I like the story of Herman Mark, who was greatly concerned about his ancestry because his father had been Jewish (though he converted before Herman was born). The Nazis confiscated his passport, but he paid a bribe equivalent to a year's salary to get it back. He also converted all his assets into platinum in the form of wire, bent it into coathangers, hung clothes on them and put them in his car, then strapped a Nazi flag onto the radiator and drove across the border into Switzerland.

What makes this even more impressive is that it was done at the institute of theoretical physics, not the institute of chemistry ;)

@GlutenEruption

Ай бұрын

It's a great story although to be fair it's almost impossible to do enough academically to complete a PhD in theoretical physics and then win a Nobel prize without having enough general chemistry knowledge or practical experience to know about aqua regia.

@sboinkthelegday3892

Ай бұрын

What I find impressive is what kind of heritage would make a man so obsessed with two shiny coins, that he'd go through this elaborate money laundering scheme. To avoid the taxation by a force that's only going to be bailed out to USA and Argentina anyway, with piles and piles of the stuff "still missing". Try to ionize THAT acid.

@frotoe9289

Ай бұрын

Sheldon Cooper explains this. Chemistry is a subset of physics. If you know physics, you know EVERYTHING.

@matteofalduto766

Ай бұрын

Well, the alternative would had been creating a quantum wormhole to safely send and store the medals in the sixteenth dimension. But they were a bit in a rush to develop all the needed math.

@jankington216

Ай бұрын

Chemistry is something everyone should know, good thing it's taught for like 7 years of grade school.

That 's cool, while watching this video the picture at 5:35 jumped out at me. I realized quickly, "That's my photo! Small world!" That's pure gold precipitate extracted from a solution of chloroauric acid.

@Chemistorian

Ай бұрын

Wow, small world indeed! I appreciate your great work 🙂

@aerthman

Ай бұрын

I’m not seeing it ,,, 🤔

@bewinwilsonmathews1892

Ай бұрын

@@aerthman The picture of chloroauric acid in the video,that orange looking powder was photographed by the person

@aerthman

Ай бұрын

@@bewinwilsonmathews1892 thank you… I was looking for a person.

@Skyzima

Ай бұрын

That’s cool 😎!!!

This has always been one of my favorite stories from History/Chemistry because it's quite satisfying to just outsmart Nazis.

@Gordy-io8sb

2 ай бұрын

Us: "Why is a Nazi getting a Nobel prize bad?" Them: "Because it just is, okay???"

@mqegg

2 ай бұрын

​@Gordy-io8sb ?? isnt it because the Nazis were actively destroying works done by Jewish scientists?

@user-zz3sn8ky7z

2 ай бұрын

@@Gordy-io8sb Cause they would steal it? Politics aside, would *you* just give a random solider your solid golden medal that's also the most prestigious award within academia?? You can also argue that it could be used to fund the war effort - however small of a drop it may be, if it wasn't important then there wouldn't be a ban on it leaving the country in the first place

@stonebear

2 ай бұрын

Yet another example of the Danes (and their friends) stepping up to give the Nazis what-for without them even knowing they'd been had. There's a song about another one: Fred Small, "Denmark 1943" kzread.info/dash/bejne/gJpqm8WChLfQc8o.htmlsi=OSWuzsaPkS8SipY_

@daliasprints9798

Ай бұрын

As explained in the video, finding it would have implicated multiple people responsible for smuggling it out to begin with and put their lives in danger.

Somewhere, somebody is selling this " Luxury Drain Cleaner " that has gold in it for a million dollars

To the people who think they could’ve just hid it: the Nazis were literally invading Denmark as they were thinking how to hide the medals, so like others said, hiding it underground isn’t a idea as they could be found easily by checking loose dirt and using metal detectors. Hiding it in some secret area also wouldn’t work due to metal detectors and since the Nazis occupied the area for quite some time, the Nazis could’ve found it if they spent enough time fucking around. Essentially, dissolving the gold into liquid and hide it in plain sight had a higher chance of protecting it considering they only had around 6 hours or so to hide them.

@chasejones8302

Ай бұрын

More likely the science guys just wanted to do science things and have a story they can tell later.

