"Incredible metal" experiment

How to make a spoon that dissolves in the tea

Have you ever seen a met­al that melts in the hand?

Reagents and equip­ment:

  • gal­li­um;
  • beakers;
  • hot wa­ter;
  • Petri dish­es;
  • sy­ringe;
  • mug;
  • tea;
  • spoon mould.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

First, melt the gal­li­um in your hand. Then put the cap­sule with gal­li­um in a beaker of hot wa­ter. Pour it into a Petri dish and col­lect it in the sy­ringe. Fill the spoon mould with gal­li­um and put it in the fridge. Melt the spoon in a cup of tea.

Pro­cess­es de­scrip­tion

Gal­li­um is a brit­tle, sil­very-white met­al with a gray­ish tinge. It has a unique prop­er­ty - its melt­ing point is just +29.8 °C, and so it eas­i­ly melts in the hand (the tem­per­a­ture of the hu­man body is 36.6 °C).

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Ob­serve safe­ty rules in work­ing with elec­tri­cal de­vices and hot liq­uids. Gal­li­um is a low-tox­ic met­al, af­ter work­ing with it wash your hands thor­ough­ly with soap.

Warn­ing! Only un­der pro­fes­sion­al su­per­vi­sion.

Try it