Chemistry World Records

Yanhao Deng of Chenzhou, Hunan, filled a large test tube with pure oxygen in 1:25.09 in NoBook Lab, a virtual chemistry lab app, starting from an empty workbench. On a tablet, Yanhao drags in test tubes, an alcohol lamp, cotton wool, tubing and potassium permanganate, heats the reagent in a tilted tube and pipes the gas into a stoppered collecting tube until the air is pushed out and the readout lists oxygen alone, 1.767 millimoles of it. RecordSetter matched the phone video of the tablet and a smartwatch stopwatch with the tablet's own screen recording: the tube is unhooked from all tubing when the stopwatch stops at 01:25.09, and its readout still shows only oxygen several seconds later. Chemistry class at speedrun pace.

Mick Cullen replaced 105 lyrics with [chemical elements][1] in [R.E.M.][2]’s song “[It’s the End of the World][3]”. He performed the feat during a stop on the RecordSetter book tour. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemicalelement [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.E.M. [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It’stheEndoftheWorldasWeKnowIt(AndIFeelFine)

Yanhao Deng of Chenzhou, Hunan, made 1.428 moles of solid sodium chloride, about 83 grams of table salt, in three minutes in NoBook Lab, a virtual chemistry lab app, starting from an empty workbench. On a tablet, Yanhao sets out a 1,000 mL beaker, tweezers, sodium metal and concentrated hydrochloric acid, reacts the sodium in the acid and tips the white salt into a test tube in two batches; the tube's readout lists sodium chloride with small amounts of five other substances and no liquid. RecordSetter matched a phone video of the tablet and a smartwatch stopwatch with the tablet's own screen recording: the tube reaches 1.428 moles at 2:56 on the stopwatch and still reads 1.428 as the stopwatch passes 3:00. Table salt, the hard way.