From the first "Bang!" of a carbide cannon to the explosions of bubbles of hydrogen gas to quotations from his classic 1860 chemistry lecture, "Michael Faraday" came back to life Thursday night and delighted hundreds of Utahns.
Actually, the great 19th century English scientist was impersonated by Ronald O. Ragsdale, chemistry professor at the University of Utah, and his assistant was Jerry A. Driscoll, adjunct associate professor of chemistry. Both wore top hats and the swallow-tail coats popular in that century.
It looked like magic, but it was chemistry. The occasion was the 20th annual "Faraday Christmas Lecture." It harked back to lectures Faraday gave during his lifetime, 1791-1867, with dramatic demonstrations of chemistry in action.
The lecture auditorium in the Henry Eyring Building on the U. campus seats 348, but more stood along the rear walls. Delighted youngsters filled most of the seats, among them Scout groups.
"You know how we start a lecture around here?" Ragsdale asked, then fired off the carbide cannon. Driscoll spritzed water on a poster, causing new letters to appear: "Chemistry is a blast!"
Ragsdale told of Faraday's life, including his motto, "Work, Finish, Publish." He added, "So publish or perish (a popular higher-education axiom) has been with us a long time."
Asking the audience for two pennies, Ragsdale placed the coins in a long glass tube and poured in concentrated nitric acid. The audience applauded as the acid reacted with the copper, bubbling madly.
Starting a fire with dry ice, causing saucers of liquid to burn with vivid colors, setting off a 2,500-degree blaze behind protective shielding, the duo showed many aspects of chemistry.
At one point, they started a magnesium fire and showed that it could not be doused with water. Instead, they smothered it in sand.
Another spectacular demonstration came when they dropped a small rubber football into a beaker of liquid nitrogen, instantly freezing it. Then Ragsdale threw it against an auditorium wall and the brittle ball shattered.
The expansive power of steam came into play when they heated up a metal canister that had a small amount of water in it. Once the steam had driven out the air, Ragsdale capped the canister, then the partners dumped crushed ice on it.
When the steam inside cooled and condensed back into water, the canister collapsed. "Anyone can crush a can, even a physicist," Ragsdale joked. Then he used dry ice to re-expand the contraption.
They used a device to shoot out smoke rings, showed how a beaker of clear liquid turned blue when shaken in the presence of oxygen, changed copper disks to "silver" and then "gold." To shouts of excitement from the crowd, they ignited floating bubbles of hydrogen gas, each going off with a sharp "Pow!"
Ragsdale ended by citing Faraday's 1860 lecture series, "The Chemical History of a Candle."
"Indeed, all I can say to you at the end of these lectures, for we must come to an end at one time or other, is to express the wish that you may in your generation be fit in comparison to a candle," Ragsdale said.
He said he hoped those watching, like a candle, would shine with light to those about, and that in all their actions they might be like the beauty of the taper "by making your deeds honorable and effectual in the discharge of your duty to your fellowmen."
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