jdurg

Time to edit my post due to horrific grammar. In the early 1960's, scientists were doing a lot of experimentation with fluorine and fluorine compounds. One of these compounds was PtF6 which is a VERY potent oxidizer. In their experiments, scientists were able to create the salt O2(+)[PtF6](-). This was a very strong fluorinating agent with oxygen in a positive oxidation state. They took the O2 molecule and pulled an electron away from it to give it a +1 charge. So they knew that PtF6 was an INCREDIBLY strong oxidizing agent. Once they discovered that they could put O2 into a positive oxidation state, they also realized that the first ionization energy of oxygen was pretty much the exact same as that of Xenon; a noble gas. Their theory was that if PtF6 could oxidize oxygen, then it should be able to oxidize Xenon as well since their electronegativities are the pretty much the same. So in the fall of 1962 scientists put together a mixture of PtF6 and Xenon gas and found that XePtF6 had formed. Later on, they discovered that elemental fluorine and xenon would react with each other upon exposure to light and XeF4/XeF6 would be formed if the gases were under pressure.

I would think that the sodium/potassium ions make the mixture a slight bit more stable. Pure organic acids and very potent oxidizers aren't exactly the safest of mixtures.

That will 100% definitely NOT get you any potassium. ANYTHING with water in it will not form potassium for you. Electrolysis of moistened potassium carbonate will simply not work.

I haven't gotten a chance to read the document yet, but another experimental observation I can make is the base's ability to attack glass. All the alkali hydroxides will attack glass, but the rate at which they do it is not the same. LiOH takes forever to make any change to the glass, while NaOH and KOH don't take nearly as long. CsOH, however, will visibly attack the glass. I.E. you can see it happening in front of your eyes. No I know that a lot of strong bases attack glass, so obviously the OH- ion is able to, in some way, attack the glass molecules. Therefore, if the heaver alkali hydroxides attack glass at a much quicker rate, wouldn't lead you to believe that they are stronger bases?

Another reason why I still believe that CsOH is a stronger base than NaOH, and that KOH is a stronger base than NaOH is in regards to making soaps. If you make a saponify an oil using NaOH, the resulting product is generally a solid. If you do the same with KOH, however, the resulting product winds up being a liquid and you get a liquid soap. (I believe this is caused by the KOH breaking apart the fat to a greater extent. Something that a stronger base would do). Also, look at the ionic nature of each of the alkali hydroxides. Cesium salts are VERY ionic due to the incredibly low electronegativity of cesium. NaOH and KOH are less ionic. The problem with trying to find the proper answer to this is that CsOH and RbOH aren't really used all that much due to their cost.

Potassium dating, uranium dating, and rubidium dating tend to be used quite frequently as well.

You could always light some magnesium on fire and then throw the burning Mg into a pool of water. That would create a pretty impressive reaction as Mg reacts with steam and the burning magnesium would create a lot of steam which would create a good deal of H2.

I understand what you're saying, but if you look at the hydrogen halides in terms of acid strength, yes HCl, HBr, and HI are all strong acids, but HI is indeed stronger than HCl and HBr are. The same is true of the alkali hydroxides. I don't have a CRC Handbook at the moment, but I'm willing to bet that the Kb of CsOH is not the same as that of NaOH/KOH/LiOH/RbOH.

While the lithium ion does have a very negative standard reduction potential, remember that the value is in regards to an aqueous species. The real value that should be looked at is the electronegativity. The lower the electronegativity, the easier it is to pull an electron off. As a result, cesium would be INCREDIBLY willing to donate an electron. So if a base is defined as a substance which is an electron donor, then cesium metal would be the strongest base.

1): That is not correct. The bonds in HCl and H2SO4 are 100% covalent bonds. The bonds are broken apart in the presence of water, but the pure substances are NOT ionic. If they were, then HCl and H2SO4 would both be crystals at room temperature and pressure due to the ionic charges they exhibit. As you should be well aware, HCl is a gas and H2SO4 is a syrupy liquid. I do not know of any compound involving hydrogen and a nonmetal where the bonds involved can be classified as ionic. 2): In a combustion reaction, the most electronegative species is the oxidizer and the least electronegative species is the fuel. Generally speaking, however, 'combustion' is typically reserved for hydrocarbons or hydrogen combination with oxygen in order to prevent confusion. When the oxidizer isn't oxygen, it's typically just called a redox reaction. 3): How would he know if it's copper (I) or copper (II). Also, how would he determine the formula for a reaction between chromium and acetic acid? To know what will form and in what oxidation state, your pretty much just have to memorize it. (Though you could look up the reduction potential of acetic acid and the reduction potential of the metal that you're reacting. Then just see what is more likely to happen based on the values. If the metal can easily be oxidized to the +2 state, then you'll have a formula of Metal(CH3COO)2)

