Sulfur Hexafluoride Blooper
I am proud to say that I am the subject of a viral video on YouTube, one that I uploaded myself back in 2007, the early days of YouTube. The video has gone viral on multiple occasions over the years. Most recently, it came to my attention that someone had posted it to TikTok in a series of three segments, where the segments racked up over 5 million collective views over a period of 3 days. Check the original video:
Sulfur Hexafluoride Blooper featuring Lance S. Lund, Anoka-Ramsey Community College, 1995.
So, how did we get here? Back in the mid 1990s, the college experienced significant enrollment drops in back-to-back years that were somewhat unanticipated. Determined to reverse that trend, the college explored a number of ideas to recruit new students. One of those ideas was to produce videos featuring various faculty and departments and place them on the local cable access channels. This was just before most colleges even had a website.
I was the first faculty member that was approached. I had recently received a small grant from the college foundation to develop an elementary classroom visit program for my second-semester students, as well as a chemical magic show that I would present to large group assemblies at nearby elementary schools.
The idea for the video was to conduct a personal interview about me, discuss the chemistry offerings at the college and the types of students that would take our courses, and to talk about some of the things one could do with a background in chemistry. Several chemistry demos were also recorded to be featured in the promotional video.
One of those videos involved demonstrating balloons filled with different gases, including helium and sulfur hexafluoride. Prior to seeing a science teacher demonstrate the gas on a David Letterman show in 1994, I didn’t know anything about sulfur hexafluoride, other than its chemical formula (SF6). I had always assumed SF6 would be a solid and that it would be a nasty substance, considering it was a compound composed of sulfur and fluorine.
A molecule of SF₆.
The day after seeing the Letterman episode, I decided to investigate further. In those days, it wasn’t as simple as looking things up on the internet. I consulted the Merck Index and learned that sulfur hexafluoride was indeed rather chemically inert and that it was used as an insulating gas in high voltage applications. I went on to order a small cylinder of the gas to be used in occasional demonstrations.
When the video was first recorded, America’s Funniest Home Videos (known today as AFV) was a popular show on TV. It was decided to submit the video via VHS tape. A few months later, the tape was returned and the video never made it to air. However, I always showed it to my first-semester students when the topic of gases came up. The video was also shared with some of my colleagues from time-to-time, where they took it to parties or showed it to their kids for entertainment.
After showing the video to one of my classes in 2007, a student suggested that I should upload it to YouTube, a website that had made its debut a couple years earlier. Of course, this meant getting a YouTube account and learning how to upload. In the early days of YouTube, few people doing that sort of thing. Now with the ability to share the video in my classes via YouTube, students would share the video with friends or family and the video would go viral in short spurts.
Sulfur Hexafluoride Blooper Remix by Sophie.
The next round of virality came when the video was featured on Cracked, a website that was especially popular with teenagers back in 2013. It was my boys, Kai and Cy, that first brought this to my attention. They thought it was pretty cool that their dad was featured on such a hip site to the tune of 9 Brilliant Moments of Comedy Hiding on YouTube. After all, it must be funny if it was featured along with the likes of Dairy Cows Playing Like Puppies and Cheetah Shits into a Sunroof, LOL. Check it out:
When talking about the video, the author writes, “Not only does that make molecular science funny, but you know there’s bound to be some awkward shit coming up. And there totally is.” You gotta love that!
The biggest exposure was when the video was featured on Ray William Johnson’s YouTube Channel in 2014. This was also a channel to which my boys and their friends subscribed. It was brought to their attention by one of their friends and subsequently relayed to me. When discussing my video, Ray William Johnson goes on to say, “I think it kinda gets him high…he’s even got that stoner laugh,” and “I wanna be a scientist…they know how to get fucked up!” Exactly the sort of thing you like to hear when you want to endear yourself to your 20 year old sons!
Ray William Johnson wraps up the segment saying, “Now, as much as I joke, I legitimately feel this is the way more people should approach teaching.” How flattering! Check out the segment, which begins at the 0:56 mark:
Sulfur Hexafluoride Blooper featured at the 0:56 mark.
The video was most recently featured on TikTok in three segments. I have no idea how the videos became so popular there, because whomever posted the videos left out what most people consider the funniest part. If you’ve watched the original, you should already know which part that is. Do you?
Once again, I am flattered that this was brought to my attention my life partner’s 20-year-old daughter, Megan. Yes, even though the video was originally recorded in 1995 (“the fucking caveman era!“, according to Ray William Johnson), it still resonates with college-aged kids! (April 2023 update: It turns out the videos are no longer public, so links to the videos have been removed. Before their removal, the TikTok videos had collectively racked up over 10 million views!)
Needless to say, with millions of views over the years, this video has provided lots of folks with some gut-busting entertainment. If you were previously a Sulfur Hexafluoride Blooper virgin, I hope you enjoyed.
I am here to tell you that I swear by this Lance Story. It is indeed TRUE and was not simply “inspired” by real events. This is the way it went down, at least as best as I can recall. I hope you enjoyed!
Lance S. Lund
Lance@ChemLancer.com
as remembered and written on March 17, 2021