Was This The WEIRDEST Discovery of an Element Ever?

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#science #chemistry #history #alchemy #phosphorus
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[@Chemistorian]

The first 500 people to use my link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/chemistorian10241

[@olivere5497]

@@Chemistorian is skillshare a copyrighted trade mark? My mates used to organise free events called skillshares where people would teach how to code or fix stuff or grow veg.

[@LanceFleming-d2z]

Why do you speak like you have a speech impediment?

[@LanceFleming-d2z]

Your voice is annoying, distraction

[@olivere5497]

@@LanceFleming-d2z me?

[@eanjan8812]

So can’t you do an actual video on actual alchemy instead of the going the ignorant route thinking they meant literal gold.

[@michaelobrien9053]

Oh yes, the piss boiling man. I’m sure his neighbors loved him.

[@EMC273]

XD

[@custos3249]

If you think that's bad, consider the processes behind "pure finders."

[@boxsterman77]

And when the smell finally dissipated, then came the flies.

[@olivere5497]

Pee was used by leather tanners.

[@TATPMuncher]

And nilered​@@olivere5497

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

Sounds like Monty Python logic. If piss is yellow and gold is yellow, they MUST be the same thing! Boil the piss!!

[@pencilpauli9442]

Such associations would have been common. Sympathetic magic worked (or rather didn't work) in the same way. A rhinoceros horn is a bit phallic so if you kill the animal and cut off the poor thing's horn, grind it down, then ingest the powder, it will give you a stiffy.

[@MadScientist267]

Success is but a series of failures sitting at a benchmark.

[@ominous-omnipresent-they]

Boil the urine until thou hast bathe in the light of the Almighty!

[@xxDOTH3DEWxx]

Boil the piss!!!

[@Daniel-yn2lh]

OMG you're right I could actually see that, maybe put it in the HOLY HAND GRENADE 😂😂

[@No-uc6fg]

I'd say that THE weirdest and most ridiculous way of discovering an element was UC Berkeley asking the US military to detonate a goddamned Nuke on the pacific coast, have a jet fly through the shroom cloud then analyze the particles and dust found on the jet, which indeed helped them discover elements 99 and 100.

[@HeyItsDyl]

Thats not weird, that’s just American 🦅🇺🇸💥

[@olivere5497]

​@@HeyItsDylcan you handle it bruh?

[@olivere5497]

Thats not weird, they knew exactly what to expect as the table of elements is predictable. What i dont get is how would they get a sample and test it before it half life's it ass out of there. 'Heheheh, so long mo-fos!'

[@asandax6]

​@@olivere5497 Half life just means half of it is gone by that point not all. So trace amounts will be detected.

[@olivere5497]

@@asandax6 but if its half life is a few seconds, what exactly could they on that airplane apart from just lie? If i was a scientist i'd be pretty cheesed off, its my first big job out of MIT and im literally flying through an atomic dust cloud with a tampon sticking out the window.

[@ColtStone]

Phosphorus is a cool name I guess, but I'd have called it 'Urinium'.

[@DoubleMrE]

Does that come from Uranus? Oh wait…. 😂😂😂

[@seekvapes9641]

"What if we find a substance that could turn any metal into gold?" "That would be awesome, imagine what it would do it we ate it?" "I'm pretty sure that would grant us immortality!" "That sounds like a reasonable prediction, can't argue with that."

[@Yora21]

That's where Alchemy is very different from Chemistry. Alchemy assumes the existence of all kinds of magical phenomenons and its goals are more about a spiritual metamorphosis rather than just figuring out how ordinary matter works. There are many additional steps in the magical logic of Alchemy that make that sequence of reasoning a lot less random and insane. (Though still completely wrong.)

[@quantumview8151]

The image of an entire factory that boils piss is nauseating

[@unknownhuman1000]

As also the smell would be.

[@quantumview8151]

@@unknownhuman1000 that's what i was meaning

[@coryearnest9464]

Sounds like heaven to Pissbois and Girls lmfao

[@Yora21]

They wouldn't have been the only ones. The whole leather and fabric industry had been doing this on a large scale for centuries.

[@wilhelmschmidt7240]

You always knew when you were near a tannery.

