I'm surprised you didn't mention the most notorious side effect of OsO4 exposure: when it sublimes, prolonged contact with the eyes can cause irreversible blindness because its vapors literally stain your corneas black.
The other problem it has is that, while it has a pungent odor, it can poison people even below its odor threshold with prolonged exposure. The victim has no idea anything is wrong at first, only to develop pulmonary edema and die hours or days later. It's similar to phosgene that way.
@@grebulocities8225 *The other problem _you have_ :^) Also, dang, I thought I could keep myself safe from phosgene by watching out for the musty hay smell. (Though I have no idea how green corn smells?) Serves me right for trusting cute elephants on WW1 posters to tell me the whole story, I guess... (srsly though, like Tracy said above, you learn some pretty interesting stuff in the comments
@@grebulocities8225 _it can poison people even below its odor threshold with prolonged exposure_ Yes, I was a little surprised when, at 02:37 , the narration stated, _Also, it gives off a smell similar to chlorine._ Narrator is seemingly more comfortable than I would be with the risk. ;)
we use OsO4 all the time in my lab as a stain for electron microscopy. It's certainly the most toxic reagent we use and I have the utmost respect for it.
@@loberd09 yeah that's a concern. We keep ours (usually a 4% aqueous solution) in a container inside a second container, and the outer container still builds up a nasty looking black reside on the inside.
@@RespectTheChemistry I’m *that* guy in the lab who winds up with all the hazardous projects/chemicals. A running joke amongst the engineering group is to tell new employees of they see me running to get worried. I’ll work with any hazard as long as I am in charge of safety and can do what ever I want to make it safe. And to the ventilation point I take no chances. I was working with 45% HF. I did it in the hood (obviously) but on the off chance the hood malfunctioned I wore a full face respirator with HF cartridges for the entirety of the procedure, and a well stocked HF emergency kit was at hand.
"Hrm. I have a super strong oxidizer and a super strong reducing agent. Let's mix them and heat them up." That is why I love this channel so much. Been 20 years since I was last in the chemistry field, but your videos really help me keep my interest afloat and my knowledge up to speed. Thank you for making these videos!
I think you meant oxidizer and oxidizing agent as an oxidizing agent is a substance that can reduce itself to allow a substance to oxidize itself (I.e. a substance that oxidizes loses electrons to the oxidizing agent that reduces itself by gaining those electrons)
Osmium tetroxide presents a solution to an interesting problem: the divergence of the masses of the platinum-iridium international standard mass and its deputies. It is due to the history of metallurgy. Platinum-iridium was chosen because the two elements of which it is made are chemically HIGHLY INERT. They are unaffected by nearly all chemicals. However, iridium has an "evil twin", osmium, with which it is found as an alloy called variously iridiosmium or osmiridium. At the time that Grand-K was created, it was impossible to remove ALL osmium from iridium, so osmium remains as a trace element. To make the platinum-iridium standards, the powders of the constituent metals were thoroughly mixed and then sintered into a solid block. This process left countless tiny channels which penetrated the final block. Unlike platinum and iridium, osmium is NOT chemically inert. It combines with oxygen from ordinary air to form osmium tetroxide. Also, unlike nearly all oxides of heavy metals, osmium tetroxide is volatile and evaporates at ordinary temperatures. Hence, the effect of air on the standard weights is two-fold: At first, they gain weight as the oxygen is combined into osmium tetroxide; then the osmium tetra-oxide evaporates. This process is very slow, but over decades the results accumulate, and the cylinders lose weight. The exact losses depend upon temperature, humidity, and oxygen content of surrounding air. Mystery solved.
This reagent is CONSTANTLY referenced in college textbooks as the go-to way of forming diols and epoxies from alkenes . But it is SO toxic, I don’t know of ANY lab that routinely uses it. This reagent is truly terrifying and I hope to never work with it.
@@bensmith3304 with that application though, I’m sure they’re dealing with microgram quantities. I could be wrong, but yes, some applications do use it, but only to produce atomically thin amounts of it. In those cases, the danger of poisoning is pretty much zero.
Yeah, for some reason college textbooks are out of touch with reality, not only is it toxic AF it is also extremely expensive. One use it is irreplaceable for is TEM sample prep because it puts metal in stuff in a way that other reagents cannot. 🤓
Among all the chemicals you have showcased so far, OsO4 scares me the most. Those reactions were gorgeous though! I never would have seen them outside of your channel! (Also good choice of suspenseful music!)
@@mrkrabstinysadviolin1400 Hey! This video's soundtrack includes: Our Final Mission - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen Ceres - Lennon Hutton Dark Mind - Wendel Scherer Rise to Power - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen Now We Fight - Bonnie Grace There Is No Sequel - Philip Ayers
I have enough experience in the chemistry academia/idustry to have a VERY healthy fear of some chemicals and 1000s of different types of damage they can do. I'm still so impressed that you can safely play with these chemicals as if they're toys!
I'm as fascinated by the packaging of your chemicals as by your experimentation with them. Thank you for including shots of the beautiful bottles, canisters, ampoules, etc.
Cis dihydroxylation of alkenes is the first thing comes in my mind when I hear OsO4. Very straightforward mechanism. First learnt that in freshman year, but haven't seen that in action in person till this day lol
OsO4 is honestly beginning to fade into obscurity at least in the academia world as far as I know. It's deadly, toxic and spicy which sucks for a good reagent. The only reason it's still taught to students as a means of cis dihydroxylation is because its REALLY good at its job. Sure there are other reagents out there that wont make you blind, but this one is just really really good at hydroxylation of alkenes.
