MDJH

Divided cell? What do you mean? My idea was to put water in a bucket, add some epsom salt and stir, then take two plastic bottles (ideally one of them being twice the volume of the other) and fill both with the epsom salt solution, then invert them (ie. where the cap would be is toward the bottom of it) onto the water, then connect them to my voltage supply with partly-insulated graphite electrodes... as in, everything but the segment that's actually in the bottle would be covered with electrical tape. This way the anode's gas products would be separate from the cathode's gas products... would that qualify as a "divided cell"? Also, I'm intuitively guessing that what said person was referring to was probably the efficiency. It didn't occur to me to re-ask it today though.

I'm actually not inclined to look through the articles or their sources right now... but I'm convinced that I believe you. I'll probably look into them later.

I would think the "bitey" question would be a separate subject from acid strength. And yeah, an acid's "corrosiveness" isn't necessarily proportional to its strength, supposedly hydrofluoric acid burns are considered worse than even sulfuric acid burns, (supposedly because of the electronegative fluoride) yet sulfuric acid is considered a strong acid because 100% of its molecules lose at least one H+ in water, (if I recall correctly) whereas hydrofluoric acid is considered a weak acid because it ionizes only partially. Ironic that in terms of acid molecules stronger means MORE likely to fall apart.

I would think that given how there are so many chemical compounds, there'd still be many undiscovered chemical reactions between those compounds. That and what Dr. Syntax said.

Actually, we did the flame test for a some metals as part of one of the labs during intersession chemistry. But those labs were generally unpleasant, (and I wouldn't want to do any more chemistry courses) I was watching from a distance, and it just doesn't feel the same as it would if I was doing it on my own spare time and at my own pace.

Tin soldiers? Don't even know what they are, though it sounds very familiar. *Will look it up after this post* But now I think that if and when I decide to get around to it (I'll probably need to check on whether or not outdoor fires are allowed in the city I'll be living in for the next few months) I'll go to a hardware store or something like that. EDIT: As for tin soldiers, I don't have any in the apartment I'm in now, don't think I have any in my hometown, and I'm not that inclined to go look for them. o.o

... why does it even have to be "beyond a certain level" though? Why can't they start off with the explanation that it's hydronium from the start? I remember doing grade 10 science class and finding the chemistry component interesting, but finding it confusing that stuff like Ammonia would give off hydroxide instead of hydrogen... of course, that summer I got my grade 11 chem textbook early and looked it up, but it doesn't sound too complicated...

... any proof of this? Don't get me wrong, you seem to know what you're talking about, just want a source to check on since people on the Internet don't necessarily mean what they say. In any case, if we have cells for red, cells for green, and cells for blue, then how would we tell the difference between photons of green light that are closer to red than to blue and photons of green light that are closer to blue than to red? (Or can we?)

What is even better? Can't quite tell what you're referring to there. o.o But yeah, I'll probably ask the chemistry instructors at my university about this kind of stuff after the weekend. Not sure if they'd let me use their bunsen burners, ion solutions, and "platinum loops" (I haven't seen them at my university and am not even sure what they are) for a for-fun experiment though.

Nothing in particular, other than knowing that I'm able to melt tin with fire and make it a new shape. It'd be like I'm learning a new skill.

Well, first off, pH is a measure of hydronium ion concentration, not corrosiveness... and to me "corrosiveness" sounds like a property that would depend on what is getting corroded. (ie. strong acids "corroding" metals when strong bases would tend not to do so, whereas both kinds of chemicals would burn human skin) More specifically, pH is the negative base-10 logarithm of the hydronium concentration, and 1 mol/L of hydronium ions would have a pH of 0. So I guess anything with more than 1 mol/L of hydronium ions would have a negative pH. EDIT: As for question 2, I didn't even know that about biting aluminum; I guess it has something to do with aluminum being a metal.

I wouldn't want to waste a battery though. I'll probably look in some hardware store for graphite electrodes. As for the bit about copper reacting, I didn't know that. Now that I do, I'll probably use graphite covered with electrical tape for the "insulated component" of the electrodes. EDIT: That said, I was talking to someone who works in the chemistry department of the university I go to, and she said MgSO4 wasn't a very good electrolyte for water electrolysis; she was recommending cobalt something chloride or whatever, but I mentioned that I'd be doing this inside and she recommended using some iodine compound instead. What was she referring to as not being good for an electrolyte?

