jdurg

NI3 + atomic movement => N2 + I2 + KAPOW! (Equation not balanced). Al + Br2 => Heat + Light + AlBr3

Low explosives can only detonate if put into a confined space. Guncotton, Gunpowder, and Flashpowder will all detonate if put into a confined space like inside a gun. Remember, all of these are just chemical reactions. Just as one chemical reaction can generate more energy than another, one low explosive can produce more energy than another low explosive.

A high explosive will detonate if in an unconfined state. If you take flash powder and put it on the sidewalk and ignite it, it will not detonate. It will deflagrate, but not detonate. With flashpowder and gunpowder, the presence of the nitrates/chlorates/perchlorates are the oxidizers, and either sugar, charcoal/sulfur, or metal shavings provide the fuel. Atmospheric O2 plays no role in their ignition.

Actually, YT, flashpowder and gunpowder are defined as explosives. An explosive is any combination of an oxidizer and a fuel which reacts in rapid succession producing large quantities of heat and gas. Flashpowder and gunpowder meet these requirements. A High Explosive, however, must decompose through detonation when not confined; be comprised of a single compound and not a mixture; decompose at a supersonic rate; have a high level of brisance; and be initiated by shock and/or heat. A Low Explosive decomposes subsonically through deflagration which is the generation of large amounts of heat and light; will either never detonate, or detonate only if tightly confined; are generally mixtures of compounds. Black powder and flash powder are mixtures of chemicals and cannot "detonate" unless highly confined. Therefore, they are low explosives.

As Einstein once said, EVERYTHING is relative.

One more thing to worry about with esters. I forget the exact name of it, but there is an easy to make ester that is actually an attraction pheromone for honey bees. You don't want to make a lot of that and spill it on yourself during the summer, otherwise plenty of bees will want to erm...... 'make love to you'. heh.

But what I posted was in more common english. You kind of left out the oxygen there. ;-)

Is it possible that some nickel metal actually plated onto the aluminum foil and remained 'stuck' there instead of falling off like expected? Then once the nickel had covered the aluminum, no more reaction could occur? That could also explain why it reacted with the copper sulfate so well since copper is presumably below nickel in the electromotive series. With the copper sulfate being an intense blue, it would be hard to see any green from the nickel.

not neccesarily. If one of those acids wants to form the ester more than the others, you'll have glycerol which is predominately made from glycerol and the dominant acid. Another problem with esters is that your body becomes sensitized to the esters. At first, the smell might be nice and not bother you, but the more you're exposed to it the higher the likelyhood that those same 'nice' smells will start to give you headaches and other adverse reactions. I've become sensitized to ethyl acetate and I can now no longer go near nail polish remover or the ester itself as it gives me vicious headaches.

The chloride ion from HCl is oxidized by the nitrate ion which results in the formation of chlorine gas. The nitrate ion is reduced at the same time into nitrite which is further reduced to NO+ which will bond with another free Cl- ion to form the NOCl. Meanwhile, the liberated oxide ions bind to the free hydrogen ions in the acidic solution, thus forming water.

I have heard of people using either a moderately strong solution of sodium hydroxide, or powdered sodium bicarbonate. The NaOH would have to be done with the solution VERY cold as the dilution of the sulfuric acid and the neutralization will result in a lot of heat and a potential KABOOM. With sodium bicarbonate, you have to be careful that you don't add too much at once an cause a violent release of CO2 which could agitate the nitroglycerin too much and make it go KABOOM! With nitrocellulouse, the agitation really doesn't matter so soaking the nitrated cotton in a saturated NaHCO3 solution until the fizzing ceases is an effective way. My senior year of high school I took an AP Chemistry course. Since the AP Exam happened before our final, the teacher made our final 'optional' but we could show up for the slotted time period if we wanted to for some extra credit. Since I had to be at school anyway, I decided to go. It was just me and a few other people there, and the teacher gave us almost full reign of the chemical supply cabinet to come up with an experiment. We could do anything we wanted as long as the materials were there in the chem lab. (Though things with alkali metals, white phosphorus, and halogens were out of the question. ) So when looking through the supply closet I saw the concentrated nitric acid and the concentrated sulfuric acid. I immediately thought 'nitroglycerin', but the teacher said no. heh. Then I suggested nitrocellulouse and she was a lot more willing to let us do that since it's far more stable, and doesn't really explode unless confined. The only problem is that we had no cotton. Not even the first aid cabient had cotton swabs. So we had everything we needed except cotton, and since it was during the finals we couldn't leave the room in order to go to the nurse's office to get some cotton balls. I then thought about other sources of cotton, and realized that I was wearing a somewhat chemically 'eaten' tee-shirt that I could cut a piece off of. I ripped out the tag from the back, and it said 100% cotton. It was a white tee-shirt so I took some scissors and cut off a couple of nice sized pieces from the bottom. We then nitrated them. Nitrocellulouse burns REALLY fast once it's been neutralized and dried, and if it is confined it makes a pretty loud pop. I was able to see why it is called 'guncotton'.