OsO4 is probably the most toxic reagent I've ever used in organic synthesis so far. My supervisor would only allow us to purchase a 4% aqueous solution and use as such - we would directly transfer it from a freshly cracked ampule to a small Schlenk tube, and use it catalytically with NMO (N-methyl morpholine N-oxide) as the stoichiometric oxidant.
Fantastic images and drama. WOW, the hair on my arms stands up seeing the melt and crystallization. A chemical channel at its best. Informative and entertaining.
I actually sell OsO4 by the gram on eBay. I've sold 4/5 vials that I had listed in the last 5 minutes, I believe because of this video. Thank you for posting! It's helped me out by making it more well known. Thanks! 😃 Edit: only 1 left! 🤯
@Antonio Trav thank you for the endorsement! If you order anything anytime from here out let me know that it's you and I'll be sure that your order is given priority and will be taken great care of with something extra added in with what you ordered. I take really good care of my customers. 🙂😉
@@justyourfriendlypebble8943 it's sealed in ampules and they have to physically break it open to get to it. That, and this element is extremely well known for what it is and we even state in the description that it is dangerous. We also vet each buyer for it by asking them certain questions when they buy it. We have also turned down and canceled sales of it in the past because we didn't trust the buyer to handle it correctly. Just because we sell it, doesn't mean a person can just buy it and have it delivered. It mainly ends up at a business or lab anyways. Rarely does a random person ever even ask about it.
Put everything in bag and can, seal it, write text what's inside and send waste management facility. They read it, okay, and throw that s#it in flames.. :p
The hypergolic reaction with hydrazine was made cooler by anticipation as it slowly slid down the test tube. Deflagration is just as interesting to watch as detonation. :) Excellent footage, as always. Thanks mate!
Some amazing footage once again. Both the close-ups and the slow-mo. But, jeez, some of those reactions were so fast that even 4230 fps wasn't enough to really see what was happening! May I suggest a collaboration with The Slow-Mo Guys? They have some *extremely* fast cameras. I love that you're bringing chemistry to the world that most chemists would class as "nope!". Hmm, what happens when we react OsO4 with LiAlH4? My prediction was that it would spray molten aluminium out of the tube, but the reaction was so fast that it instead launched the tube into the flask of water. In pieces. Yikes!
I remember seeing this listed as a 'good oxidising agent' for a reaction in first-year undergrad organic, certainly hope I don't have to work with it anytime soon. I'm curious as to why the same explosive reactions don't occur in the solid state though.
Just as the structure of water is different between frozen and liquid, same for the different allotropes of phosphorus, it could be that the (just like with white phosphorus) molten 'allotrope' is structurally less stable. Combine that with higher heat and increased surface area kablam. not 100% certain though.
Just mixing OsO4 and white phosphorus, as you do... Absolute madman XD Brilliant videos, thanks for showing these reactions that we'd probably never get to see otherwise!
The even scarier aspect of OsO4 is that if you expose a piece of metallic Osmium to air, it spontaneously forms the tetroxide on it's surface. Which then sublimes, exposing more metal to the air, forming more tetroxide. This is actually the source of the element's name, which comes from a Greek word for "bad smell", because the metal always emits the halogen-like odor from the tetroxide.
Osmium metal is quite inert. Osmium powder (sponge) however, does react with oxygen in the air. A small bead of the metal in general does not pose any problems or dangers.
Wow that's amazing All I know about OsO4 by my high school chemistry is that it is used for syn hydroxylation of alkenes to make diols. But baeyer's reagent is a safer alternative.
“He sure is showing that ampoule for a while… I wonder if this is finally the thing so dangerous that he won’t do chemistry on it… ah ok he’s mixing it with white phosphorous. Sure. Ok.”
Thank you for this video. I believe that watching this video has given me all the experience I want as far as Osmium Tetroxide is concerned. Subscribed.
@@nosurprise885 Oh definitely not, any rocket made with this stuff would be spewing toxic osmium the whole time. It was merely an interesting observation.
@@virtualtools_3021 better than the Dimethylmercury rocket that only didn't exist because some sensible person in Rochester labs told NARTS to f*** right off when asked to synthesise it in bulk. They still made and ran the plain old Mercury rocket tho.
The production qaulity of your videos is always getting better. I particularly liked the music during the first half of the video. I don't how how to describe it, but it's the kind of music you'd hear in the background of a TV show when shoing the dangers of chemicals, radiation, or a biozazard.
To be fair, osmium tetroxide mostly gets a bad rap from the ominous music which begins playing while you're trying to film it. I mean, yeah, exposure can permanently blind you or cause you to drown in your own blood, but the intimidation factor is mostly that dang creepy music.
It can also be used as a term to describe chemical bombs. It basically just means a bomb whose main destructive component is not the explosion itself, but a subsequent release of a highly harmful to life compound or substance that gets released as a consequence of the initial explosion.
Absolutely crazy to see anyone show of such reactions, but if i had suspected one person, it certainly would have been you lmao. Love the slowmo shots as per usual.
Yes... Given the shape of the lump that was expelled from the tube, and the fact that it appears to be relatively the same shape, i believe it was the phosphorus.