@labbit3574

Ай бұрын

@@chasejones8302 how about you try to hide 2 pieces of gold when the Nazis are coming to your area in 6 hours and you have to hide it well enough so that the Nazis can’t find it for a few years.

@ridhosamudro2199

Ай бұрын

​@@chasejones8302 "having a story"? Yea they've been suddenly invaded, I think that takes care of that.

@theallseeingmaster

Ай бұрын

The German Army did not have metal detectors.; they had bayonets.

@RainbowManification

Ай бұрын

Metal detectors can only pick up ferrous metals, of which gold is not.

What a brilliant story. No waffle, straight concise facts and historical detail. I liked how you explained how the gold from the Nobel Prize Medals was hidden and how it was restored back. Very informative.

IIRC, the version of this story that I read was that the medals were each put into solution in their own bottle and each bottle was labelled with the contents in latin. They weren’t sending scientists to search for medals so the Germans wouldn’t have known what it meant and they would have had to read the latin label of every bottle in the building even if they had known what had been done. Genius.

@gottfriedheumesser1994

Ай бұрын

Knowing Latin was widespread in Germany at this time as it belonged to the curriculum of 'Gymnasiums' (high schools). So most German officers would have been able to read these labels in contrast to American officers..

@stickyfox

7 күн бұрын

@@gottfriedheumesser1994 I had high school classmates that were studying latin in the 80s. Latin used to be a cliche high school subject in the US. I will agree with anyone who says our education system is circling the drain today, but in the 40s it was probably pretty good. That said, regardless of your ancestry if you didn't know what "aqua regia" was you probably wouldn't think twice about just one container of liquid in a laboratory filled with chemicals.

@gottfriedheumesser1994

7 күн бұрын

@@stickyfox In the 1960s, I had Latin for six years and 5 hours a week. Regardless of your ancestry (?) I know what it means. I don't need classmates as Latin was compulsory.

One amazing thing about this is that those two new metals are gonna be mixed with the two original binding the two scientist together for eternity (or untill the metals are broken down again)

@ignatoseg4664

Ай бұрын

Separate flask maybe? Or they just recast it into 2 different medals

@bradleypease2492

Ай бұрын

@@ignatoseg4664providing they didn’t use separate flasks then even if they recast the medals they will still contain good from the other medal

I heard about this in a chemistry past paper. My exam board likes to get some obscure example to make an excuse for a complicated balancing equation. This one was painful in the mock to do but It does work well.

Fun fact: In Russian it's called Czar's vodka

@Cjnw

2 ай бұрын

* Tsar' / Царь

@KabalFromMK9

Ай бұрын

​@@Cjnw "czar" is an accepted variant spelling of "tsar", it dates back to when ц was romanised as cz (which I personally don't like as it might get confused with Polish cz which makes a ch sound.). I personally prefer "tsar", but "czar" is correct.

@1994CivicGLi

Ай бұрын

Aqua regia means royal water after all

@mr.boomguy

Ай бұрын

Makes sense to why

@insertnamehere9718

Ай бұрын

WARNING: Do NOT get this mixed up with the Czar’s actual vodka. Trust me.

1:05 They gathered for the meeting in Denmark and finished in Germany /s The entire invasion onyl took 6 hours, so they really had to be quick with their actions.

It so happens I'm doing an Oxford Uni course on the 12th century renaissance which briefly includes alchemy and the use of aqua regia, resulting in an effect known as "rubedo", or reddening, which must refer to the color of that solution. I'd like to know more about what those alchemists thought they'd achieved, however far off the right track they were.

As far as I know, the mechanism of Au dissolutin in Aqua regia includes oxidatuon of gold not by HNO3, but by Cl2: HCl+HNO3 -> NOCl; NOCl -> NO + Cl2.

@David0lyle

2 ай бұрын

That’s my understanding. The oldest method of producing the material is to add salt and nitric acid. Surprisingly the gold processing facilities in the mountains of Colorado were actually using Cl2 from gas cylinders. 🤔 You kind of forget, as long ago as that mining was done it was one of the most sophisticated chemical operations of its time.

👏 Great video! It's one of my favourite chemistry stories, since I used aqua regia quite often during my PhD work on gold nanoparticles. It turns such a pretty shade of orange 😊

I've actually used Aqua Regia to dissolve stainless steel to analyze its components. I remember the professor telling us that it would dissolve gold. This story would make a profound impression on high school students being taught equilibrium phenomena.

