It has become somewhat of a tradition for me to electrocute a pickle or two in my grade 12 physics class the day before the Winter Break. Partially to entice the students into class that day, but mostly because it's cool. (And tangentially related to the content. Of course.)
Warning: Science Content ahead
The pickles glow yellow-orange because of the sodium chloride. I read a few years ago about a group who had soaked pickles in different kinds of salts, which caused them to glow different colours. I kept meaning to try it, but every year I forgot about it until a week or so beforehand, which wouldn't give me enough time. This year, however, I was on top of it.
I soaked a few pickles in water for a week to draw out the sodium. Then I soaked some in a lithium chloride solution and others in a copper chloride solution for two weeks. I kept some regular old sodium pickles in case this experiment didn't work. Here are the results:
Let's just say that While the copper chloride turned the yellow-green pickles bright grass-green, and while they sizzled and smoked in a satisfactory manner, I got no light from the copper and lithium chloride solutions. In fact, the lithium chloride turned the pickles' insides to mush.
Fortunately, good old straight-out-of-the-jar sodium chloride pickles do not disappoint. And here is the video. Please imagine the appropriate mad-scientist Tesla coil sound as my camera has no sound.
The group that tried this successfully soaked cucumbers in hydrogen peroxide to bleach them, and then pickled the cukes in the various salt solutions. I will try that next year.
Warning: Science Content ahead
The pickles glow yellow-orange because of the sodium chloride. I read a few years ago about a group who had soaked pickles in different kinds of salts, which caused them to glow different colours. I kept meaning to try it, but every year I forgot about it until a week or so beforehand, which wouldn't give me enough time. This year, however, I was on top of it.
I soaked a few pickles in water for a week to draw out the sodium. Then I soaked some in a lithium chloride solution and others in a copper chloride solution for two weeks. I kept some regular old sodium pickles in case this experiment didn't work. Here are the results:
Let's just say that While the copper chloride turned the yellow-green pickles bright grass-green, and while they sizzled and smoked in a satisfactory manner, I got no light from the copper and lithium chloride solutions. In fact, the lithium chloride turned the pickles' insides to mush.
Fortunately, good old straight-out-of-the-jar sodium chloride pickles do not disappoint. And here is the video. Please imagine the appropriate mad-scientist Tesla coil sound as my camera has no sound.
The group that tried this successfully soaked cucumbers in hydrogen peroxide to bleach them, and then pickled the cukes in the various salt solutions. I will try that next year.
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