The osmiums keeps the VIII oxidation state so it's not a redox, but I guess that some secondary reactions are producing Hydrogen gas causing that flame
Hello Chemical force, Do you think Os04 can react with piperine and give piperonal (then regenerates itself) without giving too much osmium complexes ? Best regards.
Black stuff could be a lower oxide or fine metal, hard to tell. Boiling it in HCl might just flake it off the glass even if it's not dissolving. And it's so fine it could be hard to see in the water? I love how the phosphorous chunk turned black just from the vapor coming off!
My respects for you! You have BALLS of steel!!! Putting phosphorus, organo-hydrazine or LiAlH4 together with liquid OsO4. Balls man, man. I do organic ozone chemistry myself, but this is realy brave. :D Nice, keep it up!
My thoughts also, my old CRC handbook describes the dioxide as black. Seems reasonable that the dioxide would be the low energy reduction product with LiAlH4. By way of analogy, KMnO4 reacts explosively with aluminum powder (upon ignition, not hypergolic) to give MnO2, Al2O3 and KO.
@@robertlapointe4093 Yes i know that, I was wondering what happen to the lithium and aluminum in the molecule. I think that lithium aluminate is formed but I'm not sure of that.
For understanding OsO4 you need to know that it wants to get its electrons back so urgently that it is a very strong oxidizer! It's a VERY noble metal and it's keen on any electrons it can get to be a "shiny" and valuable metal again. 😉 And it is not a picky one! I used it for oxidation of alkenes to produce CIS-diols. It's a very handy but pricey chemical and somehow it's not as destructive as KMnO4.
WOW. Im lost for words, amazing video and reactions. Also i dont understand how somebody can make bomb out of it, when normal person barely can afford to buy a gram of that substance. You think they have produced it or what :D
Might have just wanted it as a chemical trigger, given how hard it is to buy any sort of initiating device in the UK. Keep the bomb in Styrofoam until you're ready to trigger it, then run before it turns into liquid and ignites the second stage of the device. As an aside, if it's the osmium itself that's expensive, then you could buy up old fountain pens cheap, the better quality ones are often osmium plated. Depending on how much you'd actually need of course. Even with a fraction of a gram, technically it would still be a dirty bomb, in that it would require specialist cleanup, though it probably wouldn't deny a large area.
@@Si74l0rd If you're using OsO4 for a trigger, you've skipped a dozen far easier ways to set things off. I mean, going to a hardware, garden, or even grocery store is enough for something nasty.
@@patrickjanecke5894 Well since it never actually happened it's academic. It appears there was a communication intercept of it being talked about for use in a bomb. So none was ever acquired, nor was a bomb constructed that could use it. The Porton Down chaps theorised it would likely be used as a catalyst, depending on quantity, but they never had Osmium tetroxide on their radar so it's not in their catalogue of mixtures. They're well aware of the more standard compounds used, and most are controlled. Though if you don't care about contaminants then there are certain off the shelf products still available. And eBay sells stuff you can no longer get in a hardware store anyway. You'd need to do a fair amount of work to even get any sort of concentrated acid though these days, unless you're ordering through a specialist company, and they only deliver to registered premises. It's difficult to find drain cleaner containing acid offline nowadays, even if you do have the equipment to purify and concentrate it.
Amazing video just as expected. You have done your job on exhibiting & doing experiments with rare chemicals excellently. I am doing research on uncommon valent halides, such as TmI2 and MoCl2. Could you do such topics in the future?
Very nice. It's great to see obscure chemicals getting recognition on this channel. I think the volatility of OsO4 is truly apparent when you dropped in that piece of P4. So I assume Cl2O6 is next on the list?
Perhaps the black coating on the walls of the test tube is a product of incomplete reduction of osmium tetroxide - osmium dioxide, which dissolves in hydrochloric acid
Isn't OsO4 referred to as 'the billionaires nerve gas' because the cost is so high. Maybe it has got cheaper, but it used to be used in just one synthetic reaction - the cis dihydroxylation of alkenes and was used to make one medicine (that I know of). But pretty quickly someone worked out a co-catalyst system to allow vastly less OsO4 to be used.
While I don't doubt what you say is true, I'm finding your selection of materials doesn't do a very good job of showcasing the danger: "Osmium tetroxide ignites various materials or even explodes in contact with them" and then you proceed to show how it causes explosion with - a material that explodes on contact with water - a material that ignites on contact with air - a material that sometimes explodes all on its own, without any provocation if not stabilized - another material that explodes on contact with water I'm quite aware OsO4 is dangerous, but with selection like that one could "showcase" pretty much anything as dangerous.
I also agree. But I'm not at all degrading the video, just saying that maybe you could do a part two where you talk about some of the more toxic effects and dangerous associated with less common pyrotechnic reagents
Weird. Osmium tetroxide only has an MSDS health code of 3, which is the same as formaldehyde. There are lots of common things that are rated a 4 (i.e. the most dangerous health code) like hydrogen sulfide or phosgene. I guess those things can be smelled at lethal concentration. I've always thought phosgene smelled pretty good though. I don't know if most people would recognize it as something bad at dangerous levels. -edit at 8:35, thats clearly a weather balloon. Don't worry about it.
You’re almost certainly looking at the rating for a 4% solution, not pure crystals, but either way, NFPA diamonds really don’t do a great job of accurately characterizing lab hazard - it’s mostly for emergency workers and the like. GHS is much more through and accurate.
