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Bromine is a wonderfully thick, soupy gas/liquid. Technically it's a liquid at room temperature, but if you have it in the open it will evaporate away at a high rate of speed, evolving clouds of reddish purplish vapor. Confined in a glass ampule, it's a thick dark gas, which is quite odd to look at.
Like chlorine, bromine is a highly reactive halogen, choking and toxic to breath, but entirely harmless when in the form of a salt or dissolved ion. People like to soak in sodium bromide solutions (see first sample).
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  Gas in a bulb.
The deep color of this sample is caused by bromine gas, not liquid. There is some liquid condensed on the sides of the bulb, but the majority of the color you see is the gas. I think it's amazing that a gas can be so thick. There's a very similar bulb under chlorine, but its color is much, much lighter. Normally when you see a "gas" that is colored, it's not really a gas but rather tiny droplets of liquid (in fog) or particles (in smoke) that make it look colored or thick. The difference is that in a real colored gas, there is no diffusion of the light, just attenuation. A fog or smoke makes things look fuzzy, while with a true colored gas, they look perfectly sharp, just colored.
I received this sample when Tryggvi and Timothy came to my sodium party.
I chose this sample to represent its element in my Photographic Periodic Table Poster. The sample photograph includes text exactly as it appears in the poster, which you are encouraged to buy a copy of.
Source: Tryggvi Emilsson and Timothy Brumleve
Contributor: Tryggvi Emilsson and Timothy Brumleve
Acquired: 21 September, 2002
Text Updated: 4 May, 2007
Price: Donated
Size: 3"
Purity: 99.9%
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Sample from the RGB Set.
The Red Green and Blue company in England sells a very nice element collection in several versions. Max Whitby, the director of the company, very kindly donated a complete set to the periodic table table.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description or the company's website which includes many photographs and pricing details. I have two photographs of each sample from the set: One taken by me and one from the company. You can see photographs of all the samples displayed in a periodic table format: my pictures or their pictures. Or you can see both side-by-side with bigger pictures in numerical order.
The picture on the left was taken by me. Here is the company's version (there is some variation between sets, so the pictures sometimes show different variations of the samples):
Source: Max Whitby of RGB
Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB
Acquired: 25 January, 2003
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 99.5%
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Sample from the Everest Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (except gases) weigh about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.
Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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H and L tubes.
I saw a rather alarming listing on eBay for these two bromine tubes, listed as "Low & High Bromine Scientific Tube tubes LOT" by a seller who obviously didn't know a lot about what bromine is. The seller offered "I've no idea what these are. They are marked with some warnings, etc." Some warnings? Well, fortunately they arrived intact and now they are in a safe place where people appreciate the need to keep bromine in a safe place.
The "High & Low" bit appears to be pure conjecture on the part of the seller, based on the letters "H" and "L" hand-written on the otherwise printed labels. So far as I can tell both tubes contain an identical pressure of bromine (evidenced by the fact that there are the same size of small beads of liquid bromine in both), so H and L are not referring to high and low pressure as one might have expected. I can't think of anything else that would be characterized by high and low, so I'm going to assume that the H and L designations are some private little code whose meaning is probably lost to history.
Reader Graham Fraser offers the following theory:Hello Mr. Gray,
I very much enjoyed browsing your periodic table website and I would like to commend you on the wonderful work (both on the web and in the wood). I read the section detailing the pair of bromine tubes you purchased from a seller on ebay and the fact that they had the letters 'H' and 'L' written on them and you believed the seller misinterpreted the meaning of the letters to mean High and Low pressure. I remember a demonstration from high school chemistry class where two tubes of bromine were used. One was placed in an ice bath while the other was kept at room temperature. As you pointed out both tubes likely have the same pressure, and as a result when one is subjected to 'Low' temperature the gas in the tube condenses and leaving a liquid in the tube and the "air" in the tube goes clear. A fairly dramatic demonstration that I still remember some 14 years later.
I hope this contributes something to your site, but clearly that is just my interpretation of the 'H' and 'L' to mean 'High' and 'Low' temperature based on the class demonstration I recall.
