 19th century: bring your Geiger counter and never inhale.
I chuckled
Thanks for another video. Very sentimental feeling all of a sudden when he mentioned the idea of years those glass tubes being 100 of years old but still able to live on in entertaining ideas. And then mentioning his grandfather was the icing on the sentimental cake.
Prof Martyn : best entertainer/professor on the Interwebs.
Hello, Professor! Thank you for sharing your grandfather's antiques with us. At 3:38 the glass glows a distinct greenish yellowish color. It looks very much like the pieces of uranium glass in my collection, which give the same color when activated by UV light.
Professor Poliakoff whips out his 100-year-old discharge rod--and it still works like a charm.
the ribs on these toys serve to enhance pleasure
So cool to see in many peoples eyes such nerdy things. I wouldn't mind seeing the Professors vacuum tube collection either. Maybe?? It would be a winner.. This man grew up around the time Bell labs invented the transistor.. The "glory days" as we are being dumbed down today it seems.. Great video of 160 year old technology which is still amazing.
I stand corrected. Joseph Poliakoff invented the transistor in the 1920's I am shocked at how amazing this bloodline is. I am shocked.. True genius..
Yellow glass is Uranium doped almost always back then hence the fluorescence.. Over and out, amazing video Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff.
These are quite magical, never heard of them! Can't imagine what it must've been like for those back in the day to see them.
Martyn Poliakoff is a treasure!
I have been entertained as well as educated Thanks! Always enjoy these videos. I'm working my way slowly through all of them
Yes Sir! There are 850,000+ subscribed to this Channel...def a big audience. I wonder if your grandfather knew Tesla (or Edison). It would be excellent to hear more about him in future videos. Thank you.
Wonderful legacy to have an audience for your work 100 years later.
Always a treat to see Professor Poliakoff again. Surprized that the infamous and ominous Neil was kept off camera, somehow he seems very appropriate for Halloween season.
Some Geissler tubes are not purely decorative, they were used with 'Lecher lines' for measuring standing UHF radio waves, looking for the points where the glow died down as zero points or 'nodes'.
Excellent video!
You are such an amazing person. If we all had teachers like you no one would ever drop out of school
Thanks so much for sharing this precious part of your family history with us, Sir P!
That was really cool, and it is kind of inspiring to think about how small the audience would have been back when your grandfather was still alive, compared to the audience it is receiving AS WE SPEAK!
A couple of the things the professor says in this video surprise me. For one, he seems to think the glass is doped with iron to make it yellow and fluorescent. It is almost certainly "vaseline glass" however, doped with uranium. A simple geiger counter test will affirm this quickly. Also, he is strangely under the impression that the determination of the gasses inside will be difficult and potentially destructive to the tube??? All the information to determine the gas or gasses inside is already there. You're looking at it. One can tell simply by observing the color alone that it must be either air, argon, helium, mercury vapor, or possibly but HIGHLY unlikely, krypton or xenon. The simplest spectral analysis even done with a handheld piece of cheap diffraction grating will immediately reveal which of these gasses it is. The lines of mercury are instantly recognizable, as are the quasi-continuous repeating bands of the many rovibrational transitions of nitrogen and oxygen molecules if it's air. All of this could be done in seconds with equipment that I'm sure his lab has around somewhere.
Exactly!, when he said, "...the glass is lightly yellow..", my immediate thought was, "....that's uranium glass (vaseline glass)"....and as you pointed out, a simple spectral test would give the identities of which gasses were present in the tubes......something I did in early high school lab with a diffraction grating.
Maybe some of the statements made were to spark comments?...only the Professor knows! :P
A spectral test requires the knowledge of the pressure in the tube, which he doesn't have
You do not need precise knowledge of the pressure to do a spectral analysis. You already know the pressure is substantially below that of an atmosphere because it is capable of being lit by a low power handheld tesla coil AND the discharge does not exhibit any filamentous self-pinched arcs as in a plasma globe toy. The pressure is FAR too low to exhibit any significant pressure broadening or doppler broadening effects and the tubes all appear to have both wide and narrow regions where diffuse and capillary discharges can both be observed separately. Spectral analysis would be so trivial here you really wouldn't even need a proper transmission diffraction grating and could probably just do it by eye looking at the reflection off a cd or dvd.
he said ion, it contains a uranium dioxide dissolved in glass
Thank you for sharing with us.