@@GlutenEruption eh. Well lets put it this way: when I want to find out how toxic something is, I usually go to wikipedia, look at the both the GHS pictograms and the MSDS diamond, totally ignore them and go straight to the LC50 or LD50 then read the section on safety and handling. If you look at the actual SDS from the manufacturer or the characterization pages on something like chemspider or Sigma Aldrich, you get far, far less information than you do on wikipedia (though for slightly (and i do mean slightly) more chemicals). The most important thing I've learned about chemistry is that everything everyone says is always wrong. Melting points are wrong, decomposition temperatures are wrong, side reactions are wrong, yields are wrong, just everything is wrong except for the most simple reactions, and even then usually how simple it is is also wrong.
@@htomerif Definitely - I couldn’t agree more with all of that. That’s one of the things I love about this channel. Think about all of the Chemicals and Reagents - even INCREDIBLY commonplace industrial chemicals like SO3 - that you couldn’t even find a single PICTURE of before they had videos here. You were left with less than descriptive blurbs buried deep in old literature or if you’re lucky, you might know a professor or coworker who worked with some once and can maybe help fill in some details.
@@htomerif "Melting points are wrong, decomposition temperatures are wrong, side reactions are wrong, yields are wrong, just everything is wrong" someone is doing their master thesis
I'm surprised you didn't mention the most notorious side effect of OsO4 exposure: when it sublimes, prolonged contact with the eyes can cause irreversible blindness because its vapors literally stain your corneas black.
To quote Ex&F's sulfur nitride video:
_How Can Osmium Toxicity Be Real If Our Eyes Aren't Real_
What!?! That's very scary, huh? That's why I love the comments, you learn some pretty interesting stuff!
The other problem it has is that, while it has a pungent odor, it can poison people even below its odor threshold with prolonged exposure. The victim has no idea anything is wrong at first, only to develop pulmonary edema and die hours or days later. It's similar to phosgene that way.
@@grebulocities8225 *The other problem _you have_ :^)
Also, dang, I thought I could keep myself safe from phosgene by watching out for the musty hay smell. (Though I have no idea how green corn smells?) Serves me right for trusting cute elephants on WW1 posters to tell me the whole story, I guess...
(srsly though, like Tracy said above, you learn some pretty interesting stuff in the comments
@@grebulocities8225
_it can poison people even below its odor threshold with prolonged exposure_
Yes, I was a little surprised when, at 02:37 , the narration stated, _Also, it gives off a smell similar to chlorine._ Narrator is seemingly more comfortable than I would be with the risk. ;)
we use OsO4 all the time in my lab as a stain for electron microscopy. It's certainly the most toxic reagent we use and I have the utmost respect for it.
but what about anhydrides in resins and uranium salts?
I’ve been kicking the idea around of using some for a project but I don’t trust the ventilation in the lab enough to try.
@@loberd09 yeah that's a concern. We keep ours (usually a 4% aqueous solution) in a container inside a second container, and the outer container still builds up a nasty looking black reside on the inside.
@@RespectTheChemistry Then it's certainly a good thing that second container is there. That's a pretty intimidating reagent
@@RespectTheChemistry I’m *that* guy in the lab who winds up with all the hazardous projects/chemicals. A running joke amongst the engineering group is to tell new employees of they see me running to get worried. I’ll work with any hazard as long as I am in charge of safety and can do what ever I want to make it safe.
And to the ventilation point I take no chances. I was working with 45% HF. I did it in the hood (obviously) but on the off chance the hood malfunctioned I wore a full face respirator with HF cartridges for the entirety of the procedure, and a well stocked HF emergency kit was at hand.
"Hrm. I have a super strong oxidizer and a super strong reducing agent. Let's mix them and heat them up." That is why I love this channel so much. Been 20 years since I was last in the chemistry field, but your videos really help me keep my interest afloat and my knowledge up to speed. Thank you for making these videos!
The OsO4 is the reducing agent?
@@ethanwild3301 nope..LiAlH4 is
I think you meant oxidizer and oxidizing agent as an oxidizing agent is a substance that can reduce itself to allow a substance to oxidize itself (I.e. a substance that oxidizes loses electrons to the oxidizing agent that reduces itself by gaining those electrons)
Guys you're all wrong my uncle Ben showed me his IrF11 but he can't show you or the FBI will arrest him
Osmium tetroxide presents a solution to an interesting problem: the divergence of the masses of the platinum-iridium international standard mass and its deputies. It is due to the history of metallurgy. Platinum-iridium was chosen because the two elements of which it is made are chemically HIGHLY INERT. They are unaffected by nearly all chemicals. However, iridium has an "evil twin", osmium, with which it is found as an alloy called variously iridiosmium or osmiridium. At the time that Grand-K was created, it was impossible to remove ALL osmium from iridium, so osmium remains as a trace element. To make the platinum-iridium standards, the powders of the constituent metals were thoroughly mixed and then sintered into a solid block. This process left countless tiny channels which penetrated the final block. Unlike platinum and iridium, osmium is NOT chemically inert. It combines with oxygen from ordinary air to form osmium tetroxide. Also, unlike nearly all oxides of heavy metals, osmium tetroxide is volatile and evaporates at ordinary temperatures. Hence, the effect of air on the standard weights is two-fold: At first, they gain weight as the oxygen is combined into osmium tetroxide; then the osmium tetra-oxide evaporates. This process is very slow, but over decades the results accumulate, and the cylinders lose weight. The exact losses depend upon temperature, humidity, and oxygen content of surrounding air. Mystery solved.