Love this use of chemistry! Thanks again for doing another great video and your simple way of explaining everything 🙌🏼

thats ingenius and pretty cool of that they got the Nobel Prize people to cast the gold back in to medals

* Dissolves other scientists' noble price medals * Leaves to win his own nobel prize * Refuses to elaborate Sigma move

I’m literally watching this procrastinating on working on my Franck-Hertz experiment lab report. Perhaps this is a sign to get back to work lol

I have a question. While it obviously hid it from the Nazis, and gave them back the medal, didn't it also end up getting elemental gold from the reaction? So as to say, they started with 23 carat gold, and from the solution extracted 24 carat gold, or pure gold. Or is there something amiss in my understanding?

@52flyingbicycles

24 күн бұрын

There may have still been impurities in the gold after reducing, but yeah it would be very close to 24 carat. The smith at the Nobel institute likely added impurities back into the gold to bring it back to 23 carat, since 24 carat gold is too soft.

@SuperDavidEF

12 күн бұрын

There are other steps involved and just dissolving it in aqua regia doesn't guarantee that it will come out as pure elemental gold because the other metals will also dissolve and some trace amounts will follow the gold when it is reduced back to metallic form. But it will surely be more pure than 23K gold.

Interestingly enough you can also dissolve gold with hydrogen peroxide and hydrochloric acid. It has the benefit of not having to get rid of excess nitric acid. There is a fellow on KZread called Sreetips who does precious metal refining and he has a few videos demonstrating the process.

@SilverBullet93GT

Ай бұрын

we're all here because sreetips :)

de Hevesy deserved a 2nd Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this.

Many years ago in college I wanted to use gold chloride for use in making a rose colored enamel. It was too expensive for a student budget so I talked to a friend at the chemistry dept and he outlined this process for making gold chloride. When he got to the bit about boiling off the aqua regia and all the things to be careful of while doing so I sort of lost interest. I think he thought I was a bit of a weenie as he'd started the whole process with "It's pretty simple and you really don't need any special equipment, all you need to do is ..."

What a story. I'm a huge science nerd (mostly physics) and WW2 buff and I hadn't heard it before but I will be recounting it at parties now!

Even with this story as an inspiration, I don't think I would have done any better than barely passing my high school chemistry course. Thanks for the presentation, though. Very nicely researched and delivered.

He could have added sodium metabisulphate then filtered out the precipitated cement gold before melting and casting.

Thanks for this, what an excellent video. Three take-aways for me: a) A great history/chemistry crossover story b) An application of the quote from The Last Crusade of Indiana Jones "it tells me that goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them" c) A great explanation of applying Le Chatelier's principle which I can use as an example with my HIgher Chem class next year.

Well yeah, the gold itself was probably not the most important thing to hide. It was the prizes. If they had won the war, they could have claimed these people never got them in the first place.

People who purify gold mix it with silver before attempting to dissolve it. It dissolves much more quickly when it’s alloyed with silver. 23ct gold would dissolve very slowly if at all. They use minimal nitric acid though because excess is a nuisance to get rid of.

aqua regia, mixture of concentrated nitric and hydrochloric acids, usually one part of the former to three parts of the latter by volume. This mixture was given its name (literally, “royal water”) by the alchemists because of its ability to dissolve gold. It is a red or yellowish liquid.

I never heard this story before this is fantastic. Thanks for the

The chances of that glass beaker still being there were one in a million.

Been watching enough sreetips I already knew how aqua regia was made 😅 What an incredible story of how these men were able to keep their gold.

Just go over to Sweden, strange.

I had heard this story before, but I didn't know the details.

Awesome story!

