Ben Goldacre
Saturday July 22, 2006
The Guardian
The new series of Sky’s explosion-laden hit science program “Brainiac” starts tomorrow, and there’s just one question on everyone’s lips: will they be faking the science as much in this series as they have previously? Because by the miracle of the internet I can now quote telly, so there’s a link to a very interesting clip of Brainiac for you at www.badscience.net.
It purports to show a lump of Rubidium, and then a lump of Caesium, each blowing up a bathtub, in series 2.”Whether you’ve left school, or you’re still at school, you can still appreciate the sheer MAYHEM that chemistry can be!!!” it begins. “Bunsen burners! Mixing Chemicals!” Science!!! “Now you may have been allowed to mix very small amounts of lithium with water.” Yes. “You may, with a responsible adult, have mixed H2O with sodium. And you may, under strict ‘scientific’ control, have witnessed potsasium mixed with water. But the odds are, if you have,” he reaches for a prop, “it will only have been on those… rubbish science videos!” Then they burn a box labelled “rubbish science video”, on a bunsen burner, using some big “sciencey” tongs.
I’m just trying to give you a flavour of the program.
“These next two are the dog’s nuts of the periodic table.” They go on, introducing rubidium and caesium. “Mix these two with water, stand back… and watch the MAYHEM!!!”
Now before we get into the details, I want you to know that I am a sophisticated man, and I appreciate this is a complex situation. The program makers, perhaps, thought they were making a pure entertainment show. Sky claims that viewers are always told when the results of experiments are jazzed up. But what is the point of a science show that shows what happens when you add A to B, if the sequence shows nothing of the kind?
Science consultants walk a dangerous line. One, whom we shall refer to as “Deep Throat” (and if you don’t re-employ him, Granada Productions, know that I am watching you very closely), was unimpressed with the way things turned out on Brainiac, and has nobly and quietly murmured disgruntlement. I know I’m not bringing down the government, but humour me.
So what happened with the caesium? In the program they are explicit about what they are doing. “Caesium, the emperor of alkali metals, particularly nasty, could go off at any time!” “What’s that going to do when it hits the water?” “Imagine a depth charge in a bath tub!” Yup, imagine that.
The voiceover continues, over a dance music soundtrack: “As our caesium sinks in the water, the rapid generation of hydrogen gas should produce quite an explosion!!!” They drop the caesium in and run for cover. “And it does!” The bathtub is blown to pieces. “Yeeeeeesssss” gasps the presenter. “Only on Brainiac do you get that kind of… Science!”
But what really happened? Deep Throat (okay, Brainiac’s Dr Bunhead, aka Tom Pringle) claims: “Absolutely bloody nothing. The density of caesium ensured it hit the bottom of the bath like a lead weight. The sheer volume of water then totally drowned out the thermal shock-wave I was expecting to shatter the bath. This was an expensive filming day. They had hired part of Pinewood studios and had an ambulance and fire engine plus crew on standby. They could not go home empty handed. So they rigged a bomb in the bottom of the bath (you can see the black wire leading into the bath) and then blew the shit out of it. I must say, it did look cool, [but it] ate away at my conscience… I couldn’t do anything about it.”
If this was all faked, then what exactly is the point of me watching? And moreover, what is the point of them saying “the rapid generation of hydrogen gas” caused the explosion, if it didn’t? Am I the stupidest person in the room here? Anyway, a Sky spokesperson said: “All of the experiments conducted on Brainiac have proven theory behind them. We aim to inform, excite and, above all, entertain our viewers with science method conducted in a fun and engaging way. We love big bangs and sometimes we’ll make an explosion bigger than we need to just because it’s fun but we always tell our viewers. We’re just about to start our fourth series, we’ve won several awards as well as the respect of educational professionals and we’re really proud to be sparking children’s interest in science.” When pressed on this incident, the spokesperson was unable to confirm if the experiment was faked or not, was unable to confirm if viewers were told if it was faked or not, and claimed my source was not even there for the filming and so could not comment.