[@U.Inferno]

I can turn Iron into gold by throwing a shit ton of Iodine at it really really fast

[@davidripley2916]

Wait ✋️ till you get the leccy bill for your LINAC lol 😆 You gonna need the Gold to pay it off

[@KnockKnockShows]

Next time I'm caught bottling my urine I'll play the 'It's for science' card.

[@astrokitty.404]

next time??? could thou enlighten us on how you got caught the first time (if u did)

[@unknownhuman1000]

Did this as a kid.

[@jaredf6205]

As everyone knows, you can't pause a multiplayer game... What am I supposed to do?

[@DH-.]

Amazon drivers always have piss bottles, never shake their hands.

[@TotalDec]

I've seen bottles of pee outside my Drs. office. It was strange at first. Then, I realized ppl were trying to beat UA's.

[@stickyfox]

My chemistry professor called phosphorus the only element derived from its chemical symbol.

[@amosbackstrom5366]

"Somewhat that belonged to the body of man..." I'm surprised Boyle didn't try bones, which would have yielded far more phosphorus. Probably illegal, but when has that stopped the greatest minds of a time?

[@newperve]

Human bones might be hard to legally obtain, but animal bones are available at your local butcher.

[@amosbackstrom5366]

@newperve Yes, but alas, Human exceptionalism was a significant bias. This material was derived from a man, who's "life essence" is indisputably greater than a lowly beast.

[@C0lon0]

It was the 17th century, you could easily get human bones if you was a famous scientist.

[@boxsterman77]

And I’m surprised you didn’t caught on the he literally discovered it so how could he know it was more abundant in bones.

[@justinokraski3796]

The bones from many battlefields were ground into dust for use as fertilizers

[@Ethyn_Jackson]

I'm ashamed to admit there's a mountain dew bottle in my room synthesizing some phosphorus.

[@ColtStone]

Hey, you gotta dew what you gotta dew.

[@erikjohnson9223]

@Ethyn_Jackson Matter is conserved. The P from your pee isn't being synthesized (created), but it is being concentrated as water evaporates, and chemical/microbial action is probably changing the molecules of which the phosphorus is a part (organic stuff like phopholipids and nucleic acids are probably being broken down to release orthophosphates into the water.

[@младенец]

Brother ew

[@RichardStasiak-v6t]

This is like the Monty Python insurance sketch where the guy collects gallons of urine just to prove he's serious about getting insurance.

[@EMC273]

This is such a fascinating and hilarious story of the discovery of phosphorus. Keep doing the good work, my king.

[@splotters]

Discovered in Dresden and used to destroy Dresden.

[@bunsenn5064]

I love how arguably the weirdest discovery of an element was also the very first chemical element discovered in the modern era.

[@Aurochs330]

I love these videos. Every single one is an obscure story that I would’ve otherwise never heard about. Cheers!

[@jmchez]

I don't know if it's true but I heard that, in the past, Chemistry professors would tell their students that if a 17th century alchemist could distill phosphorus, certainly a 19th /20th century student could do it too. As one would expect, gullible students would recount how they were in huge trouble with their parents or landlords because the stench would not go away. The BBC did film a chemist recreating Brandt's experiment. He used about 4 liters of urine and got phosphorus but complained that the stench was almost unbearable.

[@NonBinary_Star]

Imagine hangin out, out back, casually simmering a behemoth vat of 1500 GALLONS! of putrid urine🌞 ...birds fallin out trees ... squirrels throwin up acorns ...what a delight

[@stuartgmk]

😂😂😂

[@Jermsy212]

So Ricky’s dad was just an alchemist collecting all his piss jugs…

[@TomTomlin-d2u]

Fakn way she goes. Lmao

[@davidripley2916]

Now I wanna build a piss Catapult

[@Jo-JoandTaffy]

That guy really just didnt want to tell anyone that he liked playing with piss.

[@screechingtoad2683]

Alchemy may be pseudoscience, but it laid the foundation for true chemistry

[@horse433]

Its not pseudoscience. And “true” chemistry? You sound dogmatic

[@SpidermanandhisAmazingFriends]

​@@horse433 The premise behind alchemy is utter hooey.

