Smelly Chemistry - Periodic Table of Videos
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- Опубликовано: 29 янв 2013
- Mercaptans - or Thiols - are some of the smelliest chemicals around. We didn't dare open the bottle.
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From the School of Chemistry at The University of Nottingham: www.nottingham.ac.uk/chemistry...
Periodic Videos films are by video journalist Brady Haran: www.bradyharan.com/
Brady's other channels include:
/ psyfile (Psychology stuff)
/ sixtysymbols (Physics and astronomy)
/ numberphile (Numbers and maths)
/ deepskyvideos (Space stuff)
/ nottinghamscience (Science and behind the scenes)
/ foodskey (Food science)
/ backstagescience (Big science facilities)
/ favscientist (Favourite scientists)
/ bibledex (Academic look at the Bible)
/ wordsoftheworld (Modern language and culture)
/ philosophyfile (Philosophy stuff) 
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0:37 "le stink"
Fart in your general direction!!!!
I'd love to get my hands on a Tellurium based stink bomb.
You guys make chemistry so interesting.
Prof. Poliakoff is amazing.
On a "normal day" there are 8000 gas leak reports?!?!
I live in the city where the mercaptan leak happened, it was pretty bad..
"...to see how her hair compares to mine." I loved that argument. :)
Anyone hear breaking glass @ 3:53?
Nice tie Professor
the line "I fart in your general direction" springs to mind... ;)
Brilliant love all these videos..it is my current favourite channel. Thank you all very much for your work on these productions and especially to the prof for his humble and clear explanations of the chemistry involved.
And then it would be a bit late.
WE LOVE YOU PROFESSOR! KEEP THE VIDEOS COMING GUYS!
Awesome content. I'm astonished by the amount of detail and the amount of interesting and useful information shared.
I find it interesting that a dog's sense of smell is so much more sensitive than ours, yet bad odors seem to bother them much less, if at all.
A few years ago, a truck carrying mercaptans tumbler over in São Paulo, triggering lots of phone calls to the firemen and to the gas company even from the other side of the city. One biker asked me in the car what happened and it took me some time to explain to him.
Reason #1 is that the smell of grapefruit is not ONLY due to thiols. Reason #2 is that a substance can be perceived as having a different smell dipending on its concentration: for example indole, which smells like flowers at low concentrations, while it smells like shit (literally) at high concentrations.
Fantastic work again, Brady!
I'm subscribed to all of your channels, and really excited to see where you'll take them.
I really appreciate how non-technical you keep them, but could you post links or a full title of any papers that are discussed in the videos?
Thanks!
"Professor Moody" lol did anyone else think of Harry Potter?
Major points for plugging the vibration theory of olfaction!
Hey periodic Videos!
I happen to work in an oil refinery in Germany, where we actually remove naturally occurring Mercaptans from Propane and Butane using NaOH to bind them and then oxidize them with air (and some catalytic wizardry ;-) )
Thank you for this wonderful video.
excellent episode. thanks
brady haran is like the johnny appleseed of RUclips
spreading knowledge far and wide
Mercaptans are also used to synthesize a sedative-hypnotic called "SULFONAL" and "TRIONAL" which were widely in use a century ago..
Sulfonal was a condensation reaction of Ethyl mercaptan and Acetone.
One of the best Chanels on RUclips
You should do a video on chirality (left handed vs right handed molecules)
superb as usual.
Got ot love Prof. Poliakoff.
An introduction to an eduational kit employing the sense of smell for teaching chemistry developed by Simon Rees, Rebecca Edwards, and Jacob Cox through the Royal Society of Chemistry, Educational Techniques Group and Durham University.
It doesn't really do anything chemical, it just fools your nose into not smelling the skunk spray as much. basically, what happens is your nose gets used to smelling the skunk smell, and after a while it stops smelling quite as strong, and the tomato juices more pleasant odour is enough to mask the skunk smell. to anyone who hasn't been around the smell for very long, it still smells awful. the process is called olfactory fatigue.