And another version here on Google video too just in case.
mark said,
July 15, 2006 at 2:48 am
wow. who would have thought that the objectification of women and natural science were so compatible! thanks, Brainiac!
superburger said,
July 15, 2006 at 3:46 am
Gutted.
I’m a chemist and I have never seen 2Cs + 2H2O —> 2CsOH + H2 happen live. I was all excited until the fraud was revealed.
Two geek points. 1) Large voulmes of water placed over explosive mixtures is known to prevent large explosions, I think big bags of water have been used by bomb disposal teams to dampen blasts- pretty interesting in it’s own right.
2) Fr is almost impossible to isolate and most isotopes have a half life of 30 min, so that’s why the braniac team couldn’t get a hold of any.
3) They should have wacked it in a bath of conc. HCl, I’m sure that would be like a depth charge in a bathtb.
Ben Goldacre said,
July 15, 2006 at 3:59 am
it’s funny, whenever i do a story like this, all my friends who work in the media say “so what, everyone assumes that kind of thing is faked” and all my, well, normal friends express horror. well obviously not horror but you know what i mean.
jd said,
July 15, 2006 at 7:38 am
Quote: “Only on Brainiac do you get that type of … science.”
I presume the type of science he is referring to is …. fake science.
How terribly disappointing. Still, I’m looking forward to the episode where they prove homeopathy is real. Isn’t that their type of … science?
bazzargh said,
July 15, 2006 at 9:33 am
JD said: “How terribly disappointing. Still, I’m looking forward to the episode where they prove homeopathy is real. Isn’t that their type of … science?”
Only if you can get homeopathic explosives. I suppose they could do a homeopathic beer experiment, with budweiser (aka alcohol 9c)
Sarah said,
July 15, 2006 at 10:15 am
What exactly is the point in watching? To admire the lovely Mr Pringle of course. [wistful sigh]
MissPrism said,
July 15, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Sky in crap programme shock!
Dr Bunhead, on the other hand, rocks.
Tom P said,
July 15, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I was just shocked by the sheer amount of denim Richard Hammond was wearing. Clarkson is clearly a malign influence.
superburger said,
July 15, 2006 at 3:50 pm
They said about 2g of Cs, which is 0.015 moles, and should produce 0.015 moles of H2(g). Molar volume is about 22 l / mol, so only about a third of litre of hydrogen gas is actually evolved.
Did they try and ignite the H2 gas at the same time, or did they just expect the pressure wave to do the damage?
Can i volunteer to do the expt again, with acid instead of water, and try and ignite the hydorgen at the same time? I’m sure that would go boom.
See kids? Problems in kinetics and thermodynamics can be fun……
pseudomonas said,
July 15, 2006 at 3:57 pm
Superburger – the reaction with water is exothermic enough to ignite the hydrogen (see the potassium bit). I guess if the vial sinks then the hydrogen can’t get ignited until it reaches the air, by which point it’s too cold.
dbhb said,
July 15, 2006 at 4:19 pm
That’s a shame. I enjoy this program (and Top Gear) but there’s always been a sneaking suspicion that the games and challenges are frequently faked. Knowing that they are faked kinda spoils it a bit.
Does it matter? Is it ‘ok’ because ‘everyone knows it’s faked’?
Now that’s a dangerous attitude for anyone in the press to have. Lying is lying and even white lies erode trust. The media can’t afford to lose any more trust than it already has, IMO.
dbhb said,
July 15, 2006 at 4:21 pm
I should add that I think it would have made it just as (if not more) entertaining to see what really happened (and hear why it went wrong) and then watch them deciding to blow up the bath anyway.
superburger said,
July 15, 2006 at 5:11 pm
pseudomonas,
what i mean, is would it have been possible to ignite the hydogen as soon as it was formed, maybe by having the vial connected to a electrical circuit, which could ignite the gas as soon a it begins to evolve. …
Frank said,
July 15, 2006 at 5:28 pm
As the one who linked this on the Bad Science forum, I’m not only ashamed at being duped but also irritated that the 2kgs of Caesium I just spent last week isolating is nothing but an expensive effervescent.
superburger said,
July 15, 2006 at 5:40 pm
frank, you could always build an atomic clock with it…….
or throw caution to the wind and try and do some flame spectroscopy. I think it has a pretty blue emmision spectrum.
