jdurg

Oxidation doesn't require non-covalent species. If something is 'oxidized' it just means that its oxidation state has increased. So if the oxidation state of oxygen in a compound is -2, but it then it reacts and the oxidation state goes to -1, the oxygen has been oxidized even if it's not an ionic compound. You do not need an ionic species to have oxidation or reduction going on. Also, your formula for FNO3 is incorrect. It should be written as NO3F, or NO2OF according to Linus Pauling. (You can see his research on the compound here.

Just a note of caution here; be VERY careful with alcohol fires. I've seen too many people get hurt because of accidents involving alcohols and flame. Alcohols that people typically encounter are VERY flammable materials which evaporate very readily. As a result, a flammable field of vapor will quickly form over a puddle of alcohol. In addition, because of the chemical composition of alcohols their flame is virtually invisible. If you don't watch it the entire time, you may forget where the flame is and accidentally burn yourself or others. The most sickening site I ever saw was an automobile accident where a methanol tanker ruptured and caught fire. The fire-fighters were not aware that it was a methanol fire and started walking towards the tanker to see if people were trapped near it. The people walking towards, and away, from the fire suddenly erupted in flame when they were near the tanker. The CH3OH was burning perfectly clear and people were walking right into the flame because they couldn't see it. A thermal filter was then put on the camera filming it and you could then see the fire. Still, a lot of people suffered VERY nasty burns simply because they couldn't see the fire. So when working with alcohols and fire, be INCREDIBLY carefull. One moment of carelessness could result in some nasty burns.

The most impressive one I know of is concentrated sulfuric acid and table suger. Mix the two and the sugar decomposes into steam and carbon. It's a VERY impressive demo and is easily done with standard chemicals.

I'm still looking for a nice, detailed book (or series of books) about the elements on the periodic table. All the books that are out there are just lacking in some things. I want a nice detailed description of the element, its discovery, its uses, the chemistry of it, the production of it, etc. etc. It seems that many books will give chapters upon chapters to the common elements, but NOTHING to the more rare ones. I'd like to know more about americium, cesium, dysprosium, etc. etc. I'm almost beginning to think that in order to get a book like that, I'd have to write one myself........ hmmm..........

Hehe. My internship my senior year of college was working with a GC/MS/MS system for urine sample analysis. I worked on those machines 8 hours a day, five days a week for a good two or three months. Had to take them apart, put them back together, clean them, etc. etc. Biggest project was when the person I was working for gave me an unidentified urine sample and asked me to determine the sex of the donor, what they had in their system at the time of the test, and any other unique items. So I had to pretty much think of every solvent that could be used to test for all types of compounds, what settings to use, and a bunch of other stuff. It was pretty neat. In case you're wondering, the sample I had was of a female who had caffeine and nicotine and their metabolites, acetaminophen and its metabolites (acetaminophen is a.k.a. Paracetamol), she had eaten a poppy seed concoction based on the ratio and amount of opiate materials in there, and a few other things. It was really cool figuring all of that out. Makes me wish that I got a job in the field upon graduation, but there just weren't any out there.

That may be possible if you use a VERY high energy beam to fragment the molecule, but then you'd also have to have the -OH group fragmented off so you'd see some peaks showing up pretty intensely at around 17. You wouldn't happen to have the actual spectrum that you could show, do you?

The peak at around 110/108 is the other fragment you get when you rip off the C2H3O group from the molecule. Taking the mass of that fragment away from the main molecule's molar mass leaves you with a value of 108. Values in and around that ideal number are typicaly explained by high energy collisions which results in rearrangments in the fragments. Your peak at 80, however, is most likely a contamination in your sample, as the paracetamol molecule can't really fragment in any repeatable manner and leave you with a fragment of 80. Also, all the mass specs of paracetamol that I've ever seen don't have a peak anywhere near 80. What solvent did you use and what is column made of?

Go to an auto parts store and pick up some emergency road flares. Those contain copious amounts of strontium salts used to make the bright red flare that is easy to see.

Jdurg' date=' I'm afraid that would be the end of your nice Christmas-fire, unless you have REALLY strong beer .[/quote'] Well the beer wasn't supposed to go into the fire. (Until much later when it's already been processed by the liver and filtered out by the kidneys. Then you can put it on the fire to cease the festivities. )

Hmmm. That'd be a Christmas-y little fire there. Throw some Strontium salts on the fire for the red color, then throw some Barium salts on there for the green color. Hehe. "Have an alkaline-earth metal Christmas. It's the best time of the year. Stron-ti-um and Bar-i-um and lots and lots of beer........" Hehe. I need help.

Actually, where I live you MUST be vaccinated for a large number of things before you're even ALLOWED into school. Before going into kindergarten, or middle school, or high school, or college, I had to show proof of immunization otherwise I would not be allowed to go. So it is a requirement in some spots. For the reasons behind why Vegans may not approve of immunizations, it's not really because of the immunization (that's more of an Amish concernt), but it's because of how the vaccines are developed. If you've ever gotten a vaccine for something, you should recall how they ask if you are allergic to eggs. This is because the vaccine is grown inside an egg and there will sometimes be remnant egg proteins in the vaccine. If you're allergic to eggs, this can cause a huge problem. Vegans will not touch ANYTHING that involves animals. That's meat, cheese, dairy, animal tested products, eggs, etc. So because the vaccine required the use of eggs, the strict Vegans will not accept its use.