I beg to differ just a little bit woelen. Yes KOH and RbOH and CsOH and NaOH all dissociate 100%, but CsOH is more soluble than any of the other hydroxides. As a result, more of the CsOH can dissociate in water and you get a stronger base. For example, NaOH has a solubility of 111 grams in 100 grams of water. That's equal to about 1110 grams per liter of water. With a molar mass of 40, that's equal to a molarity of around 27.75 Molar for a saturated solution. CsOH has a solubility of 8600 grams per liter of water. With a molar mass of 150 g/mole, that equals a molarity of 57.33 Molar. Over twice as strong as sodium hydroxide is. So in aqueous solutions, which is the word I missed earlier, CsOH is unequivically the strongest base that is known.

There is no rush to get your posts here on the internet. The five extra seconds you take spelling out words and using proper grammar will not kill you. Instead, it may actually help you get answers sooner and from more people. I know that I personally won't bother helping out someone who 'onley types wen he want 2'.

Ionizing radiation can only go so far, and the amounts of radioactive particles in the fertilizers isn't all that great to begin with. (The term chemical fertilizer makes me laugh because all fertilizers are chemicals. If you use 'natural' fertilizers, you will wind up with the same proportion of radioactive particles anyway. I can guarantee you that if you analyze any fruit or vegetable, you'll find radioactive particles in there. It all depends on the sources. Also, radon has a half-life of 2.8 days. It's not going to contribute anything to the radioactivity. Also remember that radon is a noble gas so it will not be chemically bound to anything. I think you are getting radon and radium confused.) Anyway, once ionizing radiation has spent its energy, it can no longer cause any damage. With carcinogenic chemicals, however, the damage can continue to occur once it has affected one 'structure'. In addition, the amount of carcinogens in any type of smoke is gigantic compared to any possible radiation. If a geiger counter can pick up the radiation coming from a cigarette, then yes, you should worry. The thing is, there is simply not enough radioactive material in a cigarette to merit any type of 'fear'.

HF is far more dangerous. Not only will HF burn through your skin, but HF itself is violently toxic and will make you violently ill and potentially end your life. Many, many, many scientists lost their lives or severely crippled themselves when trying to isolate fluorine gas and had accidents with HF. The fluoride ion is quite toxic, and when HF attacks things it generates a good deal of F-. While CsOH will cause great physical damage to your skin, the Cs+ ion isn't all that toxic.

Cigarette smoking is just as big a contributor to global warming as outdoor barbeques are. In fact lighting up your gas or charcoal grill, or your smoker, and cooking a hamburger or two puts out a lot more CO2 than a cigarette does. Also, look at the number of people who use gas stoves or grills and compare that to the number of smokers. In light of this, I'd say that cigarette smoking does not contribute to global warming.

Calcium ions impart a yellowish color to a flame, and sodium ions impart a deep yellow/orange color in a flame. Would you be able to explain the experiment you're doing, because I'm having trouble understanding what it is that you are actually doing. (Are you burning a mixture of the chlorate and the salt, or are you mixing them in water and holding it in a flame?)

No problem. Glad to have helped. Entropy is just a really odd concept that can be hard to grasp. Probably because you really can't directly measure the amount of 'disorder' of something. If you examine the Gibbs Free Energy equation, you'll see that it actually makes a lot of sense. The equation says that reactions which give off heat and result in an increase in the amount of disorder will be energetically favorable. That is, they'll tend to happen spontaneously. If you look at explosive compounds, you'll see that they all give off a lot of heat (they're very exothermic) and the products are typically all gases. As a result, the entropy goes up dramatically. This creates a very positive value for TdS which results in a very negative Delta G. As a result, virtually are explosive compositions are inherently unstable and will decompose over time. The most sensitive mixtures have an incredibly negative Delta G value, hence why they are so unstable. (I tried to find the entropy of formation of nitrogen triiodide in order to give an example, but I don't have a CRC handy so I can't look that up. The dH of the decomposition of crystalline NI3 is VERY large and negative, and all the products are gases, so one would expect the entropy of that reaction to be VERY large and positive. As a result, the Delta G is VERY large and negative and the reaction proceeds spontaneously.) Knowing that equation will also help explain why some reactions are considered spontaneous even though the enthalpy is positive. A reaction can have a very positive Delta H, but if the entropy of the system increases, then at certain temperatures the reaction will spontaneously occur. It's a neat equation when you think about it.