I love these videos
I've attended a *couple* of lectures that talked about the apparent quantum effects in smell (and other biological processes)!
i always love to see a gorgeous Schlenk Line!!!, keep bringing Organometallic Chemistry
I've heard that the texture on the surface of the mentos permits the carbonation of the drink somewhere to attach, and it makes the soda fizz up.
They're talking about optical isomerism, or chirality, which involves molecules that are non-superimposable mirror images of one another (put one of your hands on top of the other; they are the same shape but are non-superimposable). They are identical in most ways apart from a few, such as how they rotate plane polarised light or, more relevantly, how they interact with biological receptors, i.e. how they smell, taste, etc.
thank you for the new channel recommendation
You forgot about furfurylthiol! The coffee smell! :D
I was expecting Brady to have a sniff test.
If your confused, numberphile (a show made by the same guy who produces these videos, in case you don't know), made a video explaining that. RUclips's counting system stops at around 300, so it can add advertisements, if I remember that correctly.
I used thiols for a long time, since they bind on elemental gold very well. with this, you can create amazingly useful functional surfaces.
Luckily my thiols were to big to smell :)
Good question. The most amazing fact about some thiols is that you can actually smell some of them in very highly diluted forms, and when in low concentrations they tend to smell quite nice(just to give you the perspective of how diluted they have to be in order to smell good(this is not in general): 1 mg of thiol per 10000000 dm3 of H2O! Amazing, ha!) Also, grapefruit contains some other compunds which give smell to it(mostly esters).
As I understand it, we evolved that revulsion because spoiled food tends to contain thiols. It's not that the thiols themselves are toxic in those quantities - it's just that they're very easy to detect and they tended to be associated with other chemicals which were dangerous to us.
This video reeks of great stories!
How funny you should do this video now. I was just talking with a friend about how Skunk smell (from a dead Skunk - road kill). I was commenting on how the odor, like Camphor, sticks like glue and lasts so long. I postulated it was because they are aromatic rings, and quite stable. So the phenol compound would persist and must be highly reactive. ...and here is video on it, brilliant! :D
That is some quite good evolutionary psychology.
elements heavier than iron come from that explosion you just mentioned. our sun is a second generation star, the heavier elements in our solar system come from an older star that exploded.
I've read the series throughout, grew up on it. I was thinking how it'd be during the series, I probably because I've been reading HP:MOR lately.
Sorry for another question: Is the mercaptan's mercury capturing ability related to the sulfur atom? I ask because we have mercury spill kits in our equipment shop and they all contain powdered sulfur.
I can't speak explicitly for that particular compound, but generally, compounds that utilize heavier elements in this manner tend to become pretty toxic pretty quickly.
God, I love the professor!
he has some good criticisms and additions.
Any chance we could see a followup to the sodium/water video, where you make better use of that amazing phantom camera? Thunderfoot made some very interesting observations about your theories, and the potential for the Periodic Videos to actually contribute to a new scientific discovery, instead of simply giving demos, would be amazing!
A new science channel ??
Great Scott !
Thank you for explaining. It has been a while since I saw the vid. It appears I forgot some details.
I think you should do a video on the chemicals in the brain and what their function is. One interesting video could be also what if the chemicals in the human body are not balanced. :)
being a chemist the worst thiol I had to deal with was the diester of thiol succinic acid. You had the wonderful sweet smell of the ester with the rottenness of the thiol. It was awful. If even a trace was spilled you'd smell it for weeks.
Your tie is awesome!
YAAAAAAY! New Video of periodicvideos :))))))
the professor did say something about that. apparently natural gas/methane has no smell, so something, like one of these thiols, is added in order to let people detect the gas.
i smelt it :( a lot of the alarms in the city went crazy :)) i'm happy that now i know exactly what it was. thank you! :)
i still remember one of my profs saying that two moles os "shitol" make jasmin
Glad to the that professor was on a good mood
My high school biology teacher wanted to teach us why asparagus pee smelled the way it did. He opened a bottle of methyl mercaptan in the fume hood without noting the boiling point. It boiled away immediately, went up the fume hood, across the roof, and back down in the windows. We had to stand outside for a few hours, but I never forgot asparagus's secret ingredient.
