Can anyone suggest a chemistry experiment for a magician to do in Victorian England?

[Ruby]

I need some help. Are any of you good at chemistry? Can you suggest an experiment that someone could be doing in Victorian England around 1899? At the moment the main character, a girl of 16,( who is a magician) has entered the lab where a young chemistry/apothecary professor is grinding some stuff using a pestle and mortar. She has come to find her father who is working there as she has just been told she has an exam that afternoon to see if she can study at the academy.The young Professor has a beaker containing some blue liquid which he is heating over a Bunsen burner. He adds the powder from the mortar and there is a chemical reaction, sparks of flame and thick black smoke. They have to open the window and leave the room. The MC laughs because the professor has messed up the experiment and offers to teach him how to do it. What could the experiment be? It's a fantasy so I could just make it up; but it would be better if it's scientifically correct. (Later on she discovers he will be on the panel of examiners...)

 

[JRFLynn]

Well, for the experiment gone wrong, he could've poured water on acid (by accident, of course, he is a professor ), I remember in chem class that was a big nono hehe. Some chemicals just shouldn't be mixed period, maybe he added the powder to a liquid, but the bottle was mislabeled, so it caused a caustic reaction. Actually, if it's a powder I believe you're supposed to put it in the beaker first, then pour water/whatever over it...that alone could probably cause a bad reaction, especially if it bubbles over.

As for what kind of experiment, they were discovering a lot of different elements at that time. Maybe he's testing the properties of an element, or how different ones go together...which can be dangerous. Anyways, hope my ramblings helped a bit, it's been so long I don't remember much of my college chem 0.0

 

[Ruby]

Thank you JRFLynn. You've given me a lot of information here. At the moment my MC is saying, "Don't you know it's blah, blah, blah" while I decide what to substitute that with. As you may know, in Victorian times, women were not allowed to be educated. However, she and her father are fugitives and she has nowhere else to go. But the professor is not going to be impressed with her knowledge. He will vote against her being offered a place at the exam/viva. On the other hand, as it's a Fantasy, he could be working on a magic potion that has gone wrong. I did some research on scientific experiments, but it's difficult to know what was available to the Victorians.

 

[skip.knox]

Er, why do you think women were not allowed to be educated?

 

[Ruby]

Women were not allowed to attend universities in Victorian England. I've been researching marriage in Victorian times and read that girls were not formally educated but were instructed in domestic duties in preparation for marriage. My MC wishes to attend an academic institution for magicians and scientists where there are no female students. Once she gets accepted she will set a precedent for other girls to join.

 

[Penpilot]

I think this reaction will fit your description perfectly. Alkali metals and water. Here's a youtube video showing the reaction and showing you the various metals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uixxJtJPVXk

Although I'm not sure about grounding an Alkali metal with a mortar and pestle.

 

[Ruby]

Hi Penpilot, thank you for this very useful link to YouTube. Some of those chemical reactions are really spectacular. I don't think I'll use the last couple though, unless the plot requires the young professor to burn down the lab! :smile: This story involves time travel too, so maybe he is testing metals for use in a time machine.(I just thought of that but I expect the characters intended this all along!) He used the mortar and pestle because he teaches science. The next thing I'm going to research is kinetics as the MC and her father are studying that, too.

 

[buyjupiter]

A few things to experiment with:

--photograph development. The chemicals used in developing photographs had been improved upon by the turn of the century, but they still weren't developing photos quickly then. Maybe come up with something that would improve the quality and the speed of development?

--radioactive elements and their properties. Marie Curie started working with her husband in the early 1890s doing experiments in radioactivity.

--testing materials for conductivity for the newfangled electrical devices.

--perfecting the formula for gasoline (this could be a little bit explosive)

 

[Sam Evren]

A strange synapse fired and I remembered this fellow: Duncan MacDougall. Right around the end of the Victorian Era, 1901, he tried to "weigh the soul" of tuberculosis patients. Essentially, he weighed the bodies before and immediately after death - I believe he tried to have them die whilst on the scale.

Not exactly a chemical experiment, but fun all the same.

 

[Shockley]

Just to jump in here, the term 'Victorian England' covers a wide swath of time (1837-1901) and a number of different social innovations. While it is very true that women were not encouraged to engage in scientific endeavors or receive academic training, it's not true to say that they were 'not allowed' to be educated. Mary Somerville was doing work on magnetism in the 1830s and 1840s, for example, and Ada Lovelace was working with Babbage on his machines during the same time period. Girton, a women's university, was founded in the 1860s. In the time period you are covering in your work Annie Maunder, one of the real greats, was partially responsible for both the Maunder Minimum and the discovery of the Little Ice Age being connected to sunspot activity.

