VIDEO: Dissolving gold in aqua regia

Professor Martyn Poliakoff, host of the excellent Periodic Videos channel on YouTube, obtained a bottle of Tsar’s Vodka during a trip to Russia and was inspired to pour aqua regia into the same bottle and show gold going into solution.

Aqua regia (in Latin, king’s water)  is a highly corrosive solution used for refining high purity gold.

“The key technical question is how do you hang a piece of gold into a bottle without whatever it is suspended upon dissolving into the aqua regia,” asks Poliakoff.