I wonder what happens if one puts gold into running nitric acid

Thank you for sharing this informative historical fact. I had read about it many years ago in a book. That book didn't cover it in detail though. As for another peice of history about ingenious use of chemistry I submit as follows. It is related to none other than alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan(c.721-c.815 C.E.). He was the disciple of Ja'afar Sadiq (c.700-c.765 C.E.) and was taught alchemy/chemistry by him. It is said that Jabir invented, under the guidance of Ja'afar, an ink for secret writing which revealed the writing only to the exposure of heat e.g heat generated by candlesticks, oil lamps etc. It is interesting to know that hydrochloric and nitric acids as well as nitrohydrochloric acid i.e. aqua regia were invented by Jabir too most probably under the guidance of his master and mentor Ja'afar Sadiq.

what's your source for this story? im curious where to read more about this

@cillianennis9921

Ай бұрын

Check the CCEA As1 Chemistry past papers. They used this story for a question a few years ago. Not too sure the exact year but you are looking for a redox question about it. If you don't live in the UK you can't do this But I'll actually just find it. Alright it was Question 13 paper 2019 but they don't site the source. I forgot the only do that for images. Maybe if you looked around more or had the confidential versions but if you look it up on wikipedia you can find their sources. Wikipedia is the best place to find good sources not the best source but best source of sources.

@nyuh

Ай бұрын

@@cillianennis9921 thank you !

I was familiar with this story, but I appreciate your more detailed explanation of how these two scientists outwitted the nazis.

Bravo chiaro e preciso

More impressive is that no swiss scientists were present to take the flask

Sreetips KZread channel uses these and other similar processes to recover scrap gold all the time.

almost as cool as Walt's use of mercury fulminate in Breaking Bad ;)

@user-vu4qr7cv7b

2 ай бұрын

The story with mercury fulminate in Breaking Bad is a bit distorted from a chemical point of view...but it's just a movie😀

@melody3741

2 ай бұрын

@@user-vu4qr7cv7bwhat I always thought was an insane plot hole is that dropping it on the ground made it blow up but an explosion with a strong enough pressure wave to break all the windows didn’t set off the rest of the bag…

@user-vu4qr7cv7b

2 ай бұрын

@@melody3741 exactly....there is an article " Braking Bad IV - can a little crystal blow up a room?" on mercury fulminate...if you are not familiar with it I recommend it to you...😀

@woden_arbosa

2 ай бұрын

​@@melody3741not to mention mercury fulminate being so unstable getting a bag or rocks that big would be near impossible

I wonder how much lighter were the medals were after being reformed

Now I'll smuggle gold to my country like this.

brother how pure was it in % scale?

@filonin2

2 ай бұрын

23k is 95.8% pure

@spotsies

Ай бұрын

If you are asking if this method purified the gold somehow, it probably didn't as whatever metal "contaminants" the gold had probably dissolved in the solution as well, and in the end you'd end up with the same material after evaporating the solution.

I learned about aqua regia from the anime element hunters when I was a teenager. that anime about chemistry had a very original plot. it gets bad after season 1. the ending did not make any sense.(it could have been worse, at least they saved the world). if you are going to watch it just watch the first season and pretend it got canceled aftwards. that anime has wasted potential. in that episode two beetles from the nega-earth absorbed posi-gold and became huge, so the protagonists had to make a pool filled with aqua regia in order to extract the gold from them.

Aqua Regia, Oxytocin running the ether

Amazing story... ingenious method at least...

How heavy was that flask?

@Yora21

28 күн бұрын

The medals are 175 grams each, so there would be 350 grams of gold dissolved in the liquid. The aqua regia itself has a density nearly the same as water. Though I don't know how much acid you need to fully dissolve 350 grams of gold. But I think if you had a container filled with 1 liter of liquid, it probably wouldn't be much heavier than 1200 to 1300 grams. Heavier than the 1000 grams of pure water, but you might not even notice that difference if you were holding it in your hand.

@ronbock8291

28 күн бұрын

@@Yora21 that’s crazy.

Great story!

2:29 Nitric and hydrochloric acids: togethaa we will devour the very gold

That's one way to keep your assets from government.

YAY, SCIENCE! I like science. I love history. And I absolutely friggin hate Nazis. So this is the perfect video for me. 😁

Better hiding through chemistry! Love it!

Yo that’s what dr doe was talking about

Outstanding!! 👏👏👏😎👍

A very interesting story.

The guy who invented kidney dialysis hit his work from them as well…

So gold has a valence of 3?

Good story.

I have seen this done for purifying the gold. All you need to do is just outsmart the law enforcers who often are less educated, by taking advantage of what they don't know

Thanks. :)

All I hear in this video is Sreetips' voice.