So if you go with a plot line of women being totally excluded from academia in 1899, someone will call you on that.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Was trying to rack my brains from organic chem class so many years ago. When you said blue solution I immediately thought Copper sulfate. In Victorian times it would likely have been called blue vitriol. Now copper sulfate will react with metals but reaction isn't that violent, even when heated. However magnesium may be your best bet as the reaction releases hydrogen gas which could go bang in the presence of an open flame.

The reaction with the more aggresive alkali metals like lithium and sodium would be violent but they react with air too, so wouldn't be ground with a pestal and mortar. In fact sodium if you want to keep it from oxidising is stored in liquid parafin.

And copper sulfate has a quite nasty reaction with concentrated hydrochloric acid to form a tetrachloracuprate. If you then however add lithium you can get two compounds Lithium Tetrachlorocuprate and Dilithium (No not from Star Trek!) Tetrachlorocuprate. The first is a useful catalyst used in some halide reactions.

I can see making this in such a weird way being a very risky proposition but maybe he's just playing around.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Ruby]

Hi buyjupiter, thank you for these suggestions. This book is a prequel and your idea about photograph development could be useful to the plot, although I may not use it in this scene. A character in my (unfinished ha ha) other book, sees a photograph in which she notices a figure wearing something which would be an anachronism in Victorian times, and realises he has time travelled. So maybe they are developing photographic techniques in the lab? This book ( the prequel) was originally set in 1870, but I moved it to 1899 because there were more developments in science such as the things you mention and so that the culture shock wouldn't be so great when the MC time travels.

 

[Ruby]

Hi Sam Evren, thank you for telling me about this experiment. What were his conclusions?

 

[Ruby]

Thank you Shockley, for this really helpful post. It shows you that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I originally set my book in 1870 and maybe things had changed by 1899. I have just done some preliminary research on the women you mention. They were all very inspiring and were eventually recognised as academics, but most of them were self educated as there was a lot of prejudice. Girton College was established in 1869 but women were only allowed to sit exams and at a lower level than male students. Annie Maunder went to Girton, but restrictions of the period did not allow her to receive her BA. Mary Somerville and Caroline Herschel did become honorary members of the Royal Astronomical Society but when they were very old. Most of them were able to study with their brothers or husbands, or studied in secret. I think there would have been opposition to a girl wanting to study at an all male educational institution at that time, but hopefully some of the Professors on the educational board in my book would have been enlightened and allowed her to attend certain lectures. You know, I never knew writing Fantasy would be this hard! I've just done NaNoWriMo and spent so much time researching the French wars, Victorian England, Victorian fashions, magic etc because, as you say, you don't want someone to point out inaccuracies. Tolkien didn't have these problems when he invented Middle Earth! :smile:

 

[Ruby]

Hi psychotick, thank you for posting this information. I may use one of these. I was thinking of Copper Sulphate because of the colour, but I think you are right that magnesium might be a better choice. I shall go and have another look at the videos on YouTube. The book is only a first draft so things can easily be changed. My MC may use some of these experiments in her exam, but again I need to know what the Victorians knew. Of course, there is a cop out that time travellers would have known more than your average Victorian.

 

[skip.knox]

Yep,what Shockley said. There may well have been certain universities that were closed to women; there certainly were males-only universities in the U.S. at the time. But universities were not regulated by a central authority, so it's misleading to say much of anything was allowed or not allowed in Victorian universities.

Still, your MC wants to enroll in a magician's university. Since that's fictional, you can make up whatever rules you like. And, as I said, such policies were set at the university level, at the college level, really, so you could have one that allowed it and another that forbade it.

 

[Ruby]

Hi Skip.knox and Shockley. Somehow my question about a chemistry experiment for a Fantasy novel has turned into a discussion about women's education in Victorian England. As a result of your comments I thought I'd better research women's rights and employment during this period so, as you seem interested, I will share some interesting discoveries with you. Re Annie Maunder, she got top mathematical honours at Girton but wasn't allowed to collect her BA; she then worked at Greenwich Royal Observatory but had to resign from her job upon marrying Walter Maunder in 1895 as married women were not allowed to work in public office. This also applied to women teachers, which is why you have the stereotypical spinster teacher/governess in literature. Interestingly, this applied not only to women in England but also in the USA. The marriage bar for women teachers wasn't removed until 1933 in England. My MC has a spinster governess and there are no women Professors, married or otherwise. She will also not marry because this would entail losing all her property to her husband. I think I'd better time travel her into the future soon!