Golden Rain
The silver tree was beautiful, now let’s perform a golden experiment. This experiment kind of failed and pass. What I mean is that the experiment failed, and it was a success, you know what I mean. So don’t trust my steps, but be sure to follow the video at the end of this post.
This experiment is hard. Even I fail. So you shouldn’t handle this unless you’re an experienced chemist.
Things you’ll need: potassium iodide, lead (II) ni- (wait, why am I posting this even it’s a fail? Ok then, I’ll show you what I did).
This is when I took the flask from the alcohol burner. Yup, it looks like a disaster. This doesn’t even look like the video! Well to the next photo.
Yay! it worked! You could see the shiny particles coming down to the bottom. Success and fail. It looked really nice, I like this experiment.
Yes, Gold, Au everywhere!
This is when I filtered it out. Looks like golden paint.
A closer look.
This is the water that is filtered out. It still has some golden particles in it.
Well, after all of these photos I would say that it’s a success. Follow the video to do it:
Golden rain demonstration is made by combining two colorless solutions, potassium iodide solution and Lead(II) nitrate solution at room temperature to form yellow precipitate. During the chemical reaction, golden particles gently drop from the top of erlenmeyer flask to bottom, similar to watching the rain through a window. The golden rain chemical reaction demonstrates the formation of a solid precipitate. The golden rain experiment involves two soluble ionic compounds, potassium iodide (KI) and lead(II) nitrate (Pb(NO3)2), as formular : Pb(NO3)2 + 2KI → 2KNO3 + PbI2. They are initially dissolved in separate water solutions, which are each colorless. When mixed, a the lead from one solution and the iodide from the other combine to form lead(II) iodide (PbI2), which is insoluble at low temperature and has a golden bright yellow color. At higher temperature, this substance easily re-dissolves by dissociation to its colorless ions. To explain, a double displacement reaction occur when potassium iodide and lead(II) nitrate mixing together causing metals changing their position in both two compounds forming lead (II) iodide and potassium nitrate. Lead iodide is strong insoluble in water at room temperature causing yellow precipitate of lead iodide.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rain_demonstration
Danupon Drake 