hermanntrude

also potassium iodide

yes, boronic acids form complexes with diols

unbibiium? element 122? seriously? hmmmmm that'd be in the third row of the f-block, right? holy crap.

weigh everything (glass, water, candle) before and afterwards. I think that will give you the best chance of finding out what happened. CO isn't a hypothesis. A theory is much closer, or even a well-educatd prediction based on very well-known chemistry. Any textbook will tell you that in the absence of excess oxygen, combustion gives rise to carbon monoxide as well as carbon dioxide. But you are correct that it doesn't give any reason for the drop in pressure. I'm 99.9% certain that it's to do with a gaseous substance consodensing. Whether that substance is wax or something else (most like water, but i dont quite know how), i'm not so sure. I think wax is the prime candidate.

you mean i actually have to read, actual, real words?!?? damn i'm too lazy for that :0)

glycerol is definitely a ligand, and from the model I just made i'd say it's perfectly capable of being tridentate

how about something like this?

CP i was thinking of glycerol acting as a ligand by hydrogen bonds, not by ionic bonds. I figured since it'd be tridentate rather than monodentate like water, it'd bind more strongly

Another forum I use has a symbol by each person's name, which is a tiny flag, letting you know where the person is from (or which random flag they've decided to choose in order to look cool or rebellious or something). I like this idea, especially for this forum, since there are so many education-based questions, which would be easier to approach if we knew what kind of background the asker was from. For instance, if someone asks about engineering degrees and they're from the UK, and they get an answer from someone in the US, and both are assuming they're in the same country, things might get confusing. It's also interesting to see where members are from at a glance

this isn't combustion in oxygen, either. it's more complicated than that. By closing the system, you're forcing partial combustion to occur, resulting in the formation of CO, carbon monoxide. I don't think that explains the reduction in pressure, though. I think it's probably due to condensation of wax vapours. Some of the wax is volatilised during the combustion (particularly during the partial combustion), becoming gaseous, and then when the flame goes out (and also before, as the temperature starts to fall) the wax condenses out resulting in a large reduction in gaseous molecules, resulting in a drop in pressure. There way also be some water in the gaseous phase due to the heat of the candle.

ah. yes. good point. There's always something isn't there? I say chelating is best then. Add a metal which will accept glycerol as a ligand in preference to water then isolate the coordination compound thus formed.

holy crap. That wouldnt have been a good day for the fellow who cleaned it up. Ether gives me a headache. not as bad as chloroform, though. I remember once i was distilling dichloromethane ona rotary evaporator with the water-bath at maybe 50°C, and the flask fell off the end of the distillation tube and upended itself into the water-bath. Of course, since DCM is more dense than water it sank and then proceded to boil explosively, throwing the water and lots of super-heated DCM out of the waterbath onto the floor at my feet. The fumes gave me two black eyes. My method for cleanup was simple. Hold my breath, open the windows, get out, close the door, come back after lunch.

perhaps you should buy the 80% stuff and use a warm day's sunshine to distill it. it boils at 35°C otherwise, no. It's not very safe, see... it forms explosive mixtures with air and knocks people out. bad combination. what do u need it for?

perhaps. My first try would be to form an alkoxide, since that'd be ionic and so easier to precipitate out

sounds a bit heavy-handed to me. I think the desired result is to actually get glycerol back again. I was thinking of a small, simple reaction which can be easily reversed. Just a method for separating the glycerol

i never thought of mythbusters as particularly scientific. It's just a lot of fun. And yes, I do like the way that sometimes they'll admit "we thought this one out wrong". I thought it was great when they revisited the "archimedes death ray" because so many viewers felt they could do better.

perhaps you could use a MORE polar solvent to isolate it? an ionic liquid or something? or perhaps you could use the opposite of a chelating agent? add a transition metal ion to which only glycerol can bind... since glycerol is a tridentate ligand and water is only monodentate... that shouldn't be too troublesome OR, perhaps you could react it so it precipitates out? just random ideas

it is my firm belief that we are born scientists. Since a baby has no means of gathering information from another person via language, they must divine every iota of information by empirical research. Babies learn so much during their early years that they must be able to process information in a more efficient and logical manner than any adult. The problem is that when a baby grows old enough to learn from older people they start to receive messages which contradict each other, or are wrong, or vague. This is when the red-herrings start to accumulate. A comical but representative example is when my father told me (as a joke) that mountain goats have one pair of legs longer than the other and spend their entire lives spiralling up the mountain, and, once they reach the top, unable to return, they die. the best way to learn anything is through a scientific approach. The dichotomy of science vs. art is a false one.

uranium is named after uranus, the king of the underworld, who has a name that sounds like "your anus", which is hilarious to young people and the young-of-mind like myself

there are probably several dozen things which have the formula C6H8O6

what concentration have you got so far? hydrogen peroxide is fairly hazardous even at 30%

although you can always take longer if you don't mind paying the tuition fees for another year.

be aware that a PhD can actually reduce the number of jobs you're qualified for. many research companies won't accept a PhD student simply because they can train a master's or batchelor's student up for much less money. Also research jobs are very rare worldwide.

High school science research if fairly rare. Surprisingly it's also fairly rare at university too, at least in chemistry, although university is definitely the time when you should be trying to get some research done.

OK so calculate the pH of the original solution. Then you'll know what the pH of the mixture was. Then you can work backwards to find the number of moles of hydroxide required to change the pH, then you can finally calculate the concentration of the original mixture. An ICE table will help, too.