And we're gonna be talking about this compound here, which it rejoices under the acronym:

2,4-DNP. So that translates to 2,4-Dinitrophenylhydrazyne.

You've particularly sort of appreciate it because its trivial name is Brady's Reagent

but it also rejoices under the trivial name of Bosche's Reagent.

Well, I guess, what we'd like to start the story with is taking you way back

to the dawn of organic chemistry, in maybe the 1750's through about 1980's.

All of the modern techniques that --as a student or as a member of the public that we learn about,

before the martyr of modern analytical techniques, are not available.

In fact, the only technique that's available is to measure the melting point of your compound,

and that kinda could create some difficulties for you.

I've got an example here that we can look at this morning.

So this is a popular compound. This is a compound of benzene, it's a derivative

and it has an aldehyde group on it.

But, as you can see, there's gonna be an intrinsic problem with

measuring the melting point of Benzaldehyde. It's a liquid.

And if melting points are the only thing you can do, you need a way to be sure that everything that is in

that aldehyde or carbonyl class (....)

solid that you can then even measure the

melting point even in 1750 and black the

essence of the ladies reagent or DMP

something that you can be sure that the

correct an aldehyde or ketone with to

give you a solid crystalline reagent and

back in the day it would come as a solid

so what we're going to do now is we're

going to look at the original

formulation of the BMP Brady's reagent

as it was supplied up until I guess

probably about a year and a half ago so

we're in here so we're going to do a bit

of mining because this has been packaged

up this is just secondary containment is

the plastic outer shell

and now we can get through the least in

its original form and you can see is the

Dean for the dye that the end for the

Nitro and there's the piece of the

senile hydrazine Pete and Pete gives you

the ladies reagent if the compound is

formulated correctly it will be

completely spaced and very bored we have

no need to worry but if it's dry then

that's when all the fun and games and

excitement starts but I've deliberately

selected / compound where I believe it

is dry so I'm just going to point that

away from me a little bit and just open

up gently so the compounds not terribly

volatile so I'm handling listen I could

but what we're going to do is probably

get a sheet of paper in here so that we

can put a little bit out so that you can

feel and what you should see if you can

spoon some out is a highly bright orange

now these are not Cristal's these are

aggregates where the small little

microcrystals of all started to come

together as its drying out when it dries

out then the region can become more

unstable it can suffer an autocatalytic

decomposition the order catalysis is

where the product of a reaction

encourage the reaction to become faster

which generally more products so that

becomes even faster and of course that's

how you get a runaway reaction and

that's what we call an explosion and

we're going to test out a little bit

later but let's actually focus on why

the reagents used and why it's useful

and let's take you back again to the

1750 and if you remember we had this

compound benzaldehyde we're clearly we

don't have a solid so we would like to

make a solid derivative not we would

have to take this solid and we would

have to dissolve it and that'll take us

a little bit of time so what we're going

to do is use the luxury of modern

chemistry and what I've done here is

actually so influenced me to his one eye

pattern

so this is just a solution of this

orange compound i put it into solution

and so what you should see here i hope

is that bright or institution come up

right okay so we're going to try and

turn I've been out of hiding to a into a

solid now i just mentioned that canvas

like to do all of their reactions in

solution so we're going to use methanol

we're just going to use that as a

solvent for the reaction so we need to

get both are orange hydrazine and our

carbonyl compound in the same solution

so I'm going to take some benadryl

divide here and what I'm going to do is

to a not terribly stoichiometric

reaction clue we're going to take

that'll probably about the about 250 200

300 million dancing like that will put

that into the solar put the lid back on

here and now the high desert very nice

smell of almonds but it's like toxic

toxic and now we need to switch and see

if we can get this to maker of

precipitate so let's see

benzaldehyde got a mass of about a

hundred we're about two million miles in

here this is about point two molar so we

need a illegal about this with the rate

of reaction of DMP o Brady's raging with

aldehydes depends on the substrate and

it can take anything from instantaneous

up to several hours

alright so let's just stop there

oh look there you go

so as you can see we've got almost

instantaneous reaction we've produced

from our original liquid benzaldehyde a

large clump of a bright orange-yellow

derivative chemist like to use names to

describe the derivative we started with

the hydras leave for this derivative of

the hydro-zone ok so we've talked a lot

about the chemistry of the MP and white

really useful but it won't have escaped

your attention that in media recently

there's been a lot of concern over

Brady's reagent pnp as a potential

source of the explosion the compound as

it was originally formulated damn

perfectly safe in the modern version

that we've shown you perfectly safe

the compound does have a reputation mode

for being what is called shock-sensitive

meaning that is the compound is

subjected to friction or sudden energy

through an impact it can detonate that's

not so well described actually in the

scientific literature and so in the

cause of science

what we're going to do is try and make a

brief investigation of a small and

therefore potentially safe scale to

indicate what the degree of shock

sensitivity is as formulated in wet that

shouldn't really be that much shock

sensitivity and ladies region but like

there's very little data and we're not

going to take any chances for I I'm not

gonna put on not just a face mask but

this is an explosion facemask and it

exposed it will protect my face still

and I'm gonna gonna lose any fingers so

i'm going to go for some protective

gloves as well to chest the toxin today

we are going to use this highly

expensive scientific piece of apparatus

available from any good hardware store

and we're going to strike the compound

not excessively hard because it should

lead that if it's going to go so I'm

going to give it a light tap and then

we'll see 123 that I think it's me

missing so we'll do that again

12

three we struck the compound you might

want to come in and have a look at back

and free here at the black this is where

it was struck with a hammer quite

vigorously no effect whatsoever you can

make the comparison against the material

that jumped off the front

these are exactly the same color and

that's quite a decent strike

okay from what we should do now is let's

try the compound out and see if it makes

a difference

so again the literature is not too clear

and in view of safety concerns

we're going to be a little bit vague

about how long we're going to drive is

compatible we're going to put it on this

hot plate that you can see in the back

of the hood you can see the red flashing

light indicating that the hot plate is

heating and if you look closely at the

dials here you can see it said it just

over 100 degree C so that should drive

offering water and then we'll run our

shop test we're gonna put that on the

hot plate and now it's my turn the fire

code retire to a safe distance

ok so we're backing part two of the

great shock destination story so while

we've been away having a cup of tea

what we have left is our hot plate which

you can see in the background there and

we've been cooking up rtmp so we're at

the top here and on 321 this compound is

not excessively shock-sensitive ok but

what i should add at this point of

courses we've done this under very

controlled condition was done this with

a very small amount of material the

compound has a reputation for shock

sensitivity therefore there have been

detonations in the park

clearly we've done this for you today so

that you can see and feel confident in

that in the chemistry but that i would

advise you to take in 14 pound sledge

hammers and Dustin's full of this stuff

expand very rapidly one of the things

that Idol was interesting is that when

the bubble catches fire burning gas

continues to move up