Thank you! That always bothered me. Every mention of the Kg standards mentioned the divergence, but not an explanation.
This is PRECISELY how i meant to reply…instead, it came out, “chemistry is hard”
i absolutely love the comment sections of chemistry RUclipsrs. so many intelligent people here spitting knowledge.
finally!
Imagine putting "PhD" at the end of your RUclips username 🤣🤣🤓
This reagent is CONSTANTLY referenced in college textbooks as the go-to way of forming diols and epoxies from alkenes . But it is SO toxic, I don’t know of ANY lab that routinely uses it. This reagent is truly terrifying and I hope to never work with it.
It is used regularly as a fixative/contrast agent in transmission electron microscopy.
@@bensmith3304 with that application though, I’m sure they’re dealing with microgram quantities. I could be wrong, but yes, some applications do use it, but only to produce atomically thin amounts of it. In those cases, the danger of poisoning is pretty much zero.
Especially when permanganate usually has your back for this kind of reaction.
My anatomy professor uses it for electron microscopy. He said he lost his sense of smell using it for many years
Yeah, for some reason college textbooks are out of touch with reality, not only is it toxic AF it is also extremely expensive. One use it is irreplaceable for is TEM sample prep because it puts metal in stuff in a way that other reagents cannot. 🤓
Among all the chemicals you have showcased so far, OsO4 scares me the most. Those reactions were gorgeous though! I never would have seen them outside of your channel! (Also good choice of suspenseful music!)
And the mad man heated it with white phosphorus. Such a cool thing to see
Nice pfp
Anyone know the name of the track? @chemicalforce can you please post it? :)
@@mrkrabstinysadviolin1400
Hey!
This video's soundtrack includes:
Our Final Mission - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
Ceres - Lennon Hutton
Dark Mind - Wendel Scherer
Rise to Power - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen
Now We Fight - Bonnie Grace
There Is No Sequel - Philip Ayers
Oso4 is the shit of nightmares
I have enough experience in the chemistry academia/idustry to have a VERY healthy fear of some chemicals and 1000s of different types of damage they can do. I'm still so impressed that you can safely play with these chemicals as if they're toys!
I'm as fascinated by the packaging of your chemicals as by your experimentation with them. Thank you for including shots of the beautiful bottles, canisters, ampoules, etc.
Cis dihydroxylation of alkenes is the first thing comes in my mind when I hear OsO4. Very straightforward mechanism. First learnt that in freshman year, but haven't seen that in action in person till this day lol
OsO4 is honestly beginning to fade into obscurity at least in the academia world as far as I know. It's deadly, toxic and spicy which sucks for a good reagent. The only reason it's still taught to students as a means of cis dihydroxylation is because its REALLY good at its job. Sure there are other reagents out there that wont make you blind, but this one is just really really good at hydroxylation of alkenes.
Spicy hydroxilator.... Sounds like an insult.
The filming of this channel consistently astounds me, well done.
OsO4 is probably the most toxic reagent I've ever used in organic synthesis so far. My supervisor would only allow us to purchase a 4% aqueous solution and use as such - we would directly transfer it from a freshly cracked ampule to a small Schlenk tube, and use it catalytically with NMO (N-methyl morpholine N-oxide) as the stoichiometric oxidant.
In the lab, I was never afraid of any chemical substance, except OsO4! We used that as a catalyst; i hated it, it's so extremely dangerous.
Fantastic images and drama. WOW, the hair on my arms stands up seeing the melt and crystallization. A chemical channel at its best. Informative and entertaining.
Hair on my eye's..
I actually sell OsO4 by the gram on eBay. I've sold 4/5 vials that I had listed in the last 5 minutes, I believe because of this video. Thank you for posting! It's helped me out by making it more well known. Thanks! 😃
Edit: only 1 left! 🤯
@Antonio Trav thank you for the endorsement! If you order anything anytime from here out let me know that it's you and I'll be sure that your order is given priority and will be taken great care of with something extra added in with what you ordered. I take really good care of my customers. 🙂😉
Why are you making and selling this stuff to randoms though, surely something this dangerous must have some regulations right ?
@@justyourfriendlypebble8943 it's sealed in ampules and they have to physically break it open to get to it. That, and this element is extremely well known for what it is and we even state in the description that it is dangerous. We also vet each buyer for it by asking them certain questions when they buy it. We have also turned down and canceled sales of it in the past because we didn't trust the buyer to handle it correctly. Just because we sell it, doesn't mean a person can just buy it and have it delivered. It mainly ends up at a business or lab anyways. Rarely does a random person ever even ask about it.
@@BackYardScience2000 Appreciate the clarification, you sound like a responsible seller
Hey mate! I hope your business is going well 😂
How do you handle cleanup and disposal after demos like this?
Put everything in bag and can, seal it, write text what's inside and send waste management facility. They read it, okay, and throw that s#it in flames.. :p
Buy a new house
Flush it down the toilet
@@jannejohansson3383 I think they handle heavy metals so.ewhat differently than the run of the mill organic waste... I hope...
local fish pond
Happy to see that you are using proper lab safety techniques so we can see this rare chemical in action!
The hypergolic reaction with hydrazine was made cooler by anticipation as it slowly slid down the test tube.
Deflagration is just as interesting to watch as detonation. :)
Excellent footage, as always. Thanks mate!