[@horse433]

@@SpidermanandhisAmazingFriends what is hooey? Examing the world, life, time? Testing? Speculation? Notes? Science has become a baby blanket for you guys. We know why you love science. There’s a type of person who loves science. I won’t say it cus you guys can’t handle much. ♿️♿️

[@SpidermanandhisAmazingFriends]

@@horse433 Yeah you're right, I shouldn't poo-poo alchemists for all their progress on the philosopher's stone.

[@screechingtoad2683]

@horse433 while their theories were wrong, their experiments led to chemistry

[@nathanwoodruff9422]

The bad news is gold doesn't come from other metals. If anyone want to know where gold comes from, look to the periodic table. Gold is always found with silicon. Look to the periodic table to add 79(gold) + 14(silicon) + 1 and let me know what element you come up with. It is the same reason why you always find silver(Ag) in lead(Pb) mines that have an excess of Bromine(Br) gas in them.

[@kjamison5951]

Boyle: “How didst thou make this phosphorus, good and kindly sir?” Brandt: “It was a piece of piss.”

[@davidripley2916]

You're on the Naughty Step for that one. . . 😂

[@truthtoad]

Is this where the phrase "pissing away a fortune" came from?

[@lashark06]

The irony is that brannt was very close to the truth, the stone isn't about wealth it's about health....

[@auntiecarol]

Fun fact: Brandt rhymes with lant (an English word meaning "stale urine"), derived from the Old English "hland", which is what we called 'urine' before those pesky Normans invaded and made use all start using fancy Latinate words.

[@happyvirus6590]

4:27 You could say he continued his *gold-digging*

[@marktorch9079]

Kind of ironic in a sad way for the alchomist that in pursuit of eternal life, tests the results of consuming mercury. The appeal was probably being in liquid form at room temp, Then again they didn't have gloves to handle it anyway so they were probably already doomed

[@ElectronicsGuy666]

When I was a kid I peed in a pot and boiled it on the stove to make my brother mad. It worked. It was only boiling for about 2 min and stunk up the house for days. I can’t imagine 7000L of weeks old urine jfc

[@wilhelmschmidt7240]

I always saw alchemy as a primitive precursor to chemistry. It also uses one of the most fundamental techniques of human discovery... F around and find out.

[@camgrl69]

I can hear the Sam o nella background music omg

[@legn7324]

3:18 Hennig must have been the loveliest neighbor to have at that time

[@L14MA]

First vid of this channel I've watched, and it's great. Looks like I'm watching the back catalogue.

[@_macrophage]

It's amazing how these guys were just "playing" around with White Phosphorous like it was dirt or table salt. Jesus-fuckin-christ.. How we survived as a species is truly amazing.

[@LittleW00d]

John Emsley really missed a fantastic opportunity to call his book "The striking and illuminating history of phosphorus"

[@miguelvaliente1475]

One correction, phosphorus was isolated not synthesized Elements can't be synthesized.

[@davidripley2916]

( ahem Plutonium etc. Ask Seaborg) 😠

[@jjwwqq]

How do you make a small fortune boiling urine in the pursuit of converting base metals to gold? Start with a large fortune.

[@Guranga93]

''Can't talk right now, I'm boiling PISS'' -Hennig Brandt

[@martintuma9974]

Vaše hovna, naše radost (your sh*ts, our joy)

[@MadScientist267]

Dude had him a fascination that the whole town would have known about. There's no way he did this without someone catching on. It isn't like they knew about scrubbers 🤣

[@krautismo]

FYI the putrification of elements / the decomposition of matter is not uncommon practice. It is thought to breaking the ingredients down to their prime elements from where something new can be formed, i.e gold

[@jojogaming1013]

I really don't wish to ever *SMELL* anything remotely similar to the steps that led to the discovery of phosphorus. Wait... How did he discover that that lower layer was "salty" under that "black spongy upper layer" (3:40)? Do I even want to think about that? Hmm... Oh, well, too late, I started thinking about it already.

[@FelonyVideos]

Imagine all the elements that were "right there, under his nose" that he didn't discover... (Somewhere in there is a joke about a pot to piss in, aka, potassium.) Also, how in the world did he get his hands on 1500 gallons of piss, and keep it a secret? 😂

[@RalfStephan]

An elephant can do that in one go.