Entropy is a measure of disorder. It's kind of an abstract value and I'm not fully sure how it's directly measured, but basically speaking the more entropy a system has, the less ordered the molecules/atoms are. Solids have low entropy because the atoms are aligned in a set pattern, while gases have a lot of entropy because they can go in any which way. Being spontaneous means the reaction will proceed on its own without any need to input energy. If you mix hydrogen gas and oxygen gas, it will slowly happen, but the two will react and form water. (If you add a catalyst or a little bit of heat, then it proceeds quite rapidly). As a result, the Delta G for the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen is pretty negative. On the other hand, if you have hydrogen fluoride dissociating into hydrogen and fluorine gas, the Delta G for that reaction is VERY positive. That means that no matter how long you wait, you will NEVER see the HF dissociate into H and F. The only way it will happen is if you put energy into the system. Here's another analogy. Let's say that you have a block of ice outside on a warm day as well as a beaker of water. The 'reaction' of the ice melting into water is a spontaneous occurance. It might take a while, but if you wait long enough all the ice will melt. The delta G of the reaction H2O(s) => H2O(l) at 300K is negative. The solid will spontaneously form the liquid. On the other hand, the reaction of H2O(l) => H2O(s) is NOT spontaneous. You can wait all you want, but the water will not solidify at 300K. The delta G for the 'reaction' is positive. You have to put energy into the system in order to get the water to solidify.

But you can never completely electrolyze a molten salt. You'll get to a point where your electrolysis products will have to come in contact, and you DEFINITELY don't want that happening.

That won't work either bud. Potassium is VERY soluble in molten KCl so you won't be able to get it out of there unless you heat the molten salt up above the boiling point of potassium. Then you can distill the molten potassium/KCl mixture and collect the potassium vapor and condense it back into a liquid, then solidify it.

lol. hehe. NO.

Gibbs Free Energy is a measure of the spontonaity(sp?) of a reaction. If dG is negative, then the reaction will occur spontaneously at that temperature. If it's positive, then energy needs to be put into the system in order for the reaction to take place. The equation dG = dH - TdS says that when the enthalpy goes down (i.e. reaction is exothermic) and the entropy goes up (i.e. the system becomes more disordered), the reaction will be spontaneous at that temperature. As an example, we'll look at the conversion of oxygen gas (O2) into ozone. The reaction 3O2(g) => 2O3(g) has a dH of +284.6 kJ, and a dS of -0.1398 kJ/K. Right away, we can see that this will probably NOT be a very spontaneous reaction. The equation dG = dH - TdS gives us a value of +326.28 kJ for the change in Gibbs Free Energy. This tells us that the reaction of oxygen gas forming ozone is NOT spontaneous and is NOT energetically favorable. It also tells us that in order for the reaction to occur, you MUST put energy INTO the system. Real life experiences tell us that this is correct as ozone doesn't form on its own. It only forms if there is a lot of energy put into an oxygen rich atmosphere. (Typically when there's an electrical discharge). So simply put, the dG value tells you if the reaction will occur on its own, or if energy must be put into the system. A negative value indicates a spontaneous reaction. A positive value indicates a non-spontaneous reaction.

Okay I'm back from the experiment with all appendages intact. I discovered that if you use a powdered form of selenium, absolutely no heating is needed at all. We took a large Erlenmeyer Flask and added all of the powdered selenium to it. We then added the nitric acid and a nice dark cloud of NO2 formed above the surface. My friend's fume hood works REALLY well as not once did we get an odor of the nitric oxides nor any selenium compound. The dark brown/red NO2 was neat to observe though. When all of the NO2 finally dissipated, we were left with an orange solution. On your experiment page woelen, the third picture in your series of test-tube photos is exactly what we saw upon diluting the concentrated nitric acid solution with the selenium in it. We didn't add a single crystal of anything, but the solution was that exact same orange color. We then looked through the chemical supply and was disheartend to find that we had no reducing agents. No sulfites, no phosphites, no nothing. An attempt was made to reduce the selenium ions to selenium via iodides, but that just resulted in the formation of iodine and a thick, syrupy black tar which floated on the surface of the water. Makes me wonder what that was. (The only thing in the solution was the KI, HNO3, and the dissolved selenium). In order to ppt out the red selenium, we had to have a source of SO2. There was a ton of sulfur available so we decided to try and burn that. It worked, but very poorly with a pathetic yield. The sulfur just wouldn't ignite no matter what we did. We heated it to the point where it was actually starting to vaporize, but we were never able to get it to react with much oxygen at all. A little bit did form and got into the selenium solution, and we wound up with maybe half a milligram of red Se. So the solution is now in storage until some sulfites can be found.

Some of those helium tanks, however, have a bit of oxygen put in there due to the fact that people like to breathe in helium to alter their voice, but forget that they're displacing oxygen at the same time. So some helium tank fillers put a bit of oxygen in there so people won't pass-out from inhaling a balloon.

In that case, you'd be best off going to a paint store and buying the bottles of powdered aluminum that many of them carry. (Actually, I should have said 'art' store instead of paint store).