Failed Attempt #2:

I decided to give it another try last night. In order to try and kickstart the reaction I tried a more confined volume (less oxygen) and higher temperature (higher reaction rate).

1) I grabbed a glass shotglass. Added a little HEET, lit it on fire with a lighter, and used the methanol flame to burn off any impurities on the wire.

2) By the time the flame burned out, the shot glass was too hot to touch (and stayed hot throughout the experiment). I added some more HEET back in. I used my tweezers and brought the coil of platinum into the shot glass. I tried several locations and got nothing... no indications the wire was getting hot. I think this is pretty damning because the shot glass was so hot it had to be kicking out quite a bit of methanol vapor.

3) I even tried dipping the coil in the liquid HEET. Nothing. Then I thought lets see if I get the wire hot before I expose it to the methanol (like the youtube video on the experiment). I lit the liquid on the coil on fire. It burned briefly and got red hot. As quickly as I could after the flame went out I brought it back in the shot glass. Again nothing.

4) Next I tried going to a smaller container. I couldn't find anything metal or glass readily available so I grabbed the cap off a 16 oz water bottle (warning do not try this at home. You should not use a meltable container to try and contain a liquid on fire). Again nothing.

5) I wanted to try adding a wick. You definitely should not use a flammable wick (much less with a plastic container) but I didn't have anything that wasn't flammable. I tore off a small piece of cardboard and stood it up in the pool of HEET. The cardboard was soon saturated in methanol. I tried various locations around the cardboard and again nothing.

I am becoming more and more convinced I got ripped off by the seller on ebay. If this wire is platinum one of these experiments should have started reacting. I am thinking about buying the thinner wire from Omega.