jdurg

I don't recall off the top of my head, but that's kind of like asking 'which is more lethal, being at ground zero of a fission bomb or being at ground zero of a fusion bomb?'.

The little bits of oxide and the loose bits of copper can act as the seed as well. Basically, when gallium supercools it does that because it can't find anything to help it start solidifying. By adding something to the Ga to give it that kick start, the crystals can begin to grow and the solid will form. I used Cu wire because I had a bunch lying around, and I found that the Gallium oxide latched onto the wire and I was able to get a VERY reflective and clean surface on my Ga as opposed to the oxidized surface I had in the past.

It's because the copper wire creates a 'disturbance' in the Ga and provides a spot where crystallization can begin. It's basically a 'seed' for the Ga to grow on.

Thankfully, however, like many toxic gases the human nose is so sensitive towards the smell that concentrations faaaaaaaaaar below a toxic or lethal amount can easily be detected. (Same is true for the halogens, hydrogen sulfide, and many arsenic compounds). You just have to be careful that you don't overwhelm/numb your scent receptors. That could be bad.

Very little, if any contamination. The only places where I saw some contamination was at the bottom of the vial where I was really scraping hard to get rid of some oxide that adhered to the glass. Where I was scraping, you can see a very faint blue tint from probably a small bit of copper that went into solution, so to speak.

From experience, I have found that if you take a copper wire and bend it into a tiny little hook and skim the top of the Ga, not only will the oxide adhere to the Cu fairly strongly, but it will initiate crystallization of the liquid Ga. I used this method to clean off the top of my gallium while it was still liquid, and when it solidified shortly thereafter, the surface was bright and reflective while staying completely free of oxide.

Sulfuric Acid is also a pretty potent oxidizing agent. It's not up there with nitric acid, but it is still pretty potent. If the ambient temperatures are increased, then the oxidizing ability increases as well. This is why if you put a piece of copper metal into room temperature sulfuric acid you won't see much, if any, reaction. But if you bring that sulfuric acid up to a high temperature, it will start oxidizing the copper and you'll see a pretty good reaction. H2SO4 (concentrated) is also able to oxidize some halides to their halogens. If you mix NaF and sulfuric acid, you'll get HF and some bi/sulfates of sodium. If you mix NaCl and sulfuric acid, you'll get HCl and some bi/sulfates of sodium. If you mix NaBr with sulfuric acid, you'll get some HBr but you'll also get some elemental bromine along with your sodium (bi)sulfates. This is because the sulfuric acid is able to partially oxidize the bromide ion into elemental bromine, but not at a full rate. As a result you get a nasty mixture of sulfur oxides, HBr and Br2. Definitely NOT something you want to be around. Now if you mix NaI and sulfuric acid, you'll get iodine and sodium (bi)sulfate and almost no HI. The iodide ion is very easily oxidized into elemental iodine and almost not hydrogen iodide is formed. (That's why the commerical production of HI uses concentrated phosphoric acid since H3PO4 is a very poor oxidizer).

Chemistry sets have been that weak looooooooooooooooooong before the patriot act came into effect. Once they realized just how dangerous and toxic many of the 'cool' chemicals were, they stopped putting them in the chemistry sets. Even the sets from the 1980's were weak and pathetic compared to what you could get in the 1950's and 1960's. So while the Patriot Act is a nice thing to just place blame on, the weakness of the chemistry sets took place long before the Patriot Act was even thought of.

Honestly, I wouldn't think so. This is mostly from experience with potassium permanganate solutions which are at a low pH. In those instances, the MnO4- ion gets reduced under acidic conditions to form Mn(2+) and some water. So I would think that permanganic acid wouldn't be all too stable.

Read post number 6.

If you need to etch iron, hydrochloric or sulfuric acid will do a dandy job of that.

Yeah, permanganic anhydride is one of those compounds you make in situ right when you need it as it doesn't like to hang around all too long.

Hmmm. I do know that phosphorus acid is not very stable at all and will readily decompose into phosphoric acid. Phosphorus acid is also a diprotic acid while phosphoric acid is technically triprotic. (The hydrogen bound to the phosphorus in phosphorus acid is not an acidic hydrogen). Generally speaking, the lower the number of acidic hydrogens a compound has, the stronger the acid it is. (While there are definitely exceptions to this, it's a trend that you commonly see). This leads you to believe that the more acidic hydrogens a compound has, the more it needs those hydrogens to stabilize itself. Phosphoric acid has three acidic hydrogens, so you would expect it to be more energetically stable if it held onto those hydrogens as opposed to the naked phosphate ion. Also, the phosphite ion will readily be converted to the hydrogenphosphate ion, so the 'nakedness' of the conjugate base of phosphorus acid is stablized by further reaction. So I would have to say that phosphorus acid is more acidic than phosphoric acid due to its lower number of acidic hydrogens, and the stability of the conjugate base upon coversion to hydrogenphosphate.

