Flower in the sky!!! ^ ^

Still remember Olympic 2008 in Beijing?!!

In the Olympic opening, Beijing used fireworks with the shape of footprint bring us to the stadium from Tian An Men. Then, before all the performance start, amazing, and great fireworks colored the whole dark sky.

An olympic symbol was shown in the sky by using flowerworks!!!

The opening ceremony!!!

The footprint fireworks

The formation of fireworks actually is based on the theory of combustion. There are 6 major ingredients in the composition of fireworks:

Fuel

Fuel is use to start the fireworks through combustion. Fuel used in fireworks is charcoal, which also known as black powder in pyrotechnic industry. Normally, fuels that use in fireworks will contain organic element such as charcoal or thermite.

Fuel in fireworks is to lose electrons to atoms within the oxidizer and releasing atoms from the oxidizer. During this process, between fuel and oxygen will form a bond and produce a product which in stable stage. However, only a little amount of fuel-oxidiser compound required to start the combustion. After fuel-oxidiser compound start combust, it will produce and release solid mixture liquefies and vaporises into the flame of ignition.

Oxidizing agent

The function of oxidizing agent is to produce oxygen needed for mixture inside the fireworks to burn. The most commonly oxidizers are nitrates. Nitrates are composed by nitrate ions ( NO₃^-) with metal ions. However, the most common oxidizer is potassium nitrate; it will decompose to potassium oxide, nitrogen gas and oxygen gas.

2KNO₃ → K₂O + N₂ + 5/2 O₂

From the equation above, we can observe that nitrate just releases 2.5 oxygen out of 3, so because of nitrates never release off all available oxygen, the reaction would not vigorous. In fact, nitrates not use in star explosions because the reactions of nitrates do not produce high enough of temperature to energize more colourful metal salts.

Chlorates, which contain chlorate ion ( CIO^3-). It gives out all oxygen in the reaction, in fact it will have more explosive energy and produce about 1700 to 2000^˚C temperature.

2KCIO₃→ 2KCI + 3O₂

Although chlorates have an extreme explosive, but it is very dangerous to handle because it is less stable. This is because chloride atom have the potential to form bond with four oxygen atoms but now it just bond with three oxygen atoms, so made the chlorine atom become unsaturated and non-stable. Instead, perchlorates are now been use in fireworks because it is more stable than chlorates and also release all the oxygen.

Perchlorates contain perchlorate ion (CIO^4-) and each chlorine atom is bounded to four oxygen atoms which bonded with the maximum number of oxygen atoms, therefore perchlorates are more stable than chlorates.

KCIO₄ →KCl + 2O₂

Reducing agent

The next element of fireworks is reducing agent. Reducing agent is use to burn with the oxygen that provided by oxidizing agent to produce hot gasses. Normally, sulphur and carbon would be used as reducing agent.

S + O₂→SO₂
C + O₂→CO₂

Regulators

By following, regulator like metal that add into fireworks is to control the rate of reaction by speeding up or slowing the reaction. Based on collision theory, the larger surface area will increase the rate of reaction. So, the larger surface area of metal will increase or speed up the rate of reaction. Therefore, the finer the powder of metal, the faster the rate of reaction.

Colouring agent

As we seem that the fireworks at Olympic got a lot of colour, so to produce different types of colour, different types of metal compound would be use in fireworks. In addition, different amount of energy release when reactions occur will characterized the colour of fireworks.

When higher energy released, it will correspond to shorter wavelength and the characteristic of colour will located on blue region of the visible spectrum. While the other way round, lower energy will correspond to longer wavelength and located on orange colour of the spectrum.

The metal compound and wavelength of colour of fireworks are listed in the table below:


Binders

The last element is binders. Binders are used to hold mixture of the fireworks together in a lump. There are two main elements used as binder, which are dextrin that dampened by water and shellac compound that dampened by alcohol. The binders actually do not begin work until it found that the fireworks has been lit and unstable for storage which potentially dangerous.

Hope the next olympic will more amazing and wonderful!!! ^^

Monster VS Alien

Monster VS Aliens

"Jelly Bob" seem like very love jelly and hope it be his girlfriend

Do you watch monster VS Alien???

Inside this show, there are 3 main characters; the either one is in blue color. Some of my friend said that the one is snot, but I think that is a jelly lah!!!(heheh^^) So i called it as "jelly bob".

As u saw that in monster VS alien, the “jelly bob” can move around and when it step on by a monster it still can re-shape back the original shape. So, let us back to our real life, of course a jelly can’t walk and can’t be so powerful, but to make jelly into a shape, a thickening agent is needed. If without thickening agent, jelly will collapse and not firm. Normally, pectin is use as thickening agent in jelly.

Pectin has a complex structure with a linear chain of α-(1-4)-linked D-galacturonic acid polysaccharide backbone, hologalacturonan. The structure of pectin consists of homopolymeric in majority and partially methylated poly-α-(1→4)-D-galacturonic acid residues.

At the same time, the region of galacturonic acid can be replace by α-(1→2)-L-rhamnosly-α-(1→4)-D-galacturonosyl, and the side chain of neutral sugar will branch off. Besides that, pectin also have a structure type called rhamnogalacturonan II, which is a less frequent complex. This type of side chain can be containing other residues such as L-fucose, D-xylose, D-apiose, 3-deoxy-D-lyxo-2-heptulosonic and so on so forth.

