jdurg

NaI or KI was the product, but it wasn't the only one. You actually got a mixture of NaIO3 and NaI (Or KIO3 and KI) salts. However, 1/6th of that is the NaIO3/KIO3 while the rest is the simple diatomic salt. Also YT, if your sodium iodide is coming out as yellow crystals, then you have a SERIOUS contamination problem there as NaI is a completely colorless compound. It's very soluble so it would not ppt out of a solution. PbI is a nice yellow colored salt that ppts out of solution, however.

Probably not. NaOCl forms when a solution of sodium hydroxide is exposed to chlorine gas. The chlorine gas then forms sodium hypochlorite. Simply heating the solution will not produce chlorine gas at any appreciable rate. The easiest way to get the chlorine gas is to reverse the reaction that initially created it. If the reaction occured under basic conditions (NaOH), the making the solution acidic will reverse the reaction forming chlorine gas and sodium hydroxide. This is what Bud and I have each done.

Another thing with radiation and possible cancers is that radiation affects certain parts of the body with more vigor than others. Your extremities really don't feel much of an effect at all from radiation. An equal dose of radiation to the hands/feet, torso, head, and genitals will be far more damaging to the genitals and torso than it would be to the hands and feet. Those foot x-ray machines are not nearly as bad as some make out to be since the radiation exposure one receives is to their feet which are pretty non-reactive towards x-ray radiation. The problem lies with the fact that there isn't a whole lot of protection on those things to prevent stray x-rays from hitting people in the torso area where radiation is a bit more damaging.

The problem with any virus, or easily transmittable 'thing', is that the world populace moves around so often now that you would not be able to contain it. The world isn't the same as it was 70-80 years ago where it was quite the trip to move from one continent to another. Nowadays, you can just hop on a jet and you're across the world within one day. As a result, there is no way to just contain a biological 'item' and have it remain in a target country. For the drug idea, I believe it was once attempted before. I think it was the Germans who tried to come up with a hallucinogenic compound that they could spray on the enemy and cause mass confusion. What they came up with was Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, a.k.a. LSD.

I'm just doing quick math in my head, but probably something like 1-2 grams of iodine based upon the small % of iodine in there, and the fact that the process isn't 100% efficient and you will lose a lot of iodine to sublimation and even more during the filtering process.

The major reason why the waste isn't just shot off into outerspace is because of the risk. As we've seen many times, rockets designed to go into outerspace have had 'failures' which result in the rocket exploding, or plummetting down to Earth. If this rocket is filled with highly radioactive cargo, if it explodes it would be just as damaging as if a nuclear bomb detonated and flung radioactive material everywhere. What if it didn't explode and just fell down to the earth? Well, chances are the container would not survive the impact and the highly radioactive waste would contaminate everything in the area.

RTP is NOT the same as STP.

In my apparatus, all of the stoppers were made out of/coated with Teflon so there was no worry about corrosion. Inside that first beaker was a saturated solution of calcium hypochlorite. (I put powdered calcium hypochlorite in there and added just enough water to dissolve all the OCl-, then added another spoonful of the powder to make sure it was saturated). The concentrated HCl was added to that which then generated a nice large amount of chlorine gas. The inlet for the HCl was then closed off so that the only place the chlorine could go was into the tube of distilled water. This tube removed any and all water soluble gases which may exist in the generated chlorine. The final tube had anhydrous NaHCO3 in there to dry out the chlorine and make sure that there was no water vapor in there. This leaves you with pure, dry chlorine gas. The reaction was quenched by the addition of solid NaOH which stopped the production of chlorine and basically just created a strong bleach solution.

Are you sure it's not producing hypoiodate ions akin to when you dissolve chlorine into a sodium or potassium hydroxide solution?

Yes. Especially the textbook coming out later this year with pictures of my phosphorus in it. (Okay, I'll admit, this post was some spam. heh. But I do agree that nothing beats a good textbook with pictures and questions/answers in it).

