Maybe this should be in GQ, but here goes anyway. A friend of mine is working on a writing project and needs to know about burnt sulphur - as in, what color it is when burnt, smell, etc. Here’s her own words:
“In the scene I’m writing, two people are looking at the aftermath of a fire. There’s a trail of burned powder that I have decided is a trail of sulphur (maybe this is a bad choice and I can change it later)…anyways, assuming that it is sulphur, i need to know what it would look like if it had burned. It would be powder but it would have been ground off a block naturally discovered, so it can be assumed to have plenty of impurities.”
Can anyone help out with the details here? What would such a trail look like?
Get The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments – describes the different states of sulfer and what they look/smell like. Or you can get some sulfer/sulphur yourself and burn it.
Sulfer becomes a watery yellow liquid when heated, then becomes red and plastic-like. If you burned some I suspect you’d generate a lot of hydrofen sulfide gas, which would be both smelly and toxic.
Logomancer, has your friend been talking to my 8th grade Earth Science teacher? He made the mistake of burning sulpher…it smelled terrible. All i can remember is the smell…think rotten eggs. shudder By the way, I would strongly advise against trying to burn it anywhere that’s not wide in the open with lots of airflow.