Freezing Water with Diethyl Ether - Periodic Table of Videos
A nostalgic Neil uses Diethyl Ether and bubbling Nitrogen gas to freeze some water outside a test tube. Our thanks to the Google Making & Science team.
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This is a special experiment that Neil has wanted to do for nearly forty years. He saw it done by his teacher and he's always wanted to repeat it. The experiment is very simple. It consists of a test tube in a test tube rack, filled nearly to the top with Diethyl Ether. The point about Diethyl Ether is that it's very volatile. Its boiling point is just above room temperature. And so you can get it to evaporate by blowing air through it. But it's better to use Nitrogen, because it's pretty inflammable. Think for a moment why atoms in the gas phase form a liquid. And they form a liquid because the atoms or molecules are attracted to each other. And they're attracted to a denser state, which is a liquid. So when you evaporate a liquid, you have to put in energy to pull those mole...
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This is a special experiment that Neil has wanted to do for nearly forty years. He saw it done by his teacher and he's always wanted to repeat it. The experiment is very simple. It consists of a test tube in a test tube rack, filled nearly to the top with Diethyl Ether. The point about Diethyl Ether is that it's very volatile. Its boiling point is just above room temperature. And so you can get it to evaporate by blowing air through it. But it's better to use Nitrogen, because it's pretty inflammable. Think for a moment why atoms in the gas phase form a liquid. And they form a liquid because the atoms or molecules are attracted to each other. And they're attracted to a denser state, which is a liquid. So when you evaporate a liquid, you have to put in energy to pull those mole...
