CENtral Science

Reacting chromium trioxide with ethanol

For your Monday morning entertainment, here’s a video from the talented folks at the Periodic Table of Videos and the University of Nottingham. Safety points of note: wearing gloves to handle toxic chromium trioxide, pouring a small amount of ethanol into a beaker rather than using the stock bottle, using flame-proof gloves to do the reaction, and everything confined within blast shields. But chemistry professor and department safety officer Martyn Poliakoff makes one mistake…