[@erikjohnson9223]

Hey now, human waste is indeed a practical "source" of phosphate. It is called resource recovery. Keep fertilizer out of receiving waters (where it causes algal blooms & other eutrophication) and make it available to farmers as fertilizer. Elemental P might not be practical via that route, but it isn't something we need much of, compared to fertilizer.

[@shruggzdastr8-facedclown]

He discovered Mountain Dew!! 😏

[@josejaimes-ramos1546]

Phosphoric acid is an ingredient in Mountain Dew.

[@sean..L]

Chrysocolla is a rock you sometimes see at gem shows.

[@4everseekingwisdom690]

I find it fascinating that he actually correctly identified the prima materia as it is indeed urine

[@Ubique2927]

Apparently there is 3-10 mg of gold in a litre of human urine.

[@Microtonal_Cats]

5:05 I feel like that painting (especially adding the gothic background) may have inspired the first sci-fi book, "Frankenstein."

[@vancegilmore245]

That whole urine thing must've smelled AWFUL.😢

[@kjamison5951]

King Charles II: “Phosphorus is made by reducing urine and boiling it at very high temperatures? Are you taking the piss?”

[@oldschoolman1444]

The plants in my yard like urine! 😊

[@PodcastOnTheSpectrum]

Put 1500 gallons on them see how well they do

[@trevormcintosh5564]

​@@PodcastOnTheSpectrumthey aren't Olympic swimmers lol

[@schinderiapraemeturus6239]

As a chemist - anyone who chooses to distill/make white phosphorus is daft or crazy, its highly toxic. Its a shame Brandt didnt consider the much more valuable urea content, which can be hydrolyzed to ammonia, or oxidized to nitrate. We excrete about 28gr a day. You should consider Wohler and Liebig's work on potassium salts for another video, this is very useful knowledge

[@GeorgeRegn]

threw out most of the phosphorus, bet that would have pissed him off.

[@TheNimaid]

I'm sure if those fellows looking for his secret spoke to his neighbors, they would have gotten a pretty good hint at what substance it was extracted from.

[@luizmenezes9971]

So, alchemists failed at converting lead to gold, but succeeded at converting piss into war crimes. That's good enough for me.

[@PoorMansChemist]

What an excellent video!!! Well done, sir!!!

[@happyvirus6590]

2:14 *sad gallium noises*

[@wrjtung3456]

It needs higher temperatures than mercury and wasn’t discovered at the time

[@ItzTheDragon]

It’s solid at room temperature, melts at slightly higher such as the warmth from your hand

[@bannor99]

Thumbs up for using a Waterhouse painting at the start of the video!

[@mikewebb7807]

Can you imagine the smell of that guy's laboratory 🤢🤮

[@VeteranVandal]

We now know how to transmute and we concluded that it's not worth actually doing it, it's cheaper in all kinds of ways to not use gold.

[@atrumluminarium]

3:14 sounds like the NileRed video😅

[@realdragon]

Honestly I find it weirder it took so long for someone to boil piss

[@LordMondegrene]

Witches had been boiling pins in urine for centuries. Somehow, it didn't destroy their enemies. But they kept doing it, probably to keep neighbors away.

[@LordMondegrene]

Witches boiled pins in urine for centuries. It didn't kill their enemies, but it kept neighbors away, so they kept at it. 😂😂😂

[@christopherbristow9108]

I believe the philosopher's Stone was actually cinnabar cinnabar was used in wine making processes with the Vikings. The Mead of poetry is referred to in Skáldskaparmál I believe the blood of the giant was referenced to centipar as well

[@benjamindejonge3624]

Piss poor, means you sold your urine for money to the weekly collector

[@bluewhalestudioblenderanim1132]

to be honest it does look a bit like a video game health potion here XD . . and I could see how a newly discovered glowing green substance it could've been mistaken as sutch . .

[@J32-k9n]

damn was expecting him to make Uranium lol.

[@stratometal]

I would figure that they would harvest various chemicals from sewage at treatment stations and then have that sold to companies. I heard that some portable latrine companies do something like this, I do not know if this is true, but if it is, its genius. One man's waste is another man's treasure and all that.

