The Fiery Iron Spiral 🔥🌀

[@medicalmay7607]

I always thought burning steel wool looked cool but this just takes it to the next level!

[@TommyTechnetium]

Thank you 😊

[@YazEniid]

My son watches this and now i can't stop watching this channel,great work!

[@TommyTechnetium]

Thank you 😊

[@dr.ratatoskr6233]

Watching your vids with my little son when he goes to bed, you do a great Job making chemistry exciting also for the very little ones! Greetings from good old Germany!

[@TommyTechnetium]

Thank you for your kind words 😊

[@medicalmay7607]

This seems like something fun to do for the 4th of July!

[@TommyTechnetium]

Indeed!

[@ED-yy4te]

Is it possible to change the fire color if you make an alloy wool?

[@TommyTechnetium]

Interesting question! I don't know if you notice in this video that the color of the sparks seem to change color. Sometimes orange, sometimes yellow, and sometimes white. I'm guessing this has to do with the temperature of the steel wool

[@ED-yy4te]

@@TommyTechnetium It does work that way but I was going for an iron-copper wool or potassium base steel wool.

[@540naja3]

I’m an upcoming senior in highschool. I’ve been watching your videos for a couple of years now and have been interested with your experiments. My reasoning for commenting is because I would like to peruse a career like yours but I’m not sure where to start. I plan on going to college but choosing a major that fits me perfectly has been hard. Do you have any recommendations for someone who enjoys doing experiments like the ones you show on your KZbin channel I would love to do what you do in my future but I have no idea where to start at.

[@TommyTechnetium]

Thank you so much for reaching out. I got into doing experiments like this through teaching. I was trained in college to be a high school chemistry teacher, but started teaching 8th grade science right after college. While teaching 8th grade I tried to do a ton of experiments for my students: one every day. After 7 years of this I went back to school and got a PhD in chemistry. After this I taught university chemistry, and I still try to do experiments every lecture for my students. I'm not saying this is the path you should take, but at least you can see how I got in to doing this sort of thing

[@540naja3]

@@TommyTechnetiumThank you so much! This is exactly what I needed to see. I'm excited to continue watching your videos. You've taught me so much.

[@TommyTechnetium]

@@540naja3 Keep me abreast from time to time of how you are doing

[@540naja3]

@@TommyTechnetium will do!

[@Boomer8404]

You should check out NightHawkInLight's video on this too. It was cool!

[@AsherGaming-hm4ec]

0000

[@experimental_chemistry]

Burning iron forms a mixture of ferrous and ferric oxide with the formula Fe3O4. It's named magnetite because it's still magnetic. Here in Germany we also call it iron hammer blow. I like this demonstation experiment very much. Longtime exposure photography of it looks really fascinating. But it's a good idea to wear old cloth while carrying it out. And safety goggles are absolutely manditory here. 😎🤓🥸

[@TommyTechnetium]

In my experience doing this experiment and analyzing the product, it's almost entirely FeO

[@experimental_chemistry]

​@@TommyTechnetium How did you analyse it? When I once dissolved the product in acid there was a lot of Fe3+ detectable afterwards.

[@TommyTechnetium]

@@experimental_chemistry gravimetric analysis. Comes out extremely close to 1:1 Fe to O. Something like 1.01 Fe to O

[@experimental_chemistry]

​@@TommyTechnetium Hm, that's really interesting. I guess it may depend on the temperatures at which how much oxygen gets access to the iron. For example the sparks from forging iron become almost exclusively Fe3O4.