When Chemists Attack

Kellie sent me a link to a study recently conducted at Clemson. It’s more likely that you’ll swerve out of your lane if you’re text messaging or messing with your iPod while you’re driving:

Text messaging and using iPods caused drivers to leave their lanes 10 percent more often in a simulated driving study conducted by researchers in the Clemson University psychology department.

[…]

Drivers who simply talked on cell phones were distracted and had slower reaction times but tended to stay in their own lane, however drivers who looked away from the road to use electronics were significantly more likely to leave their lane, said Johnell Brooks, assistant professor of psychology.

It’s not the results of the study that I want to hilight. The study, after all, tells us exactly what we expect: it’s not smart to text while driving. If you click the link above, you’ll see that the site describing the study allows comments. As I’m writing this post, the comments all say about the same thing. Here’s a sample:

And this is the college everyone raves about? Sounds like the only thing this place can do right is get drunk. What a waste of money. Ho[ne]stly I don’t think they should have even admitted they were doing this study because common sense would have given them the answer.

Commenters complained that the study was a waste of money and effort because the results confirm “common sense”. The problem with that argument is simply this: Common sense is commonly wrong. Because of this, it’s a good idea to actually test out things we think are “obvious”. You don’t have to dig very deeply in science to find a good example of common sense failing. Just consider fire.

When you burn a piece of wood, you get ash. The ash is lighter than the original wood. Common sense dictates that burning must be the loss of something within the wood.

During much of the eighteenth century, that something was called “phlogiston”, and the loss of phlogiston was obviously responsible for the difference in mass between wood and ash. Anything that burns must contain phlogiston, and that’s why ash is always lighter that the substance being burned.

We now know, however, that the sentence above is false. Burning doesn’t require the loss of anything. Instead, the burning process is the combination of a substance with oxygen from the air. How did we find that out? By actually testing the “common sense” idea!

More careful analysis of burning wood revealed that if you account for all of the gases given off, the gases and the ash together weigh more than the original wood.

It’s even more convincing to look at the burning of metals. No gases are released by the burning of metals like magnesium, so all you have to do to collect everything given off is to burn the magnesium in a container with a loose-fitting lid. It’s easy to show that the ash left behind weighs more than the original metal, and my intro chemistry students do this in lab.

The weight gain was eventually discovered by Lavosier to be due to oxygen.

So, don’t laugh too hard when some scientist seems to be testing something that’s “common sense”. It’s true that common sense isn’t very common, but it’s also true that common sense isn’t always … sense!

For my first post of the new year, here’s an improved version of an old post. I’m using the images from the post in one of my chemistry classes this spring, and I thought I’d share the improved pictures.

Iodine is one of the more unusual things you can find at your family drug store. In pure form, it’s a somewhat shiny solid. From appearance alone, you might mistake solid iodine for some of the things you’d find in the rock bins at Black Market Minerals in Myrtle Beach.

Solid iodine

What makes iodine unusual? Iodine’s a solid that goes easily from the solid to the gas phase. Also, once iodine gets into the gas phase, it is not colorless and invisible. Iodine vapor is bright purple in color. Solid iodine slowly sublimes (goes from the solid state to the vapor) at room temperature, but you can speed up the process quite a bit by supplying a little heat.If iodine vapor comes into contact with a cold surface, it will deposit (resolidify) on the surface, forming pretty crystals. The same thing happens when water vapor in the atmosphere comes into contact with an extremely cold car windshield – making frost.

To show the phase changes of iodine, I set up an experiment similar to a demonstration from one of my old chemistry books. I took some solid iodine and put it into a beaker, then set the beaker on a hotplate. On top of the beaker, I put a watch glass: a curved piece of glass shaped a little like a shallow bowl. On top of the watch glass, I put some ice. The ice cools the watch glass.

Setup

To speed up the production of iodine vapor, I turned the hotplate on “low”. After a few minutes, I could just see the color of iodine vapor in the beaker.

A little vapor is visible

Once the hotplate’s temperature gets to about 114 ^oC (237 ^oF), the iodine begins to melt, forming a dark purple liquid. The amount of iodine in the vapor state increases.

More vapor is visible. If you value your nose, keep it away from the vapor.

After more heating, you can see all three phases of iodine inside the beaker.

Pick a phase, any phase!

There is a mixture of solid and liquid iodine at the bottom of the beaker. Since the hotplate is providing heat energy, some of the solid iodine melts, forming liquid. Some solid iodine also sublimes, forming vapor. The liquid iodine evaporates, forming more vapor.

Near the top of the beaker and on the cooler upper sides of the beaker, iodine vapor deposits, forming solid iodine crystals. Some iodine vapor condenses to liquid on the warmer lower walls of the beaker, and that liquid then freezes to solid iodine. That’s a total of six different phase changes going on all at once; and we haven’t even discussed the ice on top of the beaker.

The ice? The ice at the top of the beaker melts, removing energy from the iodine vapor and helping it deposit on the bottom of the cold watch glass.

Deposited iodine crystals, forming from purple iodine vapor

The iodine crystals on the watch glass are flat and shiny – almost metallic in appearance. They look a bit like stalactites.

Deposited iodine crystals, closer view

I advise against attempting this experiment yourself, since iodine looks more harmless than it is. Iodine won’t blow up on you – provided you keep it away from combustibles, but iodine can cause chemical burns on contact. Iodine vapors are harmful to the lungs. This sort of experiment needs a fume hood, and solid iodine shouldn’t be handled directly. Plus, buying lots of iodine might make some folks think you’re going to start a meth lab.