APPLICATION - RADIATION FROM SOLAR FLARE BURSTS!

If you want to read about this video and how it relates to the recent concerns about radiation in Japan, see the following post on my blog: http://thehomescientist.blogspot.com/2011/03/potassium-iodide-and-radiation.html

Here I make potassium iodide from elemental iodine and potassium hydroxide.

3I2 + 6KOH == 5KI + KIO3 + 3H2O

The coproduct of potassium iodate can be separated easily because it is far less soluble in water, and to ensure it was all precipitated out I immersed the solution in an ice bath.

This video is a good demonstration of how things really go when you do chemistry yourself. You start with a bunch of assumptions, and a lot of the time many of these are proven wrong and you have to figure out another way to do it. For example, the additional heating I had to do and the fact that I used too much iodine. I've added a number of annotations to highlight this as well.