Very good

The only problem is that you can not recover exactly 100% of the gold. But close to that, if you are very careful. Also, wouldn't a flask of gold chloride solution be noticeably heavier than normal? And would this be something that would tip off someone to it's contents?

@spotsies

Ай бұрын

If you enter a lab, you'll see a bunch of selves with a bunch of solutions. Even if you are a Nazi, it is probably common sense not to fuck with that, as half of the materials gives you cancer, the other half just kills you. Including aqua regia. Also, if you do it well, I don't think there would be any significant losses in this specific reaction.

@jakepullman4914

Ай бұрын

I doubt a German soldier tasked with retrieving gold medals would think twice about an unusually heavy orange liquid.

@viket8316

Ай бұрын

if you where a soldier and enter a laboratory and see a bunch of color liquids you wouldnt get close to that shit because they may explode provoke a toxic gas or worse give all your troops a mortal disease reason it was unoticieable by any soldier when someone doesnt know about weird liquids they dont touch it since they know a bad move can provoke a new disease

@Debbiebabe69

Ай бұрын

Its a lab. Labs contain lots of scary stuff known only to those who read chemistry books. German soldiers were typically 19 year old shooters who know nothing about chemistry (there was no KZread, Sreetips, or anything like that in those days). To them, all those 'funny coloured flasks' probably contained something that if you spilled a drop on yourself, would strip you down to the bone in seconds. So they stayed WELL away.........

very cool story

Now that's cool!

I think Lewis spin theory is best

Aww... They thought those Nazi wouldn't kill the two if they didn't know they'd won Noble prizes 🤗

If you like refining then Sreetips is the guy with the channel of the same name.👍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Aqua Regia is the combination of the three top acids..HCL , H2So4, and Nitric acid. powerful antidote to whatever ails ya!

@dougadams9419

5 күн бұрын

No Sulfuric Acid.

So are Max von Laue and James Franck now properly recognized as sharing in two Nobel prizes, not just the ones they won?😄

Great!!

who saw the bear?

Damn

The thumbnail looks like it was preserved in AMBER. Thats what I would've done. Dip it in something that hardens, then spray paint it to look like a hockey puck or something.

@antoniomromo

Ай бұрын

Unfortunately the entire invasion was about 6 hours, so they probably had less than that.

Fooling into thinking silver could turn gold Considering ancient currency was in the form of salt, I suppose salt extraction The invention of metal purifying and forming Elon musks innovation Hydrogen generation It's all amazing and I'm disappointed many dismiss what we take for granted. Great story

It has other uses I can think of. Imagine a T-1000 kicking on your front door. You know something like this can deal permanent damage to it.

I really thought this was a video about a guy who was competing against nazis for the Nobel prize

Nice!

If they fled to Sweden, wouldn't it be easier to take the medals with them?

@liger04

2 ай бұрын

Germany had made it publicly known that no gold would leave German borders. Only choice was to hide it where no soldier would look.

How big were these medals? Seems so weird that the germans would be looking so hard specifically for them that they couldnt find a decent hiding place for them.

@redcrown5154

Ай бұрын

they probably weren't even looking for them, why would they? lol

@VioletRM

Ай бұрын

they were just looking for valuables. the nazis confiscated a lot of gold, jewelry, etc

@JohnDoe-hs1jp

Ай бұрын

@@redcrown5154 I don't if they were looking for those medals specifically, but the Nazis had a policy of looting gold and fine art from Jews and dissenters whenever possible. It's a good thing that they were able to hide these medals, because Germans could have melted them down into bullion and used the gold to buy weapons from Spain or Switzerland.

@Rusonekox9

Ай бұрын

Mine is 6.173 ounces or 175 grams 😊 it's not really large.

@redcrown5154

Ай бұрын

​@@JohnDoe-hs1jp sure buddy haha

It is nasty shit.......I'll tell ya that.

People should read the book pattons papers vol. 3

@lococomrade3488

3 күн бұрын

Nah. Patton was a known bigot and racist. Listening to that idiot isn't worthwhile.

They only saved the Gold not the Original cast Prizes..

They really could have just buried it in someone's backyard though...

@HooverShrimpster

2 ай бұрын

Bro the germans are literally knocking on your front door. How are you going to escape to your neighbor's yard?