[@pithlyx]

i read the thumbnail as "U-Rine" and im thinking to myself how did i never hear of such an element.

[@The1stDukeDroklar]

Discovers something and automatically jumps to it being the philosopher's stone.

[@atzuras]

Just imagine the smell of the production factory ....

[@chrisleblanc581]

The strangest discoveries to me are ones made using elegant maths alone with the imagination and musings of a human mind. Dirac predicting antimatter is an excellent example. This to me is just an inevitable discovery as a commonly available reagent mixture that was used for thousands of years for a variety of things and observations added over time. Another example would be walking and talking with friends and imagining relativity and special relativity with the aid of thought experiments in the early 1900s when we were still figuring out what an atom even was. That is f-ing bizarre.

[@ayylien3070]

2:47 the world's largest piss jug

[@Daniel-yn2lh]

Wow gives new meaning to having a pot to piss in and then he made another batch 😂 The beginning of WATER SPORTS 😮

[@l-l]

alchemists trying not to play with their pee challenge

[@SteveStevens-uv2px]

Breaking Bad - The Piss Farm Days

[@abraxasjinx5207]

There are tiny trace amounts of actual gold in human urine that we intake through our diet. So don't waste that gold, and don't spend it all in one place.

[@aaronfreeman5264]

Sorry that he wasted so much, in his search for the Philosopher's Stone. It's a Bagua technique. A sample of Phosphorous was seen in the court of Persia, and borrowed by Lugh Longarm. The Rainbow Sword came a lot closer to the Sorceror's Stone.

[@jaytravis2487]

😅my face when my aunt asked me how I got so good with computers (*DEFINITELY NOT FROM LEARNING HOW TO HIDE MY PRAWN COLLECTION FROM MY PARENTS WHEN I WAS IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL*)

[@xCoolMrDimas]

Love the content, keep it up!

[@Yora21]

Cool story. But I think the discovery of Helium is much more unusual.

[@oliversmith9200]

Next time you take a whiz you'll know, You can make phosphorous from that flow.

[@dreadassembly4087]

The problem with Alchemy is the danger to life and environment. Just because a chemical has the ability to do great things on one end, what affect does it have on the other end. Once you start messing with molecular structures do you end up with a forever chemical that can't biodegrade or go back to it's original form. According to urine sample we are all on anti depressants.

[@Mic_Glow]

I need you to pee, we have an element to discover!

[@The_CommunistDoge]

By god, it's genius! I'm going to continue it's research for my thesis. Now, to ask the departiment for 7000 liters of piss...

[@Morbazan125]

Book should’ve been called the stinky history of phosphorus

[@ketas]

i bet it was nice smell to boil 7 tons of sour piss

[@jhhwild]

I wonder if any Discord moderators accidentally made phosphorus in their basements.

[@paradigmbuster]

Urine glows under ultraviolet light.

[@HeWhoisHim.]

I personally believe the true Philosophers stone is tourmaline

[@alimohammedabd]

Is that why they call it a golden shower?

[@thegrassyknoll7792]

If i was his neighbour i would be so pissed off😂

[@hamaljay]

So this guy pissed away his fortune.

[@miss_lexie_jane]

Is this the grace of gold in Elden Ring? A story written by GRRM a notorious troll and gardener? Lol

[@miss_lexie_jane]

There's even a Godfrey, the first Elden Lord.

[@ksc1406]

Ok, but where did they get all the piss? Were they stealing it??

[@kennyadams9741]

Ugh. Just imagine the huge piss clouds coming from that dudes house 🤮

[@2ndviolin]

We can now make gold from lead inside a nuclear reactor, but this process turns out to be very expensive. What a disappointment! 😂

[@paulkielty3800]

These guys were all just taking the piss.

[@GMJ33]

I loved this so much , because we’re talking pee and poo the rubarb king or something made an entire farm out of human poop and kept it a secret but it actually help clean up a lot of filth in the city and everyone thought it was because of his garden and he would go collect peoples poop so they were throwing it in the street , sorry for yap ily KZbin

[@TheMookie1590]

me saying to myself, I bet some bro thought his pee would do it seconds later the video said urine. bruh