Isn't that reaction about as close as you can get to a black flame?
never ever stop making videos man. If there were oscars for youtube videos you deserve all of the awards for all categories
if he stops making videos then I'll assume he neglected his PPE that one time
Some amazing footage once again. Both the close-ups and the slow-mo.
But, jeez, some of those reactions were so fast that even 4230 fps wasn't enough to really see what was happening! May I suggest a collaboration with The Slow-Mo Guys? They have some *extremely* fast cameras.
I love that you're bringing chemistry to the world that most chemists would class as "nope!".
Hmm, what happens when we react OsO4 with LiAlH4? My prediction was that it would spray molten aluminium out of the tube, but the reaction was so fast that it instead launched the tube into the flask of water. In pieces. Yikes!
I remember seeing this listed as a 'good oxidising agent' for a reaction in first-year undergrad organic, certainly hope I don't have to work with it anytime soon. I'm curious as to why the same explosive reactions don't occur in the solid state though.
Not enough mixing/surface area
@@virtualtools_3021 probably not enough activation energy too
Just as the structure of water is different between frozen and liquid, same for the different allotropes of phosphorus, it could be that the (just like with white phosphorus) molten 'allotrope' is structurally less stable. Combine that with higher heat and increased surface area kablam. not 100% certain though.
Just mixing OsO4 and white phosphorus, as you do... Absolute madman XD
Brilliant videos, thanks for showing these reactions that we'd probably never get to see otherwise!
Poor Hydrazine seems to be afraid of Osmiumtetroxide... but finally they merged together.
One of the best chemistry experiments videos ever on RUclips..thanks so much!!
The even scarier aspect of OsO4 is that if you expose a piece of metallic Osmium to air, it spontaneously forms the tetroxide on it's surface. Which then sublimes, exposing more metal to the air, forming more tetroxide. This is actually the source of the element's name, which comes from a Greek word for "bad smell", because the metal always emits the halogen-like odor from the tetroxide.
That is one if the most terrifying things ive ever heard
@@Paonporteur it should be wtf
Not true. Osmium metal is inert and harmless.
Osmium metal is quite inert. Osmium powder (sponge) however, does react with oxygen in the air. A small bead of the metal in general does not pose any problems or dangers.
That’s just false, what
Wow that's amazing
All I know about OsO4 by my high school chemistry is that it is used for syn hydroxylation of alkenes to make diols.
But baeyer's reagent is a safer alternative.
I like how the fume hood kinda sounds like a drum roll right before the reaction happens.
10:51 I would guess the black coating is a lower oxide of osmium? Something like OsO2 or a non-stoichiometric oxide like OsOx with x between 1 and 2.
“He sure is showing that ampoule for a while… I wonder if this is finally the thing so dangerous that he won’t do chemistry on it… ah ok he’s mixing it with white phosphorous. Sure. Ok.”
Your channel deserves subscribers in millions
Your channel is consistently the finest of all the channels I watch! Thank You!!
Thanks Chemical Force! You have shown me materials and compunds I could only dram of in reactions and otherwise.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for sharing! I love the great way that you are filming the reactions!
As always, this channel is just pure awesomeness!! thanks for making the video!! btw, nice music to go along with the video!
Thank you for this video. I believe that watching this video has given me all the experience I want as far as Osmium Tetroxide is concerned.
Subscribed.
Superb improvement in filming technique and storyboarding with suitably dramatic music. Keep it coming 👍
THANK YOU FOR MAKING A PROFESSIONAL VIDEO! 139 comments in ONE day! your on your way! good luck!
The Lithium Aluminium Hydride reaction created quite a significant amount of thrust.
dont think about it
@@nosurprise885 Oh definitely not, any rocket made with this stuff would be spewing toxic osmium the whole time. It was merely an interesting observation.
@@shadowtheimpure better than the mercury lithium fluorine TRI regent rocket that was theorized but never made
@@virtualtools_3021 Humanity is truly frightening in their capacity to self-destruct, isn't it?
@@virtualtools_3021 better than the Dimethylmercury rocket that only didn't exist because some sensible person in Rochester labs told NARTS to f*** right off when asked to synthesise it in bulk.
They still made and ran the plain old Mercury rocket tho.
The production qaulity of your videos is always getting better.
I particularly liked the music during the first half of the video.
I don't how how to describe it, but it's the kind of music you'd hear in the background of a TV show when shoing the dangers of chemicals, radiation, or a biozazard.
Once again you've turned chemistry into an art form. 👍🏻
To be fair, osmium tetroxide mostly gets a bad rap from the ominous music which begins playing while you're trying to film it. I mean, yeah, exposure can permanently blind you or cause you to drown in your own blood, but the intimidation factor is mostly that dang creepy music.
Best chemistry channel ever 👍❤️
The phrase "dirty bomb" is mostly used to refer to bombs that release nuclear radiation when detonated.
It can also be used as a term to describe chemical bombs. It basically just means a bomb whose main destructive component is not the explosion itself, but a subsequent release of a highly harmful to life compound or substance that gets released as a consequence of the initial explosion.
Principle is the same.
It's dirty in that it requires specialist cleanup. Even if it were only a tiny amount of OsO4.
So does mercury fulminate count as a dirty bomb nowadays?
I don't think so, and it vapor in air when main agents burn? It's nasty but not most effective what I know.
Those reactions equations are super nice addition to your video tht are already very good content
Honestly very impressed by the flame produced with white phosphorus, cool video ! :)
As usual, this video is stunning, beautifully shot
That was a really good one! Some angry reactions there. Scary chemical. 👍
Absolutely crazy to see anyone show of such reactions, but if i had suspected one person, it certainly would have been you lmao. Love the slowmo shots as per usual.
