• Question: Which is the coolest reaction you have ever made?

    Asked by anon-256600 on 8 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Emma Daniels

      Emma Daniels answered on 8 Jun 2020: last edited 8 Jun 2020 10:52 am

      The coolest reaction I’ve done in terms of temperature uses liquid nitrogen which is almost -200 degrees (celcius)! But in terms of cool-ness, I like doing reactions in a glove box! This is pretty much what it sounds like – it’s a big, air-tight box, with gloves coming out of it. You can see what they look like here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glovebox

      Some chemicals are sensitive to oxygen and moisture in the air. So if you use them in the open they can react or break down. Glove boxes are filled with inert gasses, such as nitrogen or argon, that don’t react with anything. This way, we can use glove boxes to store or do reactions with chemicals that are sensitive to air or moisture, which I think is pretty cool!

    • Photo: Sarah Montgomery

      Sarah Montgomery answered on 8 Jun 2020:

      I’ve done some fun experiments as demonstrations in school. Probably cooler than what I normally do in my lab! For example we filled some bottles with the perfect ratio of oxygen and hydrogen and set fire to them to launch them across the assembly hall.

      One pretty wild thing we did in our research lab was to use our newly-discovered enzyme to make a molecule that was very similar to methamphetamine. We had to get special permission for that one. It was justified on the basis that we were “showing the enzyme is useful for making biologically active compounds”!

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