The only way to generate chlorine gas from Cl- ions is via electrolysis. If you put a fairly strong current through a saturated solution of NaCl, you'll wind up with chlorine gas, hydrogen gas, and sodium hydroxide. However, this will take some time and really isn't that efficient as some of the chlorine will react with the NaOH solution and produce sodium hypochlorite. In the apparatus that bud has described above, and the one that I've described in numerous threads, you mix a solution of calcium hypochlorite and hydrochloric acid. The action of an acid on the hypochlorite ion generates a hydroxide ion and chlorine gas. Using hydrochloric acid and calcium hypochlorite provides plenty of chlorine atoms for the generation of the chlorine gas. When I made my chlorine that is now a part of my element collection I did it using the apparatus drawn out below. You start out with a beaker that has a two-holed stopper in it. In one hole is a tube leading out to a test-tube/beaker filled with distilled water. In the other hole is a tube that leads to preferably a container with an open/shut valve filled with concentrated HCl. The beaker itself has a concentrated solution of calcium hypochlorite in it. When you add the HCl, it generates chlorine gas. The gas will bubble out of solution and through the open tube into the testtube/beaker filled with water. This water filled container is also closed off with a two holed stopper. One hole is filled with the chlorine inlet, and the other is filled with an outlet into a container filled with anhydrous sodium bicarbonate. Again, the chlorine gas will be forced out of the water tube into the bicarbonate filled tube. Finally, the gas will rise out of the annhydrous bicarbonate and into whatever container you want to put it in. It helps if the height of each tube is lower than the one before it since chlorine gas is fairly dense. In the first container drawn there, the reaction between HCl and Ca(OCl)2 occurs which generates chlorine gas. This gas is then pushed through a tube of water where any extra HCl and other gases will dissolve in the water. (As does a small amount of chlorine). The chlorine is then forced through anhydrous sodium bicarbonate which will absorb any and all water vapor present in the gas. This leaves you with pure, dry chlorine gas. Under the outlet, you can put a beaker with bromide or iodide ions in it and generate bromine or iodine. I had a glass ampoule for my outlet, and when the ampoule was full of chlorine gas it was then sealed off, trapping the gas inside. It's kind of neat to look at my chlorine ampoule and know that I made the pure element myself.

We'll have to keep him in mind in terms of sources for elements. This past week has been great for me in terms of my collection. I received a few things in the mail and got a few more things for a really good price. I picked up a 1/10th ounce gold maple leaf for melt price, a 5-gram gold bar for melt price, 10+ carats of rough uncut diamonds, a 1/10th ounce platinum maple leaf, some fluorine gas, some unoxidized sodium metal in a sealed ampoule, some amorphous selenium, a larger chunk of europium, some more nickel thanks to some Canadian quarters and dimes received in change, some black phosphorus, and some more osmium. I didn't pay anything exorbinant for either of the items. (I'm excited about the diamonds because 10+ carats is over two grams of raw diamonds. These things aren't of a high enough quality to be cut and used as jewelry, so they are PERFECT for the element collection as some allotropic carbon). It's always nice going through these little periods where you can find a bunch of elements that you want/need and you don't have to pay through your teeth for them. (Now combined I spent a good deal of money on all of those items, but at any one purchase I didn't spend a ton so it was was easier to afford).

Yes, but you would also need the hypochlorite and the acid in order to generate the chlorine. So that will be at least 6 or 7 dollars. (And frankly, household bleach is not a good source of hypochlorite since it is so freaking dilute. You would need a LARGE amount of the stuff in order to generate a good amount of chlorine).

A very small amount of the iodine dissolves in the water/alcohol solution. With the presence of the iodide ions, however, it dissolves to a very large extent. By generating the chlorine gas and passing it through the solution, the iodide ions are oxidized back into elemental iodine. As a result, the solubility drops tremendously and it ppts out of solution.

The procedure should work, but their reasoning is a bit off. The fact that they are using HCl and Bleach is to produce chlorine gas which will cause any I- ions to be oxidized back into elemental iodine. The acid does not directly create any iodine. In fact, the acid is more likely to create HI than it would iodine. You may get better yields if you generate the chlorine in a separate container and direct the chlorine gas into the iodide solution.

Heh. I've heard many women saying the same thing about Human Males.