Do a video about superconductor metals and how they work
I wouldn't name "2,2-dimethyl-ethanethiol" b/c the parent chain should be named with the longest number of carbons, which is propane. But the difference between "2-methyl-2-propanethiol" and "2-methyl-2-thiol-propane", I don't know. The thiol and propane belong to two different functional groups so it has to do with that.
Probably the same way we make heavy atoms - colisions. Also its not just - out of H start fusing He, out of He start to fuse Li. Because then we would end up with mostly even atomic numbered elements.
I already knew about psyfile bit when I heard him say new channel I just thought 'really Brady? ANOTHER CHANNEl?'
Strawman argument, beautiful.
Prof. Moody and Prof. Moriaty?
You're the best..
Usually "R" denotes a hydrogen or a hydrocarbon side chain (of some length).
The Prof. Should make a video explaining Right-handed vs. Left-handed molecules.
Do the Selenium/Tellurium compounds have similar, but worse, smells to thiols? or are they different and worse
if he was my science teacher i would love science again
sometimes, where the chemical is faceing is very important, especially when dealing with drugs.
look for some thing called enantiomers (if i try to explain it, it would take me days)
A few months ago, the Japanese isolated a compound that smells like vanilla from cow manure. Indol is commonly used in perfume, but also contributes to making poop stink. A little thiol makes garlic and grapefruit smell good, a lot smells like rotten eggs. Chemistry is very strange.
I love this guy, and his tie... I want his tie.
BRADY!!! why must you make more channels for me to subscribe to????? i already have 188!!!!.......189 now guh, damn you and your ability to know exactly what i want to watch.
Can you please explain the diet coke and mentos reaction?
Is it possible that there is a mechanism in the nose to isolate the sulphur-hydrogen bond from the triols? Then we would just be recognizing that bonded pair. I guess the issue would be if that bod was stable and how much energy would go into isolating it (also if that is actually how it's done)...
Is this a similar reason as why necrotic or burning flesh has a terrible stench, like when you have electro-surgery or smell dead animals?
As the prof said, many foodstuffs give off hydrogen-sulphides when they rot.
Yay new video ! :)
I love your tie.
We use 2-mercaptoethanol in the lab and that stuff is stinky! Another stinky smell is anaerobic bacteria. It is amazing how such a tiny thing could stink so badly!
what about Betamercaptoethanol which we use as a reducing agents in the biochem?
Does any of this explain the smell from pulp and paper mills ?
I love that the selling point for psyfile is to compare his daughter's hair.
Can someone explain to me the nomenclature of 2-methyl-2-propanethiol? The compound looks like it ought to be called 2-methyl-2-thiol-propane. or 2,2-dimethyl-ethanethiol
Does this mean that you can get rid of the smell from skunks with bleach?
So are mercaptans part of the compound beta-mercaptoethanol? We used that in intro BCEM but alas I am not a chemist.
I have made grapefuirt mercaptan before from pulegone and H2S :) it really really smells bad as I had to make 17grams of it!
There is a talk from TED.com on youtube here: watch?v=yzOcvINn8Iw in which Luca Turin talks about why he believes we smell vibrational frequency's and a possible mechanism for it and how he founded a company making scents for the perfume industry based on this. I found it quite compelling.
I have a question for you. When the Snow melts where does the White go?
I like periodically glancing at his tie.
My Paramedical Biology Teacher once brought Durian fruit to show the class, the moment she took it out of the plastic the pungent smell filled the room and lots of people in the school thought there was a gas leak.
I'm surprised butyric acid wasn't mentioned :o
Very interesting indeed, i'm with the professor theory about why these compounds smell so wrong!...
PROFFESOR MOODY!!
I love your tie :>