jdurg

You know, something woelen said got me thinking. You should be fairly careful with this mixture you have YT. A method of producing NaOH is using a mercury electrode. The green color you mentioned makes me think that perhaps there is some mercury ion contamination in the NaOH you were using? Organic mercury compounds are really nasty things that you want to try and avoid. Chances are it ISN'T a mercury contamination, but better safet than sorry.

I believe the same holds true for ozone which has three oxygen atoms bound in a manner that results in a delocalized bond.

Hemoglobin is a pretty good organometallic compound. I think we've been making that one for millenia.

Exactly. MAS will tell you that Carbon atom 1 was bound to oxygen atom 2, while AAS will only tell you that you have two oxygen atoms and one carbon atom but not how they were arranged.

You can also take your NC and mix it with a plasticizer and you'll get a material that is commonly used to make ping-pong balls. Trust me, ping-pong balls go up in a nice quick burst of flame if you light them on fire. Found out the hard way in college.

Hehe. Well I think the smell of putrid organic experiments gone wrong and all the five headed sheep near YT's place of residence will make it pretty easy to spot. And yes, I will be in Sandwich, Kent as that is where our UK version of the company is located. I'm still working on the details of the trip and need to get my passport straightened out, but I'm looking forward to it.

In my job I have the opportunity to do a lot of traveling. On the 20th of this month I will be heading out to one of our corporate offices in Sandwich, UK. I'll be going from the 20th to the 24th and should have a little bit of free time to see the area. I know we have a lot of members at the forums here from the United Kingdom, so if any of you know of any good places to get some food or to visit post them here with some details about how to get there. I fly from the East Coast here on Sunday and due to the travel time and time zone differences it will wind up taking up the entire day. But I do plan on seeing the area when I'm not working as this is my first trip outside of the USA. Sometime later this year I may also wind up going to Shanghai, China to give some training and from what I've heard Shanghai is a great place to go and is a lot like NYC. I'm not really sure when I'll be heading out, or if I'll even be able to depending on my workload, but that will be fun to see. Now I just need to work on my boss to let me go to a protocol meeting out in Paris, France in the middle of September.

Oh yes, one more thing. Be VERY careful with NaOH on your skin. It is MUCH more nasty than HCL, or most other acids are. The reasoning is that NaOH will readily saponify the fats just benath the layer of dead skin cells on the surface of your skin. You really won't even feel this happening all that painfully. It will typically just be a slight warming and tingling sensation, but later on it will REALLY begin to hurt.

Exactly! This is why you typically don't think of metals as crystalline substances. The melting point of most metals is so remarkably high that when you quit heating a molten metal it generally solidifies very quickly and is unable to form nice crystals. The crystals it does form are so small and mixed together that the metal as a whole looks like one large mass. Cesium metal, which has a low melting point, does form some beautiful crystals. The cesium that I have readily melts and re-solidifies so I can see the very beautiful crystals that it tends to form. Gallium doesn't really form great crystals since it tends to supercool which makes crystal forming quite tough. For most metals you can get quite beautiful crystal formation, but it takes quite a bit of effort and results in a much higher price for those metals.

Aluminum metal is a VERY reactive metal. Much moreso than most people think. (As we see it used all the time in outdoor structures, soda cans, baking, etc.). Many people don't realize that aluminum metal is covered by a very tightly bonding oxide coating which protects the metal from further reaction. This oxide layer is insoluble in water so you don't think of aluminum reacting with water. The thing is, aluminum is up there with sodium and potassium in terms of reactivity with H2O. You just need to remove the oxide layer. Sodium hydroxide is able to remove the oxide layer given enough of an induction time. Now, the aluminum metal is readily available for reaction with water and you get copious amounts of hydrogen gas forming.

The remarkable thing about silver acetylide is that it isn't really a "classic explosive". It contains no nitrogen and no oxygen, and doesn't really consist of a "typical" fuel and oxidizer. The reaction products are also both solids (Ag and C) since the melting points of both products are WELL above the temperatures reached by the reaction. Therefore there is little to no smoke or vapor produced by the detonation. Only solid remnants. (A tiny bit of the carbon may initially oxidize to form miniscule amounts of CO or CO2). Since no gas is formed, one may wonder why there is any sound at all when Ag2C2 detonates. The reason you do have a sound is that a great deal of energy is released by the detonation which smacks the molecules in the air around it. This results in the creation of a brief, but intense energetic wave akin to when a hammer strikes the surface of something. The detonation of a normal explosive results in a great deal of energy being imparted into the newly formed gaseous molecules. This causes a massive outrush of gas from the detonation, and the air that replaces the outward moving gas will smack together giving a nice "kaboom".

In a cylinder the nitrogen comes out as a gas because the cylinders are filled with compressed gas. In a large cryogenic flask, like a dewar flask, the nitrogen comes out as a liquid because the gas is simply cooled down to a liquid and is not under pressure.