Ummmmmm............... what? I've heard of many things before but never heard of a lot of things. Maybe you could help me out as well?

Hmmm. I wasn't aware of this. Would this be a viable way to make some sodium sulfite from some drain cleaner and gardening sulfur, or are the yields too poor and the sulfide and thiosulfate interfere in whatever you'd use the sulfite for? (I.E. reducing selenium ions).

Awesome! Thanks for the confirmation Woelen. I'll have to make sure that my red selenium stays nice and cool and doesn't heat up. What's strange is that on the shattered black-glass selenium slug that I have, on some of the broken edges the black selenium has slowly turned red. It's truly remarkable the differences in the allotropic forms. I should take a photgraph of my red selenium next to my red phosphorus. The two look nearly identical, with the phosphorus being slightly brighter.

It's a rough guess. There has never been enough Francium on earth at any one time to actually see what it looks like.

Cesium will melt if you hold an ampoule of it in your hand. I would guess that the latent heat of fusion for cesium is very low as it doesn't take a lot of energy for it to melt. Gallium is a solid at room temperature, but will melt if the temperature is raised. However, I think that gallium has an elevated heat of fusion because even above it's melting point, it takes quite a bit of time for the gallium to melt. I have never had my gallium melt on a warm summer day due to the heat. I have had my cesium melt repeatedly.

My bad. I thought the question was asked here before, but instead it was at another forum. Oops. Let me just copy and paste my answer in the other forum here. "Okay, to start with let's just go over what makes a metal a metal. A metal is an element where the nuclei are evenly spaced in a lattice arrangment and the electrons flow around this lattice of positively charged nuceli. Because the electrons are free to move, metals are able to conduct electricity VERY well. Metals are also able to conduct heat very well since the energy associated with heat can easily be passed along all of the electrons flowing around these nuclei. The fact that the nuclei are surrounded in a sea of electrons also means that metals can be beaten and pounded and pulled without breaking as the electrons allow the nuclei to move past each other yet still remain connected. This strong attraction also means that the positively charged nuclei are fully surrounded by negatively charged electrons, so they have no want/need to go anywhere. As a result, most metals have a very high melting point and boiling point. So as you can tell, its the electrons that really play an important role in determining the properties of a metal. If we look at mercury, we see that it is just to the right of a very noble metal (gold) which is a solid, and to the left of a fairly reactive metal (thallium) which is also a solid. When looking at the electron configuration of these metals, we see the following: Au (79): [Kr]4d10 4f14 5s2 5p6 5d10 6s1 Hg (80): [Kr]4d10 4f14 5s2 5p6 5d10 6s2 Tl (81): [Kr]4d10 4f14 5s2 5p6 5d10 6s2 6p1 Now remember that as we go from gold to thallium, the size of the nucleus increases as does the charge of the nucleus. Meanwhile, the electron shells don't really increase in size until we get up to Thallium where the 6p subshell starts to fill. In gold, the 'metal lattice' is made up of nuclei which readily give up that 6s electron and allow it to flow in this sea of electrons. As a result of this, there is a strong connection between the seemingly positively charged nuclei and the negatively charged electrons. They want to stick around each other and feel that they need the other atoms to stay together. Because of this, gold has a pretty high melting point and boiling point, but is a VERY soft metal because the atoms are able to slip past each other yet still remain 'attached'. With Thallium, the 6s shell is completely filled so the nucleus really won't want to get rid of them as easily. However, the 6p shell is starting to fill so it can be shared amongst all the other atoms as well. Thallium has a relatively low melting point, but it's still well above room temperature. It's a fairly reactive metal as not only will it give up its 6p1 electron to other Tl atoms, but it will also give it up to anything else in the area. Gold is a bit more conservative with its 6s1 electron. It will hold onto that tightly since the nucleus of Gold is so huge and has such a strong attraction to any and all electrons. This brings us to Mercury. Mercury has a very large nucleus like thallium does, but it also has a completely 'full' 6s subshell unlike gold. Because of this, one would think that mercury would have a strong attraction to its electrons and not want to share them with other atoms, let alone itself. This is quite true as mercury is a pretty poor conductor of electricity in terms of a metal, and is not really that great of a conductor of heat either. So while in a normal metal you have a bunch of positively charged nuclei surrounded by a sea of electrons, in mercury you basically have a bunch of individual atoms which occasionally show a positive charge when an electron jumps around and switches places with other Hg nuclei. As a result of this, the attraction that each mercury atom has to another Hg atom is VERY poor. This means that you don't need a lot of energy to move an atom past another. At room temperature and pressure, there's enough energy to cause Hg to be a liquid. The mercury nucleus is happy with its own two electrons and really doesn't feel the need to share. It's a large nucelus, so it will keep those electrons and you get a bunch of negative charges next to each other. (As the outer shells will be negatively charged and somewhat repel each other, but the very strong charge of the Hg nuclei will still keep a semi 'sea' of electrons). So why is mercury a liquid? Because it has a VERY strong attachment to its 6s electrons and doesn't want to give them up, yet the nucleus of mercury is very big and exerts a strong pull on other electrons so the element remains together, but only as a liquid. "

