Important: Safety Warning
This page, written for children, describes experiments or amusements involving hazardous chemicals, electricity, or projectiles. The activities described have caused serious injuries and should not be attempted at any age without proper training, supervision, and equipment.
In addition, this page describes practices involving highly flammable materials in ways that create a serious risk of fire or explosion.
In addition, this page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Experiments (Iodine has a beautiful)
Iodine has a beautiful metallic lustre, with a bluish black colour, and should be kept in a well-stoppered bottle. A small quantity placed in a clear flask and heated, affords a magnificent violet vapour, which may be poured from the flask into another glass vessel, when it condenses again into crystalline plates. The colour of the vapour originates the name of this element, so called from the Greek lwons, violet-coloured. If a little iodine be placed in contact with a thin slice of phosphorus, the latter takes fire almost immediately.