Melting #1: Sulfur (Making a Sulfur Coin)

I’m going to be melting sulfur…

Sulfur is a chemical element with symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent, and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula S₈. Elemental sulfur is a bright yellow crystalline solid at room temperature.

Sulfur Melting Point: 115 °C ( 239.38 °F)

Yay! the sulfur is melting!

It took about 10 minutes to melt the sulfur. Now time to pour it into the mold!

OK, the sulfur hardened. Time to take it out the mold. I used a hammer to take it out.

No! that’s the ugly side. The better side is this:

Wow, I’m actually impressed. You’re probably wondering why the sulfur is brown. Just wait a couple days and the coin will turn yellow. But once it turned yellow, it has a chance to crumble in a month. Because sulfur crystallization is a complicated process. The time it takes is mostly determined by the temperatures the substance was subjected to initially. I’ll be making another post to show you how the color changed.

Hope you enjoyed the experiment if you did, drop a like on the bottom ↓

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur

https://melscience.com/en/experiments/sulfur-melt/