jdurg

Dissolve it in water, then put a current through the solution. If it dissolves and conducts electricity, then it's ionic. If it dissolves and does NOT conduct electricity, it is covalent. If it doesn't dissolve in water, then try and dissolve it in some xylene. If it dissolves, it's covalent. That should cover all of the substances you have listed there.

Cheeses and certain chocolates are also pretty rich in lactose so there may be a reaction with lactose there.

It's a fine concept as long as you can understand that it requires more energy to break apart water into H2 and O2 than you actually get from the combination of the two. While the sites make it seem as if the hydrogen is "free" and comes from a limitless source, the energy required to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen is most certainly not free. If you turn your car on/off fairly frequently, you will severely shorten the life of your battery as it will take quite a bit of charge to get the electrolysis going. So just be aware that while you may save on energy costs in terms of petrol, overall there is actually an increased energy cost.

From everything I can tell, the introduction of bromide and bromate in an acidic environment does indeed produce elemental bromine. The phenol would appear to be there in order to react with the bromine forming ortho-bromophenol and hydrogen bromide. The HBr would escape from the phenol portion of the testtube and dissolve in the water with the methyl red (a pH indicator). The change in pH from the gaseous HBr escaping and dissolving in the aqueous layer should indicate if a reaction is taking place or not.

The size of the element really doesn't matter. If you take any gas in existance and place it at a low pressure inside a sealed tube it will conduct electricity just fine.

That liquid doesn't exist. In order for something to react with air it has to be readily reduceable by the oxygen in the air, or a strong oxidizer in order to oxidize the components of the air. ANY strong reducing agent or strong oxidizer will have horrendous consequences on your health and well being if you were to ingest it. As a result, it would be inherently toxic.

Hydrogen, and any gas for that matter, will conduct electricity if at a VERY low pressure. Neon lights and gas discharge tubes all conduct electricity. If they didn't, we wouldn't be able to see the gas.

The thing is, a paired electron is energetically stable while an unpaired electron is energetically unstable. So by removing one electron from a set of paired electrons you are taking a stable configuration and making it unstable. This requires energy. This is why the Alkaline-Earth metals are much less reactive than their comparitive Alkali Metals of Group 1. Those Group 2 metals have a somewhat stable configuration of paired electrons in the s-shells so in order to remove an electron from it you need to input a greater deal of energy. In the Group 1 metals the electron is not paired up so it is easier to be pulled away as it doesn't have the electron pair stability.

So basically you want a super insoluble hydroxide salt of a compound that will soak up the tiny amount of free OH- in water thus causing the pH to drop? I think the closest I can think of is ammonium nitrate. NH4NO3 will dissolve readily in water whereby the NH4+ ion will pull an OH- ion from water leaving H+ NO3- in solution and giving off some ammonia gas. The pH of 0.1 molar ammonium nitrate solution is about 5.12.

A short while back we were discussing acids and acid strength and it was rightfully mentioned that while nitric acid is considered a strong acid, it really doesn't dissociate 100% and is the 'weakest' of the 'strong' acids. Is it possible that the NO3- ions are pulling away some hydrogen ions from water to form the HNO3 molecule which leaves a miniscule amount of free OH- ions in solution? The OH- ions could be passivating the surface of the iron nail and thus not allowing it to react. If the amount is small enough, then any copper hydroxide that forms would remain in solution due to the very tiny bit present. This would also explain why an acidified nitrate solution will cause the reaction to occur because the extra H+ ions remove this passivated surface from the iron nail. hmmm......

Heh. If you have no electricity around it's going to be a bit hard to freeze the water.

LOL. I actually had someone who was willing to send me one of the targets used when working with super-heavy elements. He said that at one time it contained this high atomic number elements, but in the time it took to remove the target from the particle accelerator the atoms all decayed. So I do have access to something that USED to have those heavy elements in there.

Exactly. Large chemical companies offer supplies in an incredibly high purity and with assays depicting every impurity in there, but that high purity and assay cost gets transferred on to the customer and results in higher prices. While the purity of what you get from a non-chemical supplier may not be as high and you won't have the luxery of a complete assay, it's typically "good enough" for whatever the home chemist would be doing.

I just realized that in my element collection, I have a sample of EVERY single element on the periodic table whose symbol is only one letter. H - Hydrogen: Gas discharge tube. D - Deuterium: Isotope of hydrogen which has been given a name/symbol. Gas discharge tube. T - Tritium: Isotope of hydrogen which has been given a name/symbol. Tracer key-ring. B - Boron: Amorphous brown powder and black crystalline lumps. C - Carbon: Graphite rods, amorphous black carbon, diamonds. N - Nitrogen: Sealed vial and gas discharge tube. O - Oxygen: Sealed vial and gas discharge tube. F - Fluorine: Sealed ampoule with about 15-25% fluorine gas and the rest helium. P - Phosphorus: White, Red, Violet, Black phosphorus samples. S - Sulfur: Yellow powder. K - Potassium: Solid lump under mineral oil. V - Vanadium: Rectangular metal ingot. Y - Yttrium: Metallic lumps in vial. I - Iodine: Volatile dark solid sealed in glass ampoule giving off violet vapor. W - Tungsten: Heavy ingot in vial. U- Uranium: Depleted Uranium turnings and lump stored under mineral oil in vial in lead-lined box. All other elements have multiple letters in their symbol's name. That's kind of neat knowing I have all the single letter elements. (Being at work gives my mind waaaaaaaaaay too much time to be intrigued by such simple things. lol).

