If you want to read about this video and how it relates to the recent concerns about radiation in Japan, see the following post on my blog: http://thehomescientist.blogspot.com/...

Here I make potassium iodide from elemental iodine and potassium hydroxide.

3I2 + 6KOH == 5KI + KIO3 + 3H2O

The coproduct of potassium iodate can be separated easily because it is far less soluble in water, and to ensure it was all precipitated out I immersed the solution in an ice bath.

This video is a good demonstration of how things really go when you do chemistry yourself. You start with a bunch of assumptions, and a lot of the time many of these are proven wrong and you have to figure out another way to do it. For example, the additional heating I had to do and the fact that I used too much iodine. I've added a number of annotations to highlight this as well.