Elemental Barium is actually some pretty neat stuff too. I've spent the past few days moving some of my more air sensitive metals to some new jars I picked up which are smaller in size and have tighter fitting tops. (The smaller size allows less gas to dissolve in the mineral oil. The tight fitting tops, in conjunction with Teflon Tape and an electrical tape seal on the outside does a great job of keeping air out. The sodium I put into one a few months ago looks as fresh as when I cut it). Anyway, I expected barium to be fairly soft and somewhat dense, but it's neither! It's actually a pretty hard metal and felt kind of like aluminum. The oxide coating on the outside adheres very strongly to the metal so I wasn't able to remove it and see what pure barium looks like. I did try and scrape off some of the heavily oxidized sections and now have it sealed away in a much better jar. I need to go and pick up more of these jars, however.

You really shouldn't EVER use platinum when you are working with hydrogen and oxygen gas. Platinum is an incredible catalyst and if for some reason you get some oxygen and hydrogen mixed together, the platinum will instantly ignite it and you could have some trouble. At room temperature, platinum metal will catalyze the combustion of hydrogen and oxygen. I've done this myself by taking a balloon that I filled with 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen and popped it with a tiny piece of platinum wire attached to the end of a meter stick. As soon as the balloon popped, the H2/O2 mixture ignited with a VERY loud report.

Yeah, those super strong magnets on a plane would probably be a really bad idea. Emovendo also sells on E-Bay and he's a good source for "acceptable" grade elements for use in experiments and other things.

Wikipedia also copies directly from the MSDS sheet and is typically not based on actual experimental evidence.

The way I learned to remember is that cations are positive and are attracted to the cathode, therefore the cathode has a negative charge. Anions are negative and attracted to the anode, therefore the anode has a positive charge. That makes it pretty easy to remember. In addition, by remembering that it makes it easy to see where the hydrogen and oxygen will form when electrolyzing water. Hydrogen comes from the H+ ions, so it will arise on the cathode which is the negative electrode. Oxygen is the opposite, so it will form on the anode. In addition, the little pneumonic "An Ox, Red Cat" shows that oxidation (loss of electrons) happens at the anode and reduction (gain of electrons) happens at the cathode. In order to gain electrons it would have to mean that the cathode would need a large number of electrons present, thus giving it a negative charge.

Probably just evolutionary remnants from when our species had bigger mouths and were able to fit all of the teeth in there. In reality, there's no need to ever have wisdom teeth taken out if they aren't causing any problems. Then again, we also have people who need to have other teeth removed because they don't have enough room in their mouth. I just think that as we have evolved into the species that we have become today, the size of our jaw and mouth has decreased yet the number of teeth have remained the same.

Things are going pretty good right now. The area above my right eye that got rubbed away is about 90% normal. It's still slightly pink, and if it weren't for the shape of it one could just say that it was a patch of sunburned skin. The bridge of my nose is still bright red, however. That one seems to be taking a lot longer to fully heal. Probably because of a lack of blood vessels in the area. The LARGE spot on my chin that had the skin rubbed off of it is still noticeably pink. I've spent a lot of time out in the sun the past week or so, and while the rest of the skin on my face has turned a nice golden color the spots where the scabs were have just stayed pink/red so they stand out a little bit more now. When I head in for my photo ID I'll probably use a light makeup of sorts to just blend the areas in. From what I have read, the time it takes for the pink skin to fully match up with the surrounding skin is a few months.

You're wrong. the pH is actually a french term "poweur Hydronium"(sic?) which pretty much describes that it is a logarithimic measurement of the hydronium concentration. It is not greek at all.

In regards to storing HNO3, that can be done but you need a properly ventillated acid storage cabinet preferably with a special section for nitric acid. Over time, HNO3 will decompose and give off very corrosive nitric oxides. These oxides will tend to nitrate most anything which isn't something that you want happening. This is why in labs and universities the HNO3 is stored in it's own inert section of the acid cabinets with plenty of ventillation.

The scars just look like pinkish colored spots of skin, but they are beginning to match my normal skin tone now at this point. I too am simply amazed at how quickly it has healed. Less than a week for all the scabs to have falling off naturally and for just a pinkish colored replacement skin to form in its place. I think the biggest thing I did to enhance the healing process was take a large number of A, B, and C Vitamins, Zinc Gluconate cream, and an anti-bacterial cream applied twice a day to keep the wounds moist and sterile. Then I just ate a lot of protein, drank a lot of milk, and avoided picking at the scars. Every night when I went to bed, I'd wake up the next morning with a large portion of the scab(s) withered away and falling off. I almost now wish that I had photographs of how quickly this has all healed because even I am amazed at this.

Holy good lord! You're a toothpick there YT! I'm 5'10" and weigh approximately 170 pounds and people think I'm a skinny one.

If you did indeed make benzoic acid, I would venture that it is in the white mixture in the aqueous layer. The fact that your KMnO4 went colorless and then formed a muddy brown ppt makes me believe that the MnO4- was reduced to MnO2 which is a muddy brown color. MnO2 and H2SO4 will readily form MnSO4 which is apparently quite soluble, so that would explain the dissolution of the brown "mud". The excess of H+ ions would make me believe that the benzoic acid is formed in the fully protonated state and dissolved into the aqueous layer. Upon cooling, it would crystalize out of solution giving you the white cloud that you now see.