Gallium VERY readily becomes supercooled. Apparently the thermodynamics involved with it solidifying does not create a 'greater sense of stability' when it becomes a solid. As a result, it is very happy to stick around as a liquid far below its melting point. This is especially true if your Ga is very pure and there are no contaminations in the container. However once you give it a 'seed' on which to solidify, the solidification happens pretty readily. I guess a good analogy would be a supersaturated solution of something. Until you give it the prodding that it needs to ppt out of solution, it will be quite happy sticking around the way it is.

LSD, Peyote, PCP, Psilocybin, and to a VERY small extent THC can all produce this synesthesia effect. Basically, the class of drugs known as hallucinogens create this 'effect' in the brain by altering the way the brain interprets signals. The most commonly known drug to do this is LSD as people will swear that they 'hear visions and see sounds'. To a great extent, it's just a lot of exaggeration. What you mainly see is that when there is an intense sound, your vision will get these 'flashes' of color or alterations to what you are seeing. Kind of like when you get those flashes in your vision after rubbing your eyes too hard. Only when it's synesthesia, these flashes will genrally have some type of coloration to them and occur due to the perception of sound. The typical effect is that the user's vision will become altered so that when they are looking at something, it's like they are looking at it through a mixture of oil and water. The stories you commonly hear of 'Oh I saw the walls bleeding and purple elephants flying through the sky' are generally gross exaggerations told by the user in order to make the experience that much more 'intense' in the eyes of others.

NaOH reacts with aluminum MUCH faster than HCl does. NaOH eats right through the aluminum oxide coating and the aluminum itself. HCl has a much harder time getting through that coating. Simply take a test-tube and put the same amount of the same concentration of HCl and NaOH in either tube. Then put the same sized piece of aluminum metal into each tube. The reaction will be much quicker, and much more vigorous in the NaOH tube. This is the principal behind draino. Draino is a combination of NaOH pellets/powder and small aluminum pieces. When it's placed in the water, the reaction begins and the H2 that's evolved unclogs the drain.

Ooops. My bad. My last two choices came AFTER 1900.

The Kama Sutra: This way we can ensure that more human beings will be created. The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison: This book really shows how the way one treats others can have a huge impact on their life, and provides some 'moral values' to learn from. The Lord Of The Rings: While this is just an epic fantasy, it teaches a lot about language, communication, loyalty, good and evil.

It is AMAZING that any of us are still alive.

I wear whatever doesn't stink at the moment and is comfortable. As a result, you almost never see me wearing anything other than t-shirts and jeans. Mostly because it's hard to not be matching when you're wearing standard denim jeans.

By now, since the event occured about 30 years ago, they won't find any increased levels of radiation in you. Radon has a half-life of about 2.3 days and polonium, radon's decay product, has a half-life of around 128 days I believe. So by now, there is nothing left in terms of radioactive isotopes. (Unless you happened to inhale some of the actual thorium oxide).

That is as wrong and incorrect as you can get. PLEASE do some research before making a post like that. 64 bit does NOT mean that it is 'twice as fast' as 32 bit. In fact, in certain cases it can actually be slower than a 32 bit processor. The 'bit' just defines how large of a number the processor can handle. A standard 32-bit processor can handle numbers up to 32 bits in size while a 64-bit processor can handle numbers up to 64 bits in size. So the 64 bit processor is able to handle larger numbers and larger sets of data, provided that the motherboard and RAM can provide that large amount of data. The 64 bit processor also requires that the instructions and data given to it are in a 64 bit format, otherwise it won't work. Saying that a 64 bit CPU is twice as fast as a 32 bit CPU is like saying that a dual processor system is twice as fast as a single processor system. That couldn't be further from the truth. The vast, vast, vast majority of software and games out there cannot take advantage of 64 bit processing since they don't require calculations of such a high intensity and magnitude that 64 bits is required. So to sum this up, a 64 bit processor is NOT twice as fast as a 32 bit processor. In fact, unless it is fed 64 bit data by an OS that can handle 64 bit data, it may even be a teency bit slower than a 32 bit processor.

Besides, do you realize just how difficult it would be to get work done if you were around a good looking coworker? It would be a bit difficult to hide your interest in her.

There are literally dozens of threads here at the forums going over how to generate, clean, dry, and contain chlorine gas. PLEASE use the search engine and you will find more than you'd ever hope to learn about chlorine gas creation.