Okay, YT wins the award for the "Oh dear god why did I read that?" post of the week.

The only way the mercury gets out is if the tube gets broken. You see, a fluorescent light bulb is a simple electrical gas discharge tube with a coating inside of it that emits light when excited. It operates in a similar manner to a neon sign. You have a glass tube with electrodes on each end. If you put a current through the tube, you won't see anything as air has a very high resistance to it. You need MASSIVE amounts of voltage to get electricity to travel though air (I.E. Lightning). In order to decrease this resistance, you need to lower the amount of air inside the tube. The lower the gas pressure inside the tube, the easier it is to carry a current through it. By evacuating the tube to a near vacuum, electricity flows EASILY through the tube at a relatively low voltage. In a flourescent tube you have a near vacuum inside the glass tube as well as a tiny, miniscule drop of mercury. The mercury drop is placed in the tube and then the tube is sealed shut and evacuated. This causes the mercury to evaporate into a gas inside the tube due to the very low pressure. When a current is run through the tube, a blue light is given off by the excited mercury. The phosphorescent coating inside the tube absorbs these wavelengths of light and then flouresces the bright, "white" light that you see from a fluoresecent light bulb. The amount of Hg in the light bulb is almost nothing as too much Hg would require a much higher voltage in order to transmit the electricity. If a hole develops that allows the Hg to escape, then the tube would no longer work as the resistance inside the glass would be far too high.

Yes it is, though much of the acetaldehyde is excreted through the pores of the skin and via the breath. What's left gets converted into acetic acid which is why you have the aches and pains associated with a hangover that next day. The more that you wind up drinking, the more acetic acid gets left in you and the nastier you feel.

Lol. Yup. Instead I probably have platinum blond nether region hair thanks to the chlorine cloud. hehe. (That was probably a wee bit TOO much info. )

Nope. The first step is the processing of ethanol into acetaldehyde. A lot of that gets excreted through your sweat and via urination. Acetaldehyde is further metabolized into acetic acid which is almost all excreted via your urine. A very, very, very tiny bit of that acetic acid may get broken down into carbon dioxide and water, but not a helluva lot.

Yeah, I truly think that by reading that book you will become more and more clueless in the field of chemistry. Lead does indeed have 82 protons, but to say it has 82 protons and neutrons is incorrect no matter how your read it. Lead has FAAAAAAAAAAAAAR more than 82 neutrons in it. Pb-164 simply does not exist just as Pb-82 doesn't exist. Helium-4 is the isotope that we typically encounter.

Alcohol is eventually converted into acetic acid inside your body, so when you go out drinking the next day your urine will be a bit more acidic than normal. (I.E. a pH of 5.0 instead of 6.0). Whenever you take ANY acidic liquid and pour it into a solution of hypochlorite ions (bleach) it will result in the emission of chlorine gas. Adding chlorine gas to sodium hydroxide produces sodium hypochlorite, however that reaction isn't 100% in the product direction. (The reaction of Cl2 + 2NaOH => NaOCl + H2O + NaCl). As a result, when you open up a solution of NaOCl you will smell the chlorine odor due to the presence of some chlorine gas. If you add ANY acid to that solution, you will instantly remove some NaOH from the equillibrium equation and cause more Cl2 to form as the NaOCl decomposes to form the chlorine gas. So if you urinate an acidic urine (which all urine is) into a toilet bowl full of sodium hypochlorite (bleach) you will make some chlorine gas.

This is a funny, yet somewhat embarassing story involving the formation of an element. With last night being New Years Eve I went out and partied a little bit while ingesting some drinks which tend to give one a lower pH in their urine. This morning, when I awoke I went to sit on the crapper to let loose the food I ate last night and the drink I had imbibed on, I inadvertantly created an element. Shortly after "letting loose", I noticed a VERY strong chlorine gas odor and heard the toilet water hissing and fizzing. I stood up and saw a faint green cloud bubbling out of the solution and immediately started coughing. Apparently, a family member decided to use some industrial strength bleach to clean the toilet but had failed to mention this to anybody. The lower pH of my urine turned the hypochlorite into chlorine gas which bubbled out and hovered over the toilet. It wasn't an intense green color, but enough to make it annoy your lungs if you took a deep breath. lol. The chlorine cloud I inadverantly generated wound up messing with the color of the carpeting on the floor right outside the toilet as it now is a very slightly lighter shade of green. One of the funnier 'unexpected chemistry' incidents I've been involved with.

Heh. Well I shortly came upon this link here which also mentions the Nobel/Noble spelling issue.