Pectin can be found in some fruits like apples, oranges, strawberries, plums and so on. The approximately levels of pectin in fruit or plant can be calculated:

Apple – 1-1.5%
Cherries – 0.4%
Orange – 0.5-3.5%
Carrot – 1.4%

To extract pectin from fruit or plant, some steps can be taking on:

1. Add and immerse hot diluted acid that around pH 1.5-3.5 to the plant and wait for several hours for extraction.
2. When the protopection of plant loses some branching because of bond breaking, the chain length will mix with the solution.
3. Filtered the solution then concentrate the filtrate in vacuum.
4. Then, the filtrate will precipitated by adding ethanol or isopropanol.
5. Separate alcohol-precipitated pectin and dry it.

Do you still remember the “jelly bob” inside the show is blue in color???



Now, to dye a jelly into different kind of color, some coloring agents are needed. As known that different types of chemical or compound use will produce different color. The table below show different types of chemical compound and the color:



So for blue colour, Indigo carmine and brilliant blue FCF are use. For Indigo carmine, it will cause for some allergic, thus not much of product will use this chemical. Therefore, let us discuss about brilliant blue FCF.

Brilliant blue CFC, under commercial names is known as colorant. It is denoted by E number E113 and has a colour index of 42090. In addition, it is a synthetic dye derived from coal tar. Brilliant Blue FCF is described as the sodium salts.

It consists essentially of disodium alpha-(4-(N-ethyl-3-sulfonatobenzylamino) phenyl)-alpha-(4-N-ethyl-3-sulfonatobenzylamino, cyclohexa-2,5-dienylidene) toluene-2-sulfonate and also together woth sodium chloride or sodium sulphate as the principle uncoloured components. Sometimes, calcium and potassium salts are also permitted. Besides, it can also appear as an aluminium lake.

The chemical formation of Brilliant blue FCF is C₃₇H₃₄N₂Na₂O₉S₃




Although in our life we saw that a lot of things especially food, that are colourful and very beautiful, but colouring agent actually is not healthy to our body. Some artificial colouring agent will also cause some allergic, asthma and others side effects. Therefore, for our health, we need to be aware to our surrounding lure!!!

Just like the show, the 3 characters try their best to protect their country from attack of alien. We will act as a defender to stop off any alien “bacteria” and “bad things” enter our body and protect our body.

Now H1N1 quite serious in Malaysia and also in the whole world, take care yourself!!!

My orchestra timpani

My orchestra performancec at 13-6-09

We invite an international singer for our performance

This is me while playing the super expensive timpani^^


This is what i am playing

I am a Chinese orchestra member. Last year, our Chinese orchestra bought a set of timpani for Malaysia Chinese orchestra competition. Fortunately, we won the second metal in Malaysia. (^^) The set of timpani we bought about RM50000, it is a huge amount. So to take care well for this set drum, we bought “Hippo” to ensure there is lesser humidity around the drum because the set of drum will spoil under a very humidity environment. “Hippo” is a brand for dehumidified product.

There are many types of drying agent been used. For example magnesium sulphate. It has a high capacity and complete drying in rapid. Whereas the capacity is refer to how much water per gram that the drying agent holds. The disadvantages of this drying agent is it normally will available in powder form and must filtered out, because magnesium is a very strong Lewis acid and not inert to all functional group. The other example of drying agent is sodium sulphate. This type of drying agent has the similar capacity of magnesium sulphate but in slower rate. It has an advantage is less reactive and in granular form which can remove from liquid easy. But commonly, granules calcium chloride (CaCl₂) are used to be as a drying agent.

Calcium chloride is a common salt which solid at room temperature. It behaves as a typical ionic halide. It can be produce directly from limestone, but large amount are also produced as a by-product of the Solvay process. So because of its hygroscopic nature, it must keep in a tightly-sealed container.

Bonding between calcium ions and chloride ions

Calcium chloride is a compound between chloride ions and calcium ions. It can serve as a source of calcium ions in solution. Furthermore, it will form precipitation because many calcium compounds are insoluble.

3 CaCl₂(aq)+ 2K₃PO₄(aq)→Ca₃(PO₄)₂ (s)+ 6KCl(aq)

Besides that, molten CaCl₂can be split into calcium metal and chlorine gas by electrolysed.

CaCl₂(l) →Ca(s) + Cl₂(g)

To prepare calcium chloride by Solvay process, sodium carbonate will be use to react with hydrochloride acid.

CaCO₂)(s) + 2HCl → CaCl₂(aq) + H₂O(l) + CO₂(g)

Calcium chloride anhydros powder

Based on the strongly hygroscopic properties, air and gases can be channelled to calcium chloride to remove moisture. But, it cannot be use to dry alkaline gases like ammonia gas because some additional product will form and that is dangerous. Moreover, calcium chloride can also add to liquid to remove suspended or dissolve water. The dissolving process is a highly exothermic and it will produce temperature around 60^˚C in rapidly. Therefore, it is known as drying agent or desiccant. It is converted to brine as it absorbs water or water vapour from substances to dry:

CaCl₂+2H₂→CaCl₂.2H₂

So, when place the dehumidified container which contains granules calcium chloride for few days, we can observe that the granules calcium chloride become lesser and liquid form substances are form.

To ensure the super expensive timpani are safe and never be disturb by naughty “humidity” in the air, many dehumidified container are placed around the timpani. (haha)^^

NO WATER!!!