The problem is, if you don't remove the acids it becomes very unstable and will spontaneously ignite, or go 'boom' if you have it confined. That's what makes nitration so dangerous. It's the actual cleaning that you MUST do which is so dangerous. With nitroglycerin, for example, ANY remaining acid in the stuff will make it frighteningly unstable. So you have to remove the acid through neutralization. The neutralization could generate enough heat or motion to make the nitroglycerin detonate. It's straightforward, but incredibly risky.

It might be easier to get magnesium nitrate by putting some magnesium metal into a solution of copper nitrate, let's say.

Nitration acid is something you want to never store and you should only make it as you need it. ANYTHING organic that comes in contact with it can be inadvertantly turned into a very unstable compound, or a compound that will decompose in a violent manner. Plus, when making it you are mixing very concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids, so the heat of dissolution of the sulfuric acid can make it unexpectedly boil. It's not something you want to play around with or spill on yourself. (I made nitroglycerin (VERY tiny amount. Maybe 1 mL or two) and nitrocellulose in college. I was more nervous about the nitration acid than I was the product!)

The only advice I can give about college is that you should do what is most economically affordable. I know this probably won't be of much help to you in this instance, but when going to college don't take out a ton of loans to afford the place when you can get an equal education at a MUCH cheaper school. I turned down a nearly full scholarship to my state's school here to go to a VERY expensive, small private college. It screwed me up severely and I'm still in debt because of it. I'll probably be in debt for the rest of my life due to that stupid decision.

The main reasoning behind why the hair-dye doesn't warrant an MSDS is probably because of the amount of the chemical in there, and the trouble you'd have to go through in order to extract the stuff. If I have a chocolate brownie, I can extract the sugar from the brownie, but damn would that take a long time.

Yes, LiOH and NaOH will attack glass, but over a MUCH longer period of time than CsOH and RbOH will. (Hence why the ground glass stoppers of bottles of lithium and sodium hydroxide tend to annoyingly fuse shut). But CsOH will visibly attack glass. I.E. you can see it happening. It's just as effective as HF is, but hydrogen fluoride is sooooooooooooo much cheaper than CsOH that using CsOH to etch glass would be a very costly mistake.

I used Aqua Regia all the time when I was working with GC/MS machines. It's VERY effective at cleaning the ceramic components of the machines when you have to take them apart and clean them. We never kept the Agua Regia stored. We'd make it in whatever quantity we needed it when we needed it. As soon as the two acids are mixed, you'll see the color of the solution change to yellow and the smell of chlorine gas immediately evolves from it. (Even with a fume hood at full blast). Remember that Agua Regia is so effective because it creates a mixture of three INCREDIBLY powerful oxidizers; NOCl, Nitric Acid, Chlorine Gas.

If you tack on 'to produce large quantities', then yes, the statement is correct.

While this is just an opinion of mine and I hope no-one gets offended, I have a sick feeling that if a viable alternative energy source were to be found, the amount of terrorist attacks on this planet would skyrocket. Suddenly, there would be no need for the Middle East's oil and we would no longer have to purchase it from them. I think in order to continue getting money, those countries would fund terrorists to 'destroy' these alternative energy sources and factories so that the world would still be reliant on the Middle East.

Plants also tend to have the edge on animals in terms of generating toxic compounds that kill those who try to eat them. (Though the puffer fish does a darn good job of that).

A lot of MSDS sheets fail to mention that a 'pyrophoric' metal is generally only pyrophoric if in a finely divided state. Magnesium metal won't readily ignite if in a large block. If you have small shavings or ribbons, then it will ignite. But try igniting a two pound brick of magnesium with a standard lighter and you'll have a very difficult time getting it to catch fire.

Not for bi-atomic acids. (Which basically means the hydro-halides). For