Well, he's come a long way from being a horrible chemist to being an average chemist. Took him a few years to realize that chemistry is tedious work and you can't take shortcuts or it doesn't work, unless you spent a lot of time on the new procedure. It's nice to see that he now follows through with his work.
His literature research skills are still pretty mediocre. In this video I would have liked some info what influences the bounciness of the amorphous metal. Maybe there's an even bouncier one, that doesn't even need beryllium. He just copied the one he got from Steve Mould.
Of course doing somewhat dangerous stuff (and then exaggerating the danger) is kind of the theme of his channel and works very well on youtube. He surely is very talented at playing the youtube game and has a very pleasant voice.
But really, if you're amazed by his technical competence you've never worked with a truly competent chemist.
Explains why most everyone is amazed then, doesn't it?
Like how many people do you reckon work with "a truly competent chemist" in their life? A knee-jerk Google search quoted me approx. 100 000 people working as a chemist in the States, compared to approx. 135 040 000 people working a full time job in general. That's 0.07% of the workforce being chemists. Of which who knows how many fit your bill of being a "truly great chemist", and then who knows how many people get a chance to work with them. The number of people who should be able to tell how good of a chemist he is is orders of magnitude lower than the views on any one of his videos.
You are absolutely correct, I've never worked with a truly competent chemist -- my previous instructors are now complaining from the grave, so I'll give them a retroactive pass.
As someone who aced chem but nearly failed the labs, he seems remarkably skilled to me, so you saying "horrible" and "average" really surprises me -- but obviously I have nothing to judge by, never having been exposed to anything near that level of chem work except for his videos.
As you allude to, I wonder how much of the "it didn't work, so I had to try something different" is for YouTube -- if every project worked the first time it would be boring.
In chemistry only very simple stuff works the first time you try it. Even skilled chemists usually fail to replicate research papers, especially in organic chemistry. It's very frustrating. Lots of work, lots of cleaning up.
Pretty much all the chemistry you see on youtube can be considered simple. Even the cubane synthesis, which Extractions&Fire epically failed at, was undergrad stuff at my university. Chemiolis nailed it, I think.
Other great chemistry channels that come to my mind are Chemical Force (breathtaking slowmo videos), Thy Labs, Thoisoi, Prussian Blue, Chemdelic, not exhaustive.
HA! I didn't think how that might come across, but no: it's just been a long time since I last took a chemistry class, and the instructors were old back then. I'm sure they've all since passed of old age, not from beryllium inhalation or organic mercury exposure or etc. etc.
> Of course doing somewhat dangerous stuff (and then exaggerating the danger) is kind of the theme of his channel and works very well on youtube
I never got that impression from him. He definitely plays up the Rube Goldberg-ishness of his procedures, but his insistence on the risks involved seems to me to be a safety thing.
It’s important to note that he’s never cavalier about the risks. He isn’t playing up the “mad scientist” angle, or portraying any of the risks as cool. Every mention of the dangers involved is presented more in terms of him feeling uncomfortable with the risk, and is swiftly followed with what he did for safety.
Given how much he keeps bringing up that he’s buying all his reagents from Amazon and eBay, there’s a real risk that somebody might decide to try and replicate his videos at home.
Ultimately, the stuff he’s doing isn’t super risky for a trained chemist, but it is pretty damn dangerous for the random teenager watching his videos, so you need to make sure they respect the stuff that’s going on.
Yeah, you're right, I was a bit salty. Especially since I think he was the first chemistry channel that didn't get banned and so, with his innocent demeanor, laid the foundation for all the other chemistry channels, that got increasingly bold.
But he did come a long way. When you go back 8-9 years his chemistry was kinda crude. I think he usually just did the reactions once and took what he got. Guess I'm still salty that he didn't optimize, which he now does.
But then he was basically the random teenager then and is a chemist now.
There's a trend in his videos where he can barely smell things that everyone else notices, so I always wondered if he burned his nose out on an experiment.
(The other thing I wonder is, does he just keep all that equipment around that gets used like once a year?)
I lost a large swath of my olfactory palette in 2021 when I contracted COVID, but recovered some after a few months. Still to this day, I struggle to taste different foods, which is a bit painful because of how excellent my partner is at cooking.
