The Jar That Hid Two Nobel Prizes — Transcript

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1. 0:00When the Nazis marched into Copenhagen,
2. 0:01a chemist hid two gold Nobel Prize
3. 0:03medals by dropping them into a jar of
4. 0:05acid. They belonged to two German
5. 0:06physicists who defied Hitler, and their
6. 0:08names were engraved right on them.
7. 0:09[music] Smuggling gold out of Germany
8. 0:11was a crime, so if the soldiers found
9. 0:12those metals, all three men were
10. 0:14finished. So, while troops filled the
11. 0:15streets outside, he poured in [music]
12. 0:17the acid and waited, and waited. Gold is
13. 0:19so stubborn, it took hours before the
14. 0:21last bit of it finally vanished. All
15. 0:22that was left was a jar of orange
16. 0:24liquid. So, he put it on a shelf between
17. 0:25dozens of other bottles. Days later,
18. 0:27soldiers searched the entire institute.
19. 0:29They pulled out drawers, flipped through
20. 0:30papers, and walked right past the jar.
21. 0:32Then, the [music] chemist fled to
22. 0:33Sweden, and that jar sat on the shelf
23. 0:35for the rest of the war. When he finally
24. 0:36came back, it was exactly where he'd
25. 0:37[music] left it. You see, gold is so
26. 0:39lazy that almost nothing can touch it.
27. 0:41But, nitric acid can pry a few atoms
28. 0:43loose, and hydrochloric acid grabs them
29. 0:44before they can jump back on. Together,
30. 0:46they eat the gold one atom at [music] a
31. 0:47time. So, he added one more chemical,
32. 0:49and the gold fell right back out of the
33. 0:51liquid as a pile of dust. [music] The
34. 0:52Nobel Foundation cast both metals again
35. 0:54from that very same gold. Two scientists
36. 0:56got their prizes back, made from [music]
37. 0:57the gold the soldiers had walked right
38. 0:59past.