CDavis said,
July 15, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Pah! From a great height I spit on their silly caesium experiment. The correct way to blow up bathroom fixtures using alkali metals was discovered in the early ’60s by a schoolfriend, a kid called Van Ryjn. This boy had not previously shown any indication that he was other than a moron, and nor did he subsequently demonstrate any signs of ingenuity. But on one glorious summer day he created a device that provided our little band of 11-year-old nihilists with literally some enjoyment for years to follow.
You will need:
– Sodium – about an acorn-sized piece, cut in two or three.
– A pencil or similar pointed stick.
– A large, rectangular, 100-litre industrial washbasin, as found in schools, prisons and concentration camps. By their 6-inch-thick walls shall ye know them. Start filling it now – they’re big.
– Plasticine – a lump, quant suff for the following:
1) Squoosh the plasticine into a disk. Place the sodium in the centre, and fold the disk halves together, Cornish Pasty-stylee, to enclose the metal while leaving plenty of rattling room.
2) With the pencil, make several holes in the plasticine, large enough to admit large chunks of water without the sodium falling out.
3) The basin should be full by now. Turn off the tap, toss the plasticine pasty into the water and retire to a safe distance, affecting a nonchalant air.
4) After an uncomfortably long time and much bubbling, there will be a staggeringly loud bang, and the air will fill with boiling conc NaOH droplets and flying lumps of basin shrapnel. When visibility returns, the area should be a satisfying scene of devastation. If you’re not the owner of the destruction, now might be a good time to leave.
I see no reason why this will not work with the more reactive elements, though I’ve not tested this. It certainly works in swimming pools, buckets and many, many other containers.
CD
CaptainSensible said,
July 16, 2006 at 4:39 pm
I saw a video of the of the Cs H2O reaction at school (I did my Chem GCSE in 1991). They used a glass bowl thing (aka known as a trough) filled with water and threw a small pellet of CS into it; the reaction shattered the glass container and water went everywhere etc.
Pity about the fake stuff. Throwing the petulant hobbit/Clarkson understudy into a bath of acid would be fun though…
Darth_Tater said,
July 16, 2006 at 5:52 pm
We still use that video clip from the boring science video, Captain. I may be using the Brainiac clip but only in the context of the new “How Science Works” bit of the GCSE if I can find an excuse for a case study in media manipulation – thinks… maybe a combined project with the media studies people…
pseudomonas said,
July 16, 2006 at 6:18 pm
superburger: can you ignite the hydrogen before it’s reached the surface and found some friendly oxygen?
superburger said,
July 16, 2006 at 6:52 pm
pseudomonas:
Hopefully the vial is a sealed tube containing Cs and some air to provide some oxygen, if you could start the reaction and spark it at the right time there should be enough oxygen to get the reaction going, though that’s just a guess. Maybe a bigger vial with some more air in it would be good.
I think CDavis’ method sounds good, as presumably the shape of the blutac pasty means that there is an air/water/sodium microenviroment inside the pasty.
How does one handle Cs? I remember having to make some sodium wire for a solvent still and you take a solid lump of Na covered in parafin, then put it through what looks like a sausage machine, and a length of wire comes out, which you collect in a parafin filled trough/beaker.
superburger said,
July 16, 2006 at 6:56 pm
bugger, just watched the video, and the Cs is stored under argon.
Anyone have a spare bath, some Cs and a good desgin for an experiment to see if it is possible to blow up a bathtub using alkali metals.
FlammableFlower said,
July 16, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Cs and water do go up quite impressively. I had a friend who was handling some in an argon glove box, which the previous user had allowed moisture into. Needless to say he was quite surprised when it went phoom in his hands.
