Making Something Stinkier Than Thioacetone: Selenoacetone, Selenols, and My Experience With Selenium

Duration: 20:59

This video was sponsored by Brilliant! Keep exploring at http://brilliant.org/LabCoatz/. Get started for free, and hurry—the first 200 people get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Back in the summer of 2022, I became the first person on YouTube to post a video showing actual thioacetone. Most sources claim that this chemical is the stinkiest substance on Earth...so in this video, I decided to disprove that notion by making something far worse: thioacetone's evil twin, SELENOACETONE! Not only that, but I also made two other smelly selenium compounds called "selenols", which proved to be even worse! Was it risky? Yes. Was it worth it? To me, definitely. Want to support LabCoatz? Then feel free to donate or join my Patreon page! It literally costs less that a cup of coffee, and new $10+ Patrons within the United States will be offered a sample of the super-stinky 1,4-butanediselenol shown in this video: https://www.patreon.com/LabCoatz Don't want to pay monthly and just want a sample of the stench? No problem! Just donate $25 or more to the link below, including your name and address in the payment description box, and I will send a few milligrams as soon as possible. I can't ship outside of the USA though, so please keep that in mind: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/labcoatz A special thanks to @BackYardScience2000 for donating some of his chemicals to my channel! If you ever need specialty reagents, like acetic anhydride or phosphorus pentoxide, be sure to check out his eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/backyardscience2000 Official BYS2K inventory list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rCVAw273OwY7_gYJlgQ2q1RvEElIIN91y0Is0QkdxjI/edit?usp=drivesdk NOTE ON THE SALE OF SELENIUM-BASED ODORANTS: I am only selling "safe quantities" of the 1,4-butanediselenol, not multi-gram amounts. A drop of dilute solution is applied to a substrate, which is bottled up in a 0.5mL polypropylene vial, double bagged, and sent on its way in a bubble mailer. For safety and legal reasons, the compound is kept at trace levels: more than enough to smell, but not enough to cause serious harm. Remember, organoselenium compounds are considered to be toxic, which is why measurable amounts cannot be sent through the mail to unregistered individuals. A WORD ON SAFETY: I realize that some of you may be tempted to make the compounds I showed for yourself. If your intent is to purposefully expose another human to this compound (i.e. as a prank), think again. As I mentioned before, ORGANOSELENIUM COMPOUNDS ARE POISONOUS. At most, your body can only tolerate a few milligrams of selenium at once. Any more, and you might develop selenosis. Smelling these compounds is fairly safe, since only a few nanograms are actually inhaled at a time, but direct exposure (ingestion of the liquid, skin contact, etc.) can be harmful. 0:00 Intro sequence 0:43 Inciting events 1:50 How to beat thioacetone? 2:29 Selenoacetone 3:11 Getting around hydrogen selenide 4:08 Making aluminum selenide 5:43 ...too easy? 5:55 Selenols 7:20 Warning! 7:31 Making selenoacetone (dimer) 8:00 Making isopropaneselenol 9:48 Making 1,4-butanediselenol 10:27 Selenoacetone smell test 12:01 Isopropaneselenol smell test 13:29 1,4-butanediselenol smell test 16:44 Distance test 17:31 Final thoughts on selenium 18:16 Do you want to buy my stink? 18:44 Brilliant.org sponsorship segment 19:47 Conclusion and outro