You really turn toxic inorganic chemistry into a facinated piece of scary art with nice colors and high speed footages. Keep up the good work.
This is his first chemistry video that had me shouting: "I don't like this", over and over. The cleanup must have been a total nightmare.
at this point i have to assume your fume hood's output pumps directly into Pripyat
bro ended up on a watchlist to make this video mad respect
I don’t like how cool it looks. It’s strangely a really pretty molecule.
Cesium dihydroxotetraoxoosmate? 😲 You are a legend, dude!
Jeez, you’ve come a long way. Great stuff!!!!
Your this ambient is EXCELLENT!👏👏👏👍👍👍😇
Yes... Given the shape of the lump that was expelled from the tube, and the fact that it appears to be relatively the same shape, i believe it was the phosphorus.
Awesome reactions, scary too. Thank you for showing us!
I think the black coating may be OsO₂ i.e., osmium dioxide or osmium (IV) oxide.
Don't ever IV Osmium.
Cool channel very interesting!!!! Finally a rabbit hole with something interesting
Congratulations you are now on a watchlist!
Videos like this make me fall for chemistry again and again ❤️😍
How you clear all super dangerous chemicals after demonstrations?!
Looks like real friendly stuff lol
Nice video as always.
5:57 would you call that a flame? what would you call that underwater sparking? Also, would that reaction be redox or would it be Lewis acid/base?
The osmiums keeps the VIII oxidation state so it's not a redox, but I guess that some secondary reactions are producing Hydrogen gas causing that flame
@@davideaezakmi9530 thanks!
Can you make a video about ruthenium tetroxide? Is tóxic and very reactive.
@@c2n10 Thanks for the information, interesting chemical are and dangerous.
I really like your warm water setup. Great viewing.
incredible videography and knowledge of chemistry!
Hello Chemical force,
Do you think Os04 can react with piperine and give piperonal (then regenerates itself) without giving too much osmium complexes ?
Best regards.
Black stuff could be a lower oxide or fine metal, hard to tell. Boiling it in HCl might just flake it off the glass even if it's not dissolving. And it's so fine it could be hard to see in the water?
I love how the phosphorous chunk turned black just from the vapor coming off!
My respects for you! You have BALLS of steel!!! Putting phosphorus, organo-hydrazine or LiAlH4 together with liquid OsO4. Balls man, man. I do organic ozone chemistry myself, but this is realy brave. :D Nice, keep it up!
Hum…I guess today was the day RUclips wanted me to be on a watch list lol
Awee it's so pretty and deadly!
10:50 Black substance in the end may be OsO (poorly soluble in acids)?
excellent choice of music! Really sets the mood
I love watching the soft metals like the potassium and the phosphorus oxidized immediately upon touching the osmium tetroxide
I think the dark stuff inside of the test tube is OsO2, Osmium (IV) Oxide.
My thoughts also, my old CRC handbook describes the dioxide as black. Seems reasonable that the dioxide would be the low energy reduction product with LiAlH4. By way of analogy, KMnO4 reacts explosively with aluminum powder (upon ignition, not hypergolic) to give MnO2, Al2O3 and KO.
And what is the oxidation product of LiAlH4 in this reaction?
@@Trifosgene Formally, the H in LiAlH4 is H- and it is oxidized to H+ in the water co-product.
@@Trifosgene what if I told you I work with multiple 100 kg quantities of triphosgene?
@@robertlapointe4093 Yes i know that, I was wondering what happen to the lithium and aluminum in the molecule. I think that lithium aluminate is formed but I'm not sure of that.
WOWO! THE CHEMICAL REACTION ARE VERY INTERESTING!
ofcourse its Yellow
This stuff is EXTREMELY toxic. I'm surprised you made it out safely! Cool experiments though.
For understanding OsO4 you need to know that it wants to get its electrons back so urgently that it is a very strong oxidizer! It's a VERY noble metal and it's keen on any electrons it can get to be a "shiny" and valuable metal again. 😉
And it is not a picky one! I used it for oxidation of alkenes to produce CIS-diols. It's a very handy but pricey chemical and somehow it's not as destructive as KMnO4.
I’d like to see your setup that makes this safe and easy to deal with.
Many years ago, we found a substitution of OsO4 in dihydroxylation of olefin. That substitution is ruthenium chloride
WOW. Im lost for words, amazing video and reactions. Also i dont understand how somebody can make bomb out of it, when normal person barely can afford to buy a gram of that substance. You think they have produced it or what :D
No. The osmium itself is where the cost lies. They just wanted their bomb to also be a status symbol I guess.
Might have just wanted it as a chemical trigger, given how hard it is to buy any sort of initiating device in the UK. Keep the bomb in Styrofoam until you're ready to trigger it, then run before it turns into liquid and ignites the second stage of the device.
As an aside, if it's the osmium itself that's expensive, then you could buy up old fountain pens cheap, the better quality ones are often osmium plated. Depending on how much you'd actually need of course. Even with a fraction of a gram, technically it would still be a dirty bomb, in that it would require specialist cleanup, though it probably wouldn't deny a large area.
@@Si74l0rd If you're using OsO4 for a trigger, you've skipped a dozen far easier ways to set things off. I mean, going to a hardware, garden, or even grocery store is enough for something nasty.