As an aside, I found out that you can set fire to dry ice (solid CO2) using sodium hydride (dry). Once when rushing some work I weighed out 12g into a flask that wasn’t flame dried. After sparking quite impressively it got quite hairy (not literally) and not wanting to explain why I had to discharge a fire extinguisher I dropped some dry ice pellets in…. it looked a bit like barbeque firelighters.
FlammableFlower said,
July 16, 2006 at 7:19 pm
If you want to see some good footage of big bangs with sodium – this guy had a sodium party with a dirty great lump bought off eBay (post 9/11 that amount may be a little harder to obtain). The biggest lump they used was 175 g. Quiet nice videos at the bottom of the page:
www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Stories/011.2/
Ben Goldacre said,
July 16, 2006 at 7:50 pm
I love that sodium party page. especially the bit about dumping salt, and this..
“Then there were a series of secondary explosions obviously caused by a single fairly large chunk that was literally hopping across the lake. It was thrown high up into the air, came down to hit the water at a high rate of speed, and was then thrown back up into the air by the resulting explosion. This happened at least three, maybe four times, so far as I can tell from the video.
“This is quite alarming: The longest time between impacts, timed on the videotape, was 3.12 seconds. If you do the math, this means the chunk was thrown almost 40 feet high. Fortunately it was going reasonably close to straight up and down, and we were quite far away (about 200 feet). But this skipping behavior, which so far as I know is documented here for the first time on the internet, clearly gives the whole thing far greater potential reach. It’s easy to imagine a chunk skipping hundreds of feet.”
superburger said,
July 16, 2006 at 8:03 pm
maybe that’s the solution, just have a piece of Cs, covered in parafin to stop it going up in the catapult, then fire into a suitable large tank.
Can anyone contact braniacs and demand a real Cs explosion be broadcast on Sky?
How the hell did ebay allow anyone to sell that much sodium metal?
FlammableFlower said,
July 16, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Where I used to work we used a lot of sodium. Howerever, we never had the balls, or the lake with surrounding acres, to try catapulting large lumps into water.
boro_dave said,
July 17, 2006 at 10:17 am
I remember a technician (who shall remain nameless) who decided to wash out a large glass bottle. The label said it was only ethanol so it would easily be swept away with copious amounts of water. He placed the bottle under the tap, turned it on and then turned round to do something else…
The bang must have been deafening – it was loud to me in the basement office 50ft away – and left a lab covered in glass pieces as well as a shaky (and lucky) technician with only a few scratches from flying glass. If he hadn’t had his back to the sink, the glass would have been embedded in his face.
Turns out that the bottle of ethanol was stored with pieces of sodium in it to keep it dry!
So, sodium + water + ethanol vapour + enclosed space = bomb
Evil Kao Chiu said,
July 17, 2006 at 10:26 am
Dammit. I like Brainiac.
Further disillusionment. Go on, disprove the tooth fairy next, why don’t you…
Andrew Clegg said,
July 17, 2006 at 12:13 pm
The only other time I’ve watched Brainiac, they tried to prove/disprove the folk wisdom about sneezes travelling at a hundred miles an hour… By getting someone to sneeze at a ping pong ball at point blank range, and measuring how fast the ball then rolled across the table. As if the law of conservation of momentum had been thrown out by the Court of Appeal.
Andrew.
JQH said,
July 18, 2006 at 7:37 am
boro_dave (post 27)
The stupidity you describe is not that of the technician who decided to wash out the bottle but that of the moron who chose to store sodium under ethanol instead of parafin and compounded the mistake by not changing the lable.
sockatume said,
July 18, 2006 at 8:25 am
He wouldn’t be storing the sodium under ethanol, he’d be storing ethanol with sodium (wire). It’s common practice for certain solvents, to keep them dry. Although I’ve not seen it done with ethanol before (ether’s the one I run into most).
boro_dave said,
July 18, 2006 at 10:41 am
Sockatume – you could be right about being ether, not ethanol. My memory’s not what it used to be!
Still produced a big bang, regardless of the solvent!