Cheers,
Graham Fraser Well, it was a good theory, but wrong. I have now learned that in fact H and L do refer to pressure, just not pressure of bromine. It turns out these tubes contain identical amounts of bromine, but different amounts of Air. The H tube likely contains about one atmosphere of air, while the L tube contains much less, maybe even mostly vacuum (other than the bromine). Radiation expert William Kolb, a long-time correspondent of mine, reports that he happened to be researching bromine on the web, and google lead him to both my description of this sample, and to a company that sells tubes exactly like this. Putting two and two together, he emailed me their instruction sheet, which explains that these tubes are designed to demonstrate the phenomenon of diffusion.
Both tubes are stuck into an alcohol/dry ice cooling bath, which causes all the bromine in them to condense and solidify at the cold end of the tube. The tubes are then removed and allowed to warm up. In the tube with only bromine, the whole space of the tube fills up pretty much uniformly with purple bromine vapor, while in the tube that also has air in it the bromine takes much longer to diffuse to the far end of the tube.
So there you have it, after only four years, the definitely correct answer has been determined! And if you want a set like this, they are still available from scientific suppliers, as are similar pairs of tubes containing iodine.
Source: eBay seller sellitontheweb
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 22 November, 2003
Text Updated: 12 March, 2007
Price: $10
Size: 12"
Purity: >99%
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Brominated vegetable oil in Mountain Dew.
Yes, Mountain Dew (and other citrus-flavored soft drinks) contain brominated vegetable oils, you can read it right on the label. There's nothing particularly bad about this, it's just curious, and one of not many commonly encountered applications of bromine.
Surprisingly, while millions drink such sodas daily without ill effect, there are, according to a wonderful email I received from reader Noah Horwitz shortly after adding this sample, at least two documented cases in the medical literature of bromine poisoning through soft drinks. In one case a patient developed "Bromoderma", ulcers on the hands, after drinking 8 liters a day of Ruby Red Squirt. Frankly I would have thought that if you drink 8 liters a day of any soft drink bromine poisoning would be the least of your worries, but apparently not. The other case is summarized in this abstract:Bromism from excessive cola consumption.
B. Zane Horowitz.
Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology. 35.n3 (May 1997): pp315(6). (3222 words)
Abstract:
Background: Bromism is an unusual occurrence. Historically bromism has been known to occur with chronic ingestion of bromide salts used as sleep medications. In this case, excessive consumption of a cola with brominated vegetable oil caused a severe case of bromism. Case Report: The patient presented with headache, fatigue, ataxia, and memory loss which progressed over 30 days. He consumed 2 to 4 L of cola containing brominated vegetable oil on a daily basis before presenting with these symptoms. His significantly elevated serum chloride, as measured by ion specific methods, and negative anion gaps were overlooked during a prior hospitalization and emergency department visits. A focal neurologic finding of right eyelid ptosis led to an extensive evaluation for a central nervous system lesion. The patient continued to deteriorate, until he was no longer able to walk. A diagnosis of severe bromism was eventually made and his serum bromide was confirmed at 3180 mg/L (39.8 mmol/L). Despite saline loading the patient failed to improve but subsequent hemodialysis dramatically cleared his clinical condition, and reduced his serum bromide levels. The unilateral eyelid ptosis, a rarely reported finding in bromism, also resolved with hemodialysis. Conclusions: A negative anion gap or an elevated serum chloride should prompt an evaluation for bromism. In this case hemodialysis dramatically improved the patient's clinical condition and reduced the half-life of bromide to 1.38 h. In short: Don't drink multiple liters of citrus flavored sodas every day for months on end or you're liable to keel over.
Source: Walmart
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 11 March, 2009
Text Updated: 17 March, 2009
Price: $1
Size: 6"
Purity: <1%
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Bromargyrite.
Description from the source:
Bromargyrite var. Iodobromite ( Ag (I Br) cub.), Schoene Aussicht Mine, Dernbach, Germany. Little, definited yellow crystals on limonitic matrix. Very rare. 1,6x1x1 cm (crystals < 1 mm); 2 g.
Source: Simone Citon
Contributor: John Gray
Acquired: 30 September, 2008
Text Updated: 1 October, 2008
Price: Trade
Size: 0.04"
Composition: Ag(IBr)
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Halothane vaporizer.
Halothane is C2HBrClF3, basically a chlorofluorocarbon of the ozone-depleting variety. But surprisingly, it's also a very widely used surgical anesthetic. This vaporizer is used for administering the gas to patients and has controls for carefully adjusting the dose.
Source: eBay seller i_sell_tech
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 February, 2009
Text Updated: 1 March, 2009
Price: $100
Size: 8"
Composition: C2HBrClF3
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