How urine led to significant discoveries in chemistry
Learn about the history of urine in alchemy and chemical experiments.
© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.What's the relationship between heat and temperature?
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Hell Creek was home to T. rex, Triceratops, and now…these foot bones.
-
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.The pilot black snake (Elaphe obsoleta) uses its platelike scales to travel with an easy gliding motion.
-
© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Learn what causes kidney stones and how to prevent them from forming.
-
© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Learn why and how alchemists attempted to conceal their chemical knowledge.
-
© Open University (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, which resulted in a fortune, his disillusionment, and the Nobel Prizes—one of which, the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Martin Luther King, Jr., received for his role in the American civil rights movement. This video explores how Nobel's and Fritz Haber's lives provide evidence of the importance of the social responsibility of scientists.
-
© American Chemical Society (A Britannica Publishing Partner)Learn why urinating in the ocean is not chemically damaging to it.
Transcript
DARCY GENTLEMAN: You may not think it, but pee has been a source of some major insights in chemistry. Without it, we might not have effective fertilizers, matches, or even tasty colas. Well folks, you're in for a surprise, because pee led to the discovery of one of the first elements of the modern era. It may not be the number one discovery of all time, but it's still a discovery with number one.
Medieval alchemists were in the business of trying to turn base metals into gold. They loved looking for connections, so if two things shared a similar color, they probably have something even more spectacular in common. So if urine has a golden hue, there's bound to be some connection with gold, right? This search for any missing link came from alchemists' desperation to find the Philosopher's Stone, a material that can turn anything into anything else, particularly into gold.
So in the mid 1600s, alchemist Hennig Brand, taking that crisp golden hue as a sign, thought he could make the Philosopher's Stone a reality with the crystals from boiled down pee. See, alchemists already knew that if they urine fester, it made ammonia, a useful ingredient making silver mirrors. Brand, on the other hand, was the first to boil festering wee down until there was nothing left, except the seemingly magical white paste.
This white paste glowed in the dark, earning it the name Miraculous Bearer Of Light, or in ancient Greek, phosphorus. It wasn't the Philosopher's Stone, but it was the 13th element ever discovered. Known then as the Devil's element, phosphorus glowed in the dark, could burn up in the air, and was sourced from a seemingly infinite flow of material.
Other alchemists like the legendary Robert Boyle, caught on to Brand's discovery and began playing around with the stuff. This new pee-fueled field of study left alchemists so impressed that they started searching for even richer sources of the stuff. In fictionalized accounts, alchemists' logical train of thought held that more exotic sources gave better yields. So maybe some thought royal excrement would have higher concentrations of phosphorus.
You know what they say, one man's royal waste is another man's miraculous bearer of light. By figuring out how to extract crystals from urine, ancient alchemists moved from exploring magic to understanding science. For this pee process, they learned how to carefully control reactions to make useful things like dyes or medicines.
And the flammable properties of phosphorus led to the first matches, making fire more portable and therefore useful. As phosphorus uses increase, chemists finally figured out a less fester-needing source, bones. Eventually, phosphoric acid turned out to be useful for fertilizer, adding more fizz to carbonated beverages like cola, removing rust, and all sorts of other stuff.
The discovery of phosphorus also lit up the stage for organic chemistry, which has given us the modern world through dyes, fuel, medicines, plastics, and longer lives. And all this pee insight helped us understand that phosphorus is so essential for life, it's literally written into our DNA and provides energy in ourselves. The modern world, brought to you by pee and nature's dumpster divers, chemists.
Medieval alchemists were in the business of trying to turn base metals into gold. They loved looking for connections, so if two things shared a similar color, they probably have something even more spectacular in common. So if urine has a golden hue, there's bound to be some connection with gold, right? This search for any missing link came from alchemists' desperation to find the Philosopher's Stone, a material that can turn anything into anything else, particularly into gold.
So in the mid 1600s, alchemist Hennig Brand, taking that crisp golden hue as a sign, thought he could make the Philosopher's Stone a reality with the crystals from boiled down pee. See, alchemists already knew that if they urine fester, it made ammonia, a useful ingredient making silver mirrors. Brand, on the other hand, was the first to boil festering wee down until there was nothing left, except the seemingly magical white paste.
This white paste glowed in the dark, earning it the name Miraculous Bearer Of Light, or in ancient Greek, phosphorus. It wasn't the Philosopher's Stone, but it was the 13th element ever discovered. Known then as the Devil's element, phosphorus glowed in the dark, could burn up in the air, and was sourced from a seemingly infinite flow of material.
Other alchemists like the legendary Robert Boyle, caught on to Brand's discovery and began playing around with the stuff. This new pee-fueled field of study left alchemists so impressed that they started searching for even richer sources of the stuff. In fictionalized accounts, alchemists' logical train of thought held that more exotic sources gave better yields. So maybe some thought royal excrement would have higher concentrations of phosphorus.
You know what they say, one man's royal waste is another man's miraculous bearer of light. By figuring out how to extract crystals from urine, ancient alchemists moved from exploring magic to understanding science. For this pee process, they learned how to carefully control reactions to make useful things like dyes or medicines.
And the flammable properties of phosphorus led to the first matches, making fire more portable and therefore useful. As phosphorus uses increase, chemists finally figured out a less fester-needing source, bones. Eventually, phosphoric acid turned out to be useful for fertilizer, adding more fizz to carbonated beverages like cola, removing rust, and all sorts of other stuff.
The discovery of phosphorus also lit up the stage for organic chemistry, which has given us the modern world through dyes, fuel, medicines, plastics, and longer lives. And all this pee insight helped us understand that phosphorus is so essential for life, it's literally written into our DNA and provides energy in ourselves. The modern world, brought to you by pee and nature's dumpster divers, chemists.