JQH – I’d still blame the technician, he was a bit old-school in terms of health and safety, i.e. H&S is for wimps.
Camp Freddie said,
July 18, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Erm, ethanol reacts with sodium to give sodium ethoxide – so I call shenanigans on this story.
In fact, people use ethanol as a safe way to wash sodium contaminated equipment. The reaction of ethanol with sodium is relatively slow, so you don’t risk fire/explosion.
If the report of an explosion is true, then it is likely to be ether in the jar that was washed.
jonman said,
July 18, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Brainiac not ‘good science’? Shock-horror!
I honestly feel that the best educational use of Brainiac would be to have science classes discuss and dissect the flaws in the experiments shown on the show. Still, to be fair, it’s not an entertaining science program, it’s a scientific entertainment program – what did we really expect – rigourious application of the scientific method.
spectator said,
July 18, 2006 at 2:42 pm
The ’60s certainly were the Golden Age for sodium bombs – here’s my story…
Me and my best mate were fairly typical disaffected inmates incarcerated in a boarding school (cf If…). We preferred alternative chemistry. One day he smuggled a pellet of sodium out of the labs, wrapped it in his oil soaked hanky and put it in his trouser pocket. At lunch someone spilt a glass of water into his lap. The sight of him running the full length of the refectory, with steam issuing form his trouser pocket has remained with me to this day. He ran straight to the lavatory, panicked, and threw the hanky down the pan – this produced the same effect as the Van Ryjn device, a slow sizzling and then, oblivion for the porcelain pedestal.
jimyojimbo said,
July 20, 2006 at 12:43 am
Awww bless. It was really funny to watch Tickle-Man describe his capsule of Caesium as the “Emperor of alkali metals” and “a depth charge in a bathtub” whilst waving it under the dwarf’s nose using the same grabby-mechanism my dear old grandma uses to pick up the telly remote. Says Sam Gamgee, “Right, I’m off!”
Alright there, little guy. Careful as you go! Go hide behind that shop dummy, and you, mate, get in that caravan.
All of this is so underwhelming comapred to my gnomish A-Level chemistry teacher pinging bits of sodium into a sink of water whilst crying, “yeah man, groovy!”
rubbertruck said,
July 20, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Makes me glad I don’t have Sky.
Also reminds me of other disappointments in teenage pyrotechnics. Like the time a “friend” played a surprise game of “catch”, involving me and a bottle of crystalline picric acid.
Never one to catch a moving object with any aplomb, I didn’t disappoint him, as the bottle bounced off the concrete at my feet, as I flailed about like the games no-hoper that I am. And what happened? Nothing, nada, bugger all. Maybe thay just made bottles tough at the fag-end of the 80’s… Another myth exploded (or not).
CDavis said,
July 23, 2006 at 3:01 pm
I’ve had some thoughts about this sodium malarkey. Advance apologies for the following long-winded blethering:
o The Van Ryjn Device seems to have worked as well as it did primarily because the plasticine shell provided enough weight to keep the whole thing deep underwater until the ignition took place. At its extreme, bits of Na that would have fizzed merrily about on the surface if unconstrained, went kaboom instead.
o Part of this is counterintuitive: in commentary here and on the Sodium Party site, there’s talk of getting enough oxygen to the evolving Na + H to allow a proper fuel/air mixture. That makes perfect sense, of course: Hydrogen just squeaks if you ignite a pure lump of it, as (presumably) the oxygen battles upstream against the flame front.
But that really doesn’t appear to be what happened with the VRD bangs, though. The actual explosion always seemed to be coming from the area of the bomb, not the gas bubbles. Given the time delay (around 5-10 seconds) before the explosion, and the vigour of the outgassing, I wouldn’t expect there to be enough oxygen left to provide a 1:2 mixture.
Further, the intensity of the explosion seemed to be related to the depth of water to which the bomb sank. I suspect that the depth pressure was helping water to reach the sodium, by reducing the size of the H bubbles.