Fascinating! I once had a book named the boy electrician and was fascinated by it. By today's standards almost all of the experiments described were truly lethal. It detailed how to make a spark coil which provide arcs of over three inches. This would be about 30kV. It also described experiments with X-Rays. It also mentioned Giessler Tubes so was quite interested to see one. From memory argon was blue, helium was yellow...can't remember any more.
Professor, your grandfather has so far entertained over a hundred thousand people. He can definitely rest in peace. This is more than he would have expected :)
This guy is absolutely delightful.
It definitely entertained me. Thank you.
Thank's for sharing this with us professor!
Professor, thank you for sharing your grandfather items.
My grandfather invented too, more of improved upon the CRT tube to make it much slimmer and operate at lower voltage. He also helped a guy known as Oppenheimer on something.
Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.
thank you for watching!
nice comment, nice response
very civil, very yummy. cooked to perfection
Greetings fellow warrior with the strength of the Falcons claw.
Thank you for sharing this wonderful family heirloom. I was certainly fully entertained.
Respect to Sir Martyn Poliakoff.a true inspiration.
what an awesome heritage for an awesome man
That's so cool. Thanks for showing us that. Wish you guys made videos more often though.
I find it quite amazing how Sir Martyn here is showing this stuff to us on RUclips, and he knew and is related to a person born 140 years ago :D
Wow, doing some background reading your whole family did amazing things. And i'm proud to say so are you Martyn. Keep it up!
The true magnificence of these contraptions is that whenever these experiments are performed, they show how beautiful orbitals can be when excited :)
these tubes have extremely high scientific value! precisely because of the questions they provoke. phenomenon, questioning, and discussion based reasoning with models is the future of science education! you just need to make sure you don't spoil all the questioning fun for the students (less explanation). thanks for the cool videos!
Please check the yellow/green glass with a Geiger counter. It looks like it may be Vaseline glass, which fluoresces under UV, and looks quite identical to your samples.
We are gratefull to your grandfather and you for this video!
this is very entertaining. thanks for the three of you who did this video👍
Those are some interesting items. Cool that they still work.
those look so cool! i love the colors they make!
Amused by the thousands of people watching this video.
Pretty sure he'd be more amused by the moving speaking picture device :D
over 232k people watched it. your grampa would be proud professor. bless
The reason they work with only one electrode 'connected' is that the tubes have a capacitance. As the supply is AC current flows in and out of the tubes and therefore they are supplied with energy which they convert into light.
Love these videos. Just relaxing for some reason listening to him explain things.
Thank you again, Sir Martyn.
Absolutely phenomenal.
This is nostalgic to me because when I was young (nearing teens, almost 40 years ago) I went to the library often and was fascinated by books that taught science. There was one book that had various sort of DIY stuff about making high voltage experiments, including high voltage transformers and Tesla coils AND these tubes. It was fascinating but sadly my only attempt was not very successful. I attempted to make a high voltage high frequency transformer from a used car ignition transformer by stripping the cap from it so that I could access the magnetic core (laminated steel plates) to make a magnetic resonance switch to operate it in relatively high frequencies. I think I got close, but not enough, it never produced any satisfying sparks even :) And I don't think I would have had any clue as to where to get these wondrous glowing glass tubes either.
Thank you for sharing these with us.
Ah, that Poliakoff. Wow, i'm sound engineer and have installed hearing aid induction loops and of course; volume control is #1 tool so just.. wow... Absolutely wonderful, i feel so warm now, almost charged..