@@patrickjanecke5894 Not making sense to use it as a trigger. Agreed
@@patrickjanecke5894 Well since it never actually happened it's academic. It appears there was a communication intercept of it being talked about for use in a bomb. So none was ever acquired, nor was a bomb constructed that could use it. The Porton Down chaps theorised it would likely be used as a catalyst, depending on quantity, but they never had Osmium tetroxide on their radar so it's not in their catalogue of mixtures.
They're well aware of the more standard compounds used, and most are controlled. Though if you don't care about contaminants then there are certain off the shelf products still available. And eBay sells stuff you can no longer get in a hardware store anyway. You'd need to do a fair amount of work to even get any sort of concentrated acid though these days, unless you're ordering through a specialist company, and they only deliver to registered premises. It's difficult to find drain cleaner containing acid offline nowadays, even if you do have the equipment to purify and concentrate it.
Amazing video just as expected. You have done your job on exhibiting & doing experiments with rare chemicals excellently. I am doing research on uncommon valent halides, such as TmI2 and MoCl2. Could you do such topics in the future?
LOL, white phosphorus. "Hey guys, I just got the most horrible thing. Now let's see what happens when we mix it with the other most horrible thing."
Angry rust is very beautiful, thank you for showing me.
Thats very well said. Since we are very "smart" we're very good at finding ways to adapt. We just forget, get a new goal/focus and on we go...
I am amazed that after all of this You still have both hands.
Very nice. It's great to see obscure chemicals getting recognition on this channel. I think the volatility of OsO4 is truly apparent when you dropped in that piece of P4.
So I assume Cl2O6 is next on the list?
11:00 it can be osmium lithium alloy or even lithium osmide???
Is this in the TIWWW category for Mr. Lowe over at In the Pipeline?
This channel gives us beautiful video
Those are the cutest little test tubes ever!!
Perhaps the black coating on the walls of the test tube is a product of incomplete reduction of osmium tetroxide - osmium dioxide, which dissolves in hydrochloric acid
Thank you, this will help with my thesis work.
Please tell me the chemical name to apply on the copper coin surface needle must push bring near the copper coin
Isn't OsO4 referred to as 'the billionaires nerve gas' because the cost is so high. Maybe it has got cheaper, but it used to be used in just one synthetic reaction - the cis dihydroxylation of alkenes and was used to make one medicine (that I know of). But pretty quickly someone worked out a co-catalyst system to allow vastly less OsO4 to be used.
It looks like the test tube only broke when it hit the bottom of the flask I Wonder what it would do if you made it into a rocket
Bad idea. Rockets require propellants that can be stored by the rocket itself and be able to safely in a somewhat controlled manner combust
While I don't doubt what you say is true, I'm finding your selection of materials doesn't do a very good job of showcasing the danger: "Osmium tetroxide ignites various materials or even explodes in contact with them" and then you proceed to show how it causes explosion with
- a material that explodes on contact with water
- a material that ignites on contact with air
- a material that sometimes explodes all on its own, without any provocation if not stabilized
- another material that explodes on contact with water
I'm quite aware OsO4 is dangerous, but with selection like that one could "showcase" pretty much anything as dangerous.
I agree however i think the most dangerous part about it is how insanely toxic it is while also being higly volatile
I also agree. But I'm not at all degrading the video, just saying that maybe you could do a part two where you talk about some of the more toxic effects and dangerous associated with less common pyrotechnic reagents
Weird. Osmium tetroxide only has an MSDS health code of 3, which is the same as formaldehyde. There are lots of common things that are rated a 4 (i.e. the most dangerous health code) like hydrogen sulfide or phosgene. I guess those things can be smelled at lethal concentration. I've always thought phosgene smelled pretty good though. I don't know if most people would recognize it as something bad at dangerous levels.
-edit
at 8:35, thats clearly a weather balloon. Don't worry about it.
You’re almost certainly looking at the rating for a 4% solution, not pure crystals, but either way, NFPA diamonds really don’t do a great job of accurately characterizing lab hazard - it’s mostly for emergency workers and the like. GHS is much more through and accurate.
@@GlutenEruption eh. Well lets put it this way: when I want to find out how toxic something is, I usually go to wikipedia, look at the both the GHS pictograms and the MSDS diamond, totally ignore them and go straight to the LC50 or LD50 then read the section on safety and handling.
If you look at the actual SDS from the manufacturer or the characterization pages on something like chemspider or Sigma Aldrich, you get far, far less information than you do on wikipedia (though for slightly (and i do mean slightly) more chemicals).
The most important thing I've learned about chemistry is that everything everyone says is always wrong. Melting points are wrong, decomposition temperatures are wrong, side reactions are wrong, yields are wrong, just everything is wrong except for the most simple reactions, and even then usually how simple it is is also wrong.
@@htomerif Definitely - I couldn’t agree more with all of that. That’s one of the things I love about this channel. Think about all of the Chemicals and Reagents - even INCREDIBLY commonplace industrial chemicals like SO3 - that you couldn’t even find a single PICTURE of before they had videos here. You were left with less than descriptive blurbs buried deep in old literature or if you’re lucky, you might know a professor or coworker who worked with some once and can maybe help fill in some details.
@@htomerif
"Melting points are wrong, decomposition temperatures are wrong, side reactions are wrong, yields are wrong, just everything is wrong"
someone is doing their master thesis
Sir please tell me the how to make anti iron coin which put the iron needle