So I’m left wondering: is it possible that the oxygen is coming from somewhere other than the atmosphere? This sounds daft, but is there a way that – at the high temperatures being generated by the highly exothermic sodium/water reaction – hot water vapour is being cracked into something else that hydrogen can burn in? This can’t be H2 + O, of course, because that would take as much energy as the bang gives out.
I realise I’m talking crap here, but the fact is that these explosions – which as the Sodium Party guy pointed out only happen beyond some critical point – seem to work best when the atmosphere is *excluded* as much as possible, especially by full immersion. Something other than simple expelled hydrogen burning in atmosphere appears to be happening. Inorganic chemists – ten HUT!
CD
amoebic vodka said,
July 24, 2006 at 8:55 pm
We suspect the delay before the explosion might be due to the sodium breaking up after a bit, which would suddenly increase the surface area over which it can react with water.
Melissa said,
July 26, 2006 at 3:23 am
I enjoy the show Mythbusters a lot, primarily because they televise their failures and back-to-the-drawing-boards along with their successes. Seeing all that gives me more respect for the science involved.
CDavis said,
July 29, 2006 at 10:53 am
amoebic vodka said
[quote]We suspect the delay before the explosion might be due to the sodium breaking up after a bit, which would suddenly increase the surface area over which it can react with water [/quote]
Good point. It occurs to me that the increased reaction = increased heat + smaller pieces to heat = ignition temp.
I still wonder what’s burning in what, though.
CD
Elliott12345 said,
October 6, 2006 at 1:59 am
Actually, if you look better, the black “cord” is actually a hose that they used to fill the tub.
Ben Goldacre said,
October 6, 2006 at 2:37 am
you mean at 1m:52s in the clip?
it can’t be more than a few mm wide, that’s a pretty narrow hose, dude.
smarshie said,
October 14, 2006 at 9:14 am
Just a comment about the idea of putting alkali metals into concentrated hydrochloric acid: Colleagues of more experience than I (I’m a Chemistry teacher) tell me that potassium doesn’t particularly react with *concentrated* HCl. This is because the concentration of chloride ions in the acid is so high that it prevents the potassium chloride produced from dissolving (this is called the ‘common ion’ effect) so it coats the metal and protects it from reacting further. I guess the same might happen with rubidium and caesium. Dilute HCl would, I think work much better. Not that I have ever had the guts to try it out for myself….
Joe said,
January 17, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I think its a shame that you are all putting brainiac down. While i can see that it is quite objectionable that the experiments shown on the show are fake, you have to remeber that this is a TELEVISION show. On how many episodes of the show “ready steady cook” do you think the chefs stayed within their alocated time limit to cook a meal? yet we would still call this real cooking. How many attempts do you think it takes for a blue peter presenter to make a mothers day card? Or even the other “science” progranmes on TV, do you really think all the experiments on these shows are one hundered percent honest? We have to take into account that while it takes depth from the programmes, Shows like brainiac must have to put on a show that has both impact and scientific background, and in this media frenzied society the impact must come first, however much of a shame this is.
Brainiac helps Young people (like me), to have acces to science outside of the classroom. I Know people who normally wouldnt give a damn about science really get into the subject, and even, god forbid, undertake in scientific discussion thanks to their new found knowledge and interest. Would all this be possible if the show had less of a “wow” factor? The obvious answer is no. So be mildly disappointed that you didnt get to see a real caesium and water reaction, but also be hopping with joy at sciences evolution into a subject which can be enjoyed by all.
MarkW said,
February 13, 2007 at 12:49 pm
Joe, the problem I have with Brainiac is its dishonesty. The caesium in the bath failed to create the explosion they wanted. A more scientific approach would have been to explain WHY it failed, and then said “well, we’re going to blow the bath up anyway”.
Have you ever seen Mythbusters? It’s a very similar idea for a programme, but takes a far more honest approach with their failures. And yet they still blow things up 🙂
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Tim Hunt said,
August 7, 2011 at 4:14 pm
Proper science, from the Open University: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uixxJtJPVXk