The greenish glass is "uranium glass", or vaseline glass (same thing). It's still used today in Geissler tubes, as it gives off a lovely glow when it's subjected to high tension electricity. The gas in the tubes is probably only residual air molecules, given the pink discharge in the bulbs. This is the most common thing for ordinary Geissler tubes, they are just evacuated to a fairly strong vacuum, and further colour is introduced to the discharge by adding vaseline glass and/or various liquids. The liquids are more difficult to identify right off the bat.
As I was watching this, an alarm on my phone went off. I set it yesterday to play X's "Blue Spark".
Life's freaky coincidences.
Thank you Joseph Poliakoff for the volume dial.For enabling me to turn down my friends bad choice of music =)
I love how he casually talks about his grandfather like "oh yeah, he invented volume control and the transistor". It just makes him more awesome.
Wow, I had no idea that Professor Poliakoff had such genius ancestors. I hope he has a lot of grandchildren! Humanity needs those great genes.
Right.
Scientific acumen is not genetic.
Scientific ability is something innate to all of us--it’s something we can learn, not something we are born with.
Aren’t you glad?
Well, this is in fact a huge debate inside science for ages. I tend to thinking DNA is strongly involved.
The Professor's grandfather was a scientific genius with a funky hair style. Quelle-surprise !
Very entertaining indeed, thank you Periodic Tables.
Let me first state I am not a chemist so I may be way out of line with these suggestions. Couldn't you use a spectrometer to narrow down what the gas may be? Also, is it possible to regulate the power output to see how much power it takes to start fluorescing which may give another clue? You can use an Ultrasonic Thickness Gauge to check the thickness of the glass. All of these tests are nondestructive, then all you need is to solve for what the pressure might be. Well, I hope this helps, always love your content. Thank you for posting it.
"There are measurements we might be able to do, but we might damage the tubes."
Well, why not use a simple spectrograph?
That's what I was thinking too, don't know the details considering I've never seen a spectrograph...
Because he said the air (lets say oxygen) will give off different light under different pressures.
But because he doesn't know the pressure he can not rely on the light.
Because multiple types of gases at different pressures can give out the same wavelength of light, a spectrograph will only tell you it emits those wavelengths which doesn't help in determining which gas it is any more than maybe narrowing it down a slight bit
My 0x1E Oh right, thanks for the clarification. 😄
My 0x1E
I think he was referring to the color of the light as detected with the naked eye. A spectrograph is vastly more accurate. If astronomers can use them to analyze objects as distant and varied as planets, comets, stars, nebulae or quasars and determine their compositions with uncanny accuracy, the light from a Geissler tube should give them no trouble at all.
I thank your grandfather greatly. thats amazing he invented so many things
The fact those things are upwards of 100 years old and still working is astounding. Considering a barely used light bulb in my house might last a year and that serves a functional purpose, not just pretty for the sake of pretty.
From my work in spectra, I can almost assuredly say the inner tube is Quartz with a low pressure Mercury or Thorium Argon mixture, both used as standards in the astronomical spectrograph we have with somewhat similar coloring. The outer fluid and gases may have a copper or iron vapor but I can't be sure. I would actually use two types of spectral analysis Emission of a charged tube at a controlled voltage, and compare it to an absorption spectrum. Might be able to tease out the quartz and glass comp as well as the other elements in the tubes
These are fantastic! Love your videos!
Did anyone else notice that the box he took those out of were labeled "Martin's historic discharge"? Best part of the whole video.
7 people so far are leaking 100-year-old gas.
lol
Noel Goetowski 41 stickers by now
Noel Goetowski What?
Very Very slowly!
That is quite a legacy, Professor Poliakoff!
Thank you for this! Simply delightful and very entertaining.
They are certainly entertaining! Thank you for sharing. One geissler tube had a purple-pink colouring to the discharge very reminiscent of the novelty "plasma globes". perhaps that's a place to start your search?
How nice of the Professor to dig these out for us all :D
Science is the best thing ever and this channel makes me happy
AWESOME! I've been dying for a new episode!
Thank you so much Professor! I love your videos and anecdotes!
your explanation is great make connections in my mind about other things
...on the shoulders of giants.