Isopropyl, ethanol, or other? Oh, and thanks for the explanation.

Wow, good thing I asked about this before trying it. So yeah, in terms of fire, if I were to have a campfire-esque outdoor fire and place objects made of tin on it, would that then create a layer of molten tin at the bottom of the fire? And if so, how far away would the layer of tin extend from the fire before freezing? (ie. at what distance would it transition from liquid tin to hot solid tin)

But what if it's a mix of equal parts blue photons, green photons, and yellow photons? Will it still look green? If so, would a prism separate those colours?

I was under the impression that "proportional" implied "linear" unless it was square proportional, cubed proportional, etc. o.o But anyway, would it presumably occur at more than half the rate than would be involved for saturated MgSO4, if it's half the saturation concentration?

I'm guessing this topic is about the confusing explanations of light. I recall using the program Paintbrush (sort of like an older version of MS Paint) as a little kid and playing around with the RGB thing to see different combinations of colours, later reading the section on colour of dad's physics book, and got the impression that for light, colours other than red, green, and blue were typically the products of those two... including white itself. Of course, that semeed to contradicted what I learned in art class, but that was supposedly about pigments anyway so it wasn't too confusing. But when learning about how light is made of "photons" how higher energy photons have shorter wavelengths, and how it's more of a continuous thing than a definite thing, then reading elsewhere about how prisms separate white light into the colours of the rainbow, but don't separate one colour into its "constituents" it just seems right contradictory. What's the real story?

I'm now in my own apartment for the fall, and I noticed that the oven's dial goes up to 500 degrees fahrenheit. According to twn.ca's conversions, that's 260 degrees celsius. And then I remembered when I read recently about tin, and recalled that it melts below that temperature. So theoretically, I could use my home oven to melt tin and reshape it... such as by placing a tin can (with the paper removed and the remains washed off, if I can) onto some baking sheet and making a sheet of tin. Or adding some spoons and forks or whatever and melting imprints onto it or whatever. Of course, I have a few safety-centric questions about doing this. 1. Is there any chance that tin could burn and/or otherwise chemically react at temperatures of 500 degrees fahrenheit? 2. If I were to melt tin onto a baking sheet to get a sheet of tin, would I be able to peel the tin off or would it be stuck to the baking sheet? 3. How do I make sure it's tin I'm melting? What would happen if what I was melting was either a tin alloy or tin with impurities, would that itself risk more chemical reactions? 4. Sort of related to the third, how do I test for impurities? I'll leave it there for now. o.o

I'm guessing I didn't make this clear in my last post, but I left the MgSO4-soaked wood at home, and since starting this thread moved out to the city where I go to university. So I'd need to find out if and where I could safely and legally have a fire out here (not sure yet how to find out) and check on it before doing fire-related experiments with salt and wood out here. But yeah, from now on this thread is about colored fire, or ideally about colored fire via metal cations. So what makes colored fire work anyway, is it that the reaction of the oxygen with the metal cations has a certain amount of energy and therefore gives off a specific wavelength of photons? BTW John Cuthbert, if the MgSO4 decomposes to MgO at high temperatures, would the SO3 be given off as SO3 or in the form of other compounds?

Ah ok... so would the electrolysis occur at half the rate, or more than half the rate, with half the concentration?

So, would half that concentrated require only one volt more or something?

I would've sworn I read SOMEWHERE that it does. Something about the charge building up before the strike... or is it for during the strike? Whatever, I'll probably get whichever's cheaper anyway. But how far is "a bit" for sticking in the ground? A few metres, or a few decimetres?

What qualifies as "conductive" though? Would trying to get the solution close to saturation make it more efficient, or would it have negligible benefit?

Putting insulated wire in the solution shouldn't affect the purity though, should it? I'll probably use a graphite rod for the uninsulated electrodes. (Ie. the part that's supposed to bubble the gases; would the graphite left behind by a burned pencil suffice?)

It's odd though, Wikipedia says it does. Well, I left the MgSO4-soaked wood in my hometown, my parents say they might burn it in the fire later and send the pictures to me. I'll find out soon enough. (My mom also threw out the MgSO4 solution on the lawn, not realizing it could kill the grass. XD)