jdurg

Hehehe.

Plutonium and Iridium also have a multitude of colors in their various oxidation states. Sadly, plutonium is a bit radioactive and iridium is quite a bit pricey so you really won't come across it on a routine basis.

Yeah, elemental bromine smells like a skunk that took a bath in a bottle of bleach. Really putrid and nasty smelling. The other big reason for using bromine products is that they are a very slow-release product and the active component is virtually odorless. The problem with bromine-based cleaning agents is that it doesn't last all too long so you have to constantly replenish your supply. But a spa/pool cleaned with bromine products will have no odor to it. Quite the contrary for chlorine based cleaners.

Bromine is used in spas and some pools instead of chlorine because the chlorine tablets can mess with the pumps and other components of a pool and spa. By using bromine, the life of the pool/spa is extended a bit and the adverse reaction that chlorine products have on your skin is lessened if bromine compounds are used.

Yeah, I've gotten kind of used to that. I mean, in the James Bond movie 'The World Is Not Enough', they walk around holding onto lumps of plutonium metal the size of your head (which would make it supercritical), and the final battle takes place inside a running nuclear reactor. My brain still cringes at that garbage.

Take a look at the structure of sulfur. Sulfur is a puckered ring of 8 sulfur atoms which is really a very non-polar substance. Toluene is very non-polar so the whole "like dissolves like" theory kicks in.

Yeah chlorine is pretty nasty stuff. I remember when I first tried to synthesize my own chlorine. I was under the impression that it was a visible green gas, so when I made my mixture of bleach and acids I was dissapointed that I didn't see a green cloud forming in my little reaction vessel. Being a complete and utter retards, I opened up the vessel and took a whiff of the apparently clear gas inside. BAD MOVE! Just as YT mentioned, it felt like someone hit me in the chest with a hammer. I was coughing horrifically for a few days and just felt like total crap for a good long while. I'll NEVER forget the choking, painful odor of chlorine gas. (It wasn't until later that I realized just how pale Cl2 really is. You need to look through a good deal of it, or look at it with a white background to really see it well).

WOAH! You took something from a lab, without being absolutely sure what it is, and you ingested it?!!!!!! Don't EVER do that. EVER!!! You have no idea what contaminants may be in there. If you ever plan on working with chemicals you MUST understand that they can kill you if you don't know what you're doing. No chemist in their right mind would take a substance that they have no knowledge of and willfully ingest it. You are VERY lucky that you didn't pick up something violently toxic like a barium salt or one of the other numerous toxic salts out there.

H2S would have probably been more effective because of how it anesthetizes one's sense of smell. If you're in a room with H2S gas present, you'll notice the horrific odor immediately but soon afterwards you won't be able to smell it. However if someone else who hasn't been exposed to it walks into the room they'll immediately notice it. My freshman year of college, someone one in a general chemistry lab cleaning up glassware and dumped two clear liquids into the waste disposal bin. (One was a nearly saturated Na2S solution, the other was HCl). The student noticed the rotted odor and just dumped the solution down the sink and flushed it with water and continued to work. The problem was that his sense of smell was numbed. He thought the gas was gone, but he just couldn't smell it. Thankfully, a professor walked by the lab and smelled the H2S and immediately pulled the kid out of the lab and sent him off to the ER.

Stink bombs don't use hydrogen sulfide to emit their odor. If they did, there's no way they could be sold. Stink bombs typically use sulfur dioxide as an "oderant" as it is quite easy to make and doesn't have the toxic effects that H2S does. (I won't get into a discussion on how to easily make it from stuff in the home, but it doesn't take much to generate it). In addition, it is also quite easy to detect in small quantities. Methyl mercaptan is another sulfur containing gas that is used in stink bombs as it is REALLY easy to detect and is not toxic like H2S. (EDIT: I also forgot to mention Ammonium Sulfide. (NH4)2S is a liquid which can easily be mixed in with other solvents and create a HORRIBLE odor in small quantities all the while being aeorosolized(sp?) quite readily. It is a reactive compound and kind of nasty, but not nearly as toxic as H2S is).

One thing that I just need to mention here. In reality, there is no such thing as 'Ammonium Hydroxide'. NH4OH is one of those incorrect things which have been misused so much that it's become commonly accepted. The species NH4OH simply does not exist. When ammonia gas dissolves in water, OH- and NH4+ ions do exist but as separate entities. You will never see a pure compound known as 'NH4OH'. Household ammonia is indeed a very dilute solution of ammonia gas in water. However, there are also numerous other things in there which may cause problems if you are assuming that it's "pure ammonia". When you heat an ammonia solution, the NH3 readily escapes the solution and will re-dissolve into some distilled water and form a much more concentrated solution. That's the process being described in this thread.

That's because Fe won't catalyze the decomposition, but Fe(x+) will.

The bubbling, gas, and heat given off were caused by the decomposition of H2O2 and not any electrolysis. 30% H2O2 is a very potent oxidizer and will readily decompose in the presence of any transition metal ions. (Especially iron). So by putting the iron nails in there you simply accelerrated the oxidation of the iron, and the decomposition of the H2O2.

No. That is a common misconception. The right to bear arms simply means that we have the right to possess weapons needed to survive your everyday life and to maintain an established 'militia'. It does NOT mean that you have the right to possess nuclear, biological, or any other 'high level' weapon (including explosive devices).

Actually, an alkali is another name for a base. Alkaline solution means a solution with a pH above 7. The reason for the name 'alkaline' meaning base is that early scientists and alchemists saw that any time a hydroxide or the pure metal of any Group 1 or Group 2 element dissolved in water, it created a basic solution. So pretty soon they started calling any basic solution 'alkaline'. To be correct, the term 'alkaline' should never be used when doing research or making a lab report as it is not a proper way to describe a basic solution. Acidic and Basic are MUCH better than 'Sour' and 'Alkaline'.

Are you willing to put your life at risk on that? NORAD is based INSIDE of a mountain, therefore it is more than just "a few feet of steel". As for the USS JFK, I guarantee you that it would be vaporized if hit directly with a nuke.

In addition, if you had a "best mod" category, those who didn't vote for YT might have trouble accessing the forums for a couple of weeks.

I was quite fond of the farmer who slept with a loaded shotgun, and during the middle of the night one of his sheep kicked the shotgun and blew the farmer's brains out.

"Man, I hate it when my pants don't fit right. I better start eating more and working out less to build up a nice fat gut."

I've met David Cone and Tim Raines (baseball players who are very polite and down to earth). I've played poker with Ron Livingston (Played Peter in Office Space. Ron and I never were in the same hand together but he was a pretty cool guy to talk with. Mentioned how while he appreciates his fame from Office Space, he's really sick of being known as "that guy from Office Space.") I was also, ahem, "introduced" to the Secret Service people who were serving for Candidate George W. Bush.

As a diabetic, I can say that when my BSL's are low I tend to be more hungry than when they are high. Although, my blood sugar levels tend to fluctuate more than a normal person's will.