Liquid Electrons - Periodic Table of Videos
Solvated electrons - sodium in ammonia. Featuring Dr Rob Stockman from the University of Nottingham. Hello Internet podcast: http://www.hellointernet.fm And on YouTube (although a few weeks...
==========
[Dr. Robert Stockman] Look at that, that is very pretty! We're gonna put some sodium into liquid ammonia. So what happens is that the sodium, ah, reacts, it releases an electron, becomes sodium single plus, and those electrons get solvated by the ammonia. And it's a really unusual thing in chemistry, to have just electrons themselves being solvated. Here we have a Dewar, this is just like you would put... a Thermos flask or something, you would put your cold drink or hot tea in. And in it we've got some solid CO2, cardice, and acetone. So that brings the whole temperature down to about -78C, and we need to do that because ammonia boils at -33C. So we've got ammonia in this cylinder over here. We've just condensed some of that into t...
==========
[Dr. Robert Stockman] Look at that, that is very pretty! We're gonna put some sodium into liquid ammonia. So what happens is that the sodium, ah, reacts, it releases an electron, becomes sodium single plus, and those electrons get solvated by the ammonia. And it's a really unusual thing in chemistry, to have just electrons themselves being solvated. Here we have a Dewar, this is just like you would put... a Thermos flask or something, you would put your cold drink or hot tea in. And in it we've got some solid CO2, cardice, and acetone. So that brings the whole temperature down to about -78C, and we need to do that because ammonia boils at -33C. So we've got ammonia in this cylinder over here. We've just condensed some of that into t...