Yup. That's another method of making KNO3. Lab demos are always great. That's why I always make sure I go down to the local University when they do their chemistry demonstrations. No matter how many times I've seen it, a thermite reaction and anything involving liquid nitrogen is too much fun to miss.

Hehe. Yup. Which is why it's kind of interesting to mix some sugar into the wet triiodide pile while it's still wet. This way, the sugar will attract unsuspecting insects to the pile and KABLAMMO! Took out a couple of stupid hornets and flies a few years ago while doing that.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but with diethyl ether one of the ethyl groups is cleaved off leaving you with a CH3CH2-O- group and an ethyl group. When two molecules undergo this change, you wind up with CH3CH2-O-O-CH2CH3 and some butane. So if that is correct, the addition of the butane to the diethyl ether skews the equillibrium and actually would prevent the peroxide from forming, hence why the shelf life is so long. Wow. I think this logic is pretty good.

If diethyl ether was that dangerous, it would not be used as a solvent in labs and organic chemistry students across the world would not be using it. (I've also never said that it's not flammable. In fact, I know first hand that it's pretty flammable. Just read through my posts here. ) Diethyl ether has a shelf-life of about 1 year. That means that there will not be any dangerous levels of peroxide in there for up to one year after it was manufactured. If you routinely use diethyl ether that has a yellow tinge to it or is well past its shelf life, then the company/school you work for has absolutely no clue about proper safety and chemical handling. (I've also worked with diethyl ether for quite a bit when going through college and my internship. Every bottle of it that we had was stored in a chemical refridgerator and the date it was opened up was written on the bottle. After 10 months, we were instructed to dispose of the bottle and not use it. It was one year if the bottle was not opened).

KMnO4 + Glycerine is a neat little reaction. Takes a little while to get going, but then it REALLY gets going. Kind of like mixing aluminum powder and iodine crystals, then putting some water on it. (Though I'm kind of fond of taking iodine crystals and putting them in a little 'bowl' made of aluminum foil, then using a cigarette lighter to heat up the bottom of the bowl. In a short bit of time, you see this really huge dark puple cloud of iodine rise up and the aluminum is just destroyed.)

Obnoxious explained it perfectly. In order to observe something, we have to make contact with that 'something' in some manner or another. Generallys speaking, for large objects like people, buildings, cars, etc. the observation takes place via light waves. We see light that is bounced off of the object and into our eyes which allows us to see the object. The objects are so huge in comparison to the thing being used to observe it that there is no visible effect on its position or momentum. When you get to a subatomic level, however, those objects aren't huge in comparison to the light wave. As a result, the act of observing the object causes it to move substantially. Observing an electron using an electromagnetic wave is akin observing a moving car by firing a 2 ton rock at it. When you make contact, you'll know exactly where the car is, but after contact is made the position and momentum of the car are changed significantly. Therefore, you won't be able to know where it will be a short time later.

A good deal of the early zinc-sulfide based paints, used in conjunction with radioactive salts, were of a green color and gave off a green glow when exposed to the radiation. Also, uranyl acetate has been used for a while and is a nice bright green color. One other neat thing is that you don't need to have a radioactive source under water for it to display the Cerenkov radiation. Pure actinium metal is so intensely radioactive that it emits a blue 'Cerenkov Glow' in plain atmospheric air. Many of the high level radioactive metals display this glow, though photographs of it are fairly rare since nobody really has a need, or a want, for pure radioactive metals. (I should know because I've spent quite a long time trying to get a good picture of pure protactinium, actinium, etc. etc. They have been made in large quantities of the pure metal numerous times in the past, but photographs which were supposedly taken are nowhere to be found).

E=mc^2. Energy and mass are directly related with each other. While the famous Einstein equation of relativity isn't exactly as I've put it here, it's good enough to show that mass is energy and energy is mass.

Because it's a state exam and says 'copper sulfate solution'. Copper sulfate solution generally implies 'in water' as I'm pretty sure that CuSO4 doesn't have any appreciable solubility in non-polar solvents. (As it's barely even soluble in ethanol). In order for it to be a thermite, you couldn't have the reaction in a solution as the initial question implies. We also know that it's not molten CuSO4 as the question again asks for reaction in solution. Therefore, you can conclude that this is a water solution.