@Superbug-tf8zy

2 ай бұрын

@@HooverShrimpster They had time to dissolve gold, they had time to bury it

@HooverShrimpster

2 ай бұрын

@@Superbug-tf8zy Gunther! Get the metal detector and search every spot inside this compound! Even the flower pot! (Mind you, it's something that actually happened in history)

@liger04

2 ай бұрын

@@HooverShrimpster If I'm doing that, Hans, then you're checking for any obvious patches of dug-up dirt within 100 meters of the lab. And to OP's point, they had no idea how long Denmark would be occupied and didn't want to lose their Nobel prizes to the first random German guy to bring a metal detector.

@teru797

2 ай бұрын

@@Superbug-tf8zy yeah but thats not as cool

Why would Nazi's scour every inch of the ground in Coppenhagen for something they didn't know was hidden? Ridiculious rationale for this chemistry experiment. This story sounds more like Neils Bohr and George De Hevesy wanting to show off their chemistry skills.

if you can dissolve gold in aqua regia, then you have plenty of time

What impressive is the fairytale that the Nobel Prize is a apolitical merit based prize has survived more than a century without falling apart! That is the true achievement.

@lococomrade3488

3 күн бұрын

Found more Fasc trash.

Neither saved the medals. They saved a precious metal for its monetary value.

Seems like hiding it in a number of other ways would've been easier.

@labbit3574

Ай бұрын

They literally stated that the Nazis would search everywhere to find it. Also turning it into something else would make it a lot harder to find, in fact, you can even hide it in plain sight.

@flazzorb

Ай бұрын

Easier, but far less subtle. Digging disturbs and displaces dirt, and if they had kept them in the building they could have easily been found. Of course, trying to take them somewhere else faced the same risks, and trying to leave Denmark risked driving into a checkpoint, and being searched.

Doesn’t this just make them into regular gold lol? Like what is the point

@filonin2

2 ай бұрын

To prevent the Germans from getting the gold and funding the war effort with it. Germany was killing people for their gold teeth and using the money to destroy the world. You try to stop them in any way you can.

@Carlos-kh5qu

Ай бұрын

Have you seen the whole video?

@spotsies

Ай бұрын

the point is preserving 13000usd worth of metal, that you can also recast later into any shape including the coins' shape

@potatoking6571

Ай бұрын

My guy, have you heard of symbolism?

@melody3741

Күн бұрын

@@Carlos-kh5qu yeah, they proceeded to entirely dissolve the metal, removing all nobel-ness from it

So destroying them saved them? Coulda smashed the soft gold with a hammer till it couldn't be identified as a Nobel prize if that was the concern. Why not just hide the metals in an chemical solution? Unless they went and dumped out every container ited be just as hidden as before but not necessarily destroyed. To the people shouting about metal detectors id imagine the gold solution would set it off just as much but it sounds like they didn't run every bottle of chemicals through a metal detector so again could have hidden it there instead of destroying it

@potatoking6571

Ай бұрын

First of all it’s symbolic seeing as the same gold is used, and that’s all that matters to them. Number two is that they had life or death stakes. It’s easy to say “why not just do this slightly riskier plan” when you don’t have to fear for your life.

*So, they thought dissolving the **_original_** medals ... and abandoning them (in that state), unprotected, on a shelf, **_during wartime, in a renowned _**_-target-_**_ building_** ... was more prudent than simply secreting their **_2.6" sizes_** ANYWHERE in an entire countryside? **-Genius!-** (I'll bet von Laue and Franck were even **_more_** dazzled by the Swedes' efficiency at **_taking 7 years to re-award them.)_* 🙄

@lococomrade3488

3 күн бұрын

They didn't have time to get to "the countryside." Pay attention more, dumbass.

gode meddews?

This sounds like a fantasy. How hard is it to hide 2 small medals ina country the size of denmark.

@lococomrade3488

3 күн бұрын

"I didn't pay attention to the video because I think I'm super smart." Watch it again until you can grasp that the Nazis were already there and there was no time to run, and nowhere to dig.

@RaptorsVideos

Күн бұрын

​​​@@lococomrade3488Did you go andreply to every single comment on this video? Lmao, you sound like a phag.

Very clever but not clever enough to produce the actual medals again. THAT would be clever!! LOL.