The signifigance of the principal number just defines what solution of the equation you have. All of the electron 'shells' are really just solutions to a mathematical equation. 6s1 and 5s1 are just ways to differentiate between the different solutions. Think of a quadratic equation where you have two possible solutions. 6s1 is the term given for one answer, and 5s1 is the term given for a different answer. As to which one has more energy, that is determined experimentally.

Well the energy levels define the amount of energy that an electron has, correct? So if energy level A is 'higher' than energy level B, the electrons in shell A would have more energy than B, correct? If an electron has more energy, it would be further from the nucleus because the energy it has is what keeps it away from the nucleus. (1s electrons have very low energy which is why they are so close to the nucleus. They simply don't have the 'oomph' to move away). Remember that the 6s1 designation is simply a solution to a mathematical equation. It doesn't denote that it's a higher energy level than the 5d10 electron is.

No problem. Electron configuration, as boring and tedious as it may be to learn, is probably the most vital piece of knowledge in chemistry. By knowing how the electron shells fill up, you'll be able to see how reactive something is, how easily it is to pull those electrons away, whether or not the element forms a positive or negative ion more easily, etc. etc. I too was shocked that gold and silver were so unreactive, yet they had a lone 6s1 electron. Then I saw that the lone electron is pushed pretty deeply into the atom and isn't an outer shell one like it is in the alkali metals. It also makes me think that the elements in row 7 and 8 are probably INCREDIBLY unreactive. That is, if those elements' electrons fill up in the same manner. I state this because they would then have the g level filled up and further protecting that lone electron from reacting. So the analog of gold that has a full g-shell probalby wouldn't react at all if it was stable enough to exist.

Silver and Gold, and Platinum as well, both have 1 electron in their 6s shell, but the 6s shell is NOT their outer shell. Because of the energy levels of the 6s, 4f, and 5d levels, the 4f and 5d subshells are actually HIGHER in energy than the the 6s shell is. As a result, you would say that the 4f and 5d shells are the outer shells of gold, while 6s is actually an inner shell. As a result, it is not very reactive because the 6s shell is held closer to the nucleus than the 4f and 5 d shells are. The 4f and 5d shells are completely filled, so they are not going to be reactive at all. If you take a look at this link, http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Au/econ.html, you'll see the relativel levels of these shells and you'll see that gold's lone electron is closer to the nucleus than the filled 4f and 5d shells. This is even more pronounced in silver where the 5s shell is closer to the nucleus than the 4d shell is. Cesium, like gold, has a lone 6s electron. The difference is, Cesium has ZERO electrons in its 4f and 5d subshell. As a result, the 6s electron IS the outermost electron for cesium. In gold, that's simply not the case.

Nope. The boiling point is the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid is equal to the atmospheric pressure.

I don't know about that. The question itself is kind of laughable at best, because you wouldn't inject a carbonate into anybody's blood to purposely ppt out a heavy metal. That would lead to a ppt forming in a critical capillary in various organs and result in almost certain death. In addition, the alkalinity of the carbonate ion could cause other problems. EDTA is typically used in a metal poisoning becuase it does bind with the heavy metal, but at the same time remains soluble in the blood so as not to cause blood vessel blockages.

Remember that freezing point depression is more dependent on the NUMBER of solute particles and less so on what the solute is. If you look at the ability of sodium chloride and calcium chloride to lower the freezing point of water, you'll see that calcium chloride is MUCH more effective because when it dilutes it gives up 3 ions in solution; one calcium and two chlorides. Calcium phosphate is a great freezing point depressant as it donates 5 substances when it dissolves in water. So when looking at which solute would result in a lower freezing point, take a look at the molarity of 'particles' and not the substance. (A one molar solution of sugar would have one mole of particles, while the same in NaCl would have two moles of particles).

Sulphur's function in black powder is to provide a pathway for the oxidation of carbon to CO2 by the potassium nitrate, and to help form a counter-ion for the potassium atoms in the potassium nitrate. When you think about what happens when black powder burns, you have carbon, KNO3, and Sulfur reacting with each other. The reaction products are basically carbon dioxide, nitrogen gas, and some sulfides. A little bit of the sulfur gets oxidized to SO2 gas as well, but the majority of the products are N2, CO2, and K2S. The sulfur gets reduced to the sulfide ion which binds with the potassium leftover from the potassium nitrate. Without the sulfur, the potasium would have nothing to bind with except for perhaps oxygen, and then the oxygen couldn't bind with the carbon and much of the energy would be lost.