and a sedative. Its actual chemical formula is 1,1,1-trichloro-2-methyl-2-propanol, which sounds complicated but it's very easy to make using an interesting reaction between chloroform and acetone.

Measure out 60 ml of acetone and place this into a beaker or conical flask.

Next measure out 30 ml of chloroform.

Most people think of chloroform as a solvent, but the hydrogen in the molecule is quite acidic and can easily be deprotonated in the presence of a bath.

Add the chloroform to the acetone in the beaker.

You'll immediately notice a slight increase in temperature.

Add a stir bar to the container and then seal it up and chill it down for an hour until it's close to 0 degrees C.

Now weigh out 2 grams of solid potassium hydroxide. Keep this protected from moisture in the air using some wrap.

Now set up the reaction. Place the chilled flask in a cold water bath and stir vigorously.

We've also used a thermometer in the flask so we can see the temperature change, but this is optional.

With the water bath at a temperature of 5 degrees, see here below, start adding the salt.

The flask slowly.

Once one portion has dissolved, add another. You'll start to see a milkiness appearing in the flask.

The temperature increase isn't huge, but was enough to keep the contents of the flask at around 10 degrees C whilst in the ice bath.

You can see the milkiness forming in the mixture.

Keep adding the solid hydroxide until everything has dissolved.

Note that sodium hydroxide also works in this reaction.

You may or may not notice the yellow color appear. We got this on one batch, but the only thing that was different was the bottle of acetone we used.

In the end it made no difference to the product.

After stirring for a further 10 minutes, remove the flask.

From the water bath.

If yours is a yellow batch it will look like this.

Or normally like this.

Now chill the flask down in the freezer for an hour to ensure that the reaction is complete and to make filtration of the fine precipitate easier.

After chilling the precipitate sinks to the bottom of the flask.

So set up for filtration and remove the fine white precipitate.

Remember it's the filtrate i.e. the liquid that we want to keep as this contains our product.

Wash out the flask with a small amount of acetone and then use this to wash the precipitate on the filter.

Get all the liquid out.

Transfer the clear filtrate to a beaker.

We're now going to evaporate off the acetone.

But alternatively you could set up for simple distillation.

If you wanted to recycle the acetone.

We've used a thermometer to help identify when we've got all the solvent off.

Heat the beaker and de-use ventilation and remember that acetone vapor is highly inflammable.

The liquid will reduce in volume quite rapidly at around 60 degrees C.

When you reach about 80 then there's not much solvent left in there.

So stop heating.

Here's what you are left with in the beaker.

Now prepare a small beaker containing ice cold water with an ice cube floating in it about 40 mils in total.

Pour the hot liquid into the ice water.

You'll immediately see a white precipitate forming.

Give the mixture a good stir.

And then chill the mixture for 30 minutes.

Make sure it's crystallized properly.

By now you'll notice a very strong icy sinus clearing.

Minty menthol like aroma.

This is the aroma of chlorbutyl.

After chilling the mixture set up for filtration again.

And filter the mixture spending some time to ensure all the filtrate is removed.

Wash the beaker and the crystals with 10 mils of ice cold water.

You then want to leave the crystals on the pump.

Occasionally stirring them for at least 30 minutes in order to get the excess moisture out.

This will give you a light fluffy dry crystalline product.

And here's our end product.

17.4 grams of chlorbutyl.

This is apparently the hemihydrate containing half a water molecule per chlorbutyl molecule.

This calculates to a 25% yield.

This is a very good starting chloroform.

The product has a very attractive aroma but it's quite persistent.

This reaction is a great example of how chloroform can be a powerful and reactive synthetic reagent in its own right.

Usually under basic conditions.

Hope you enjoyed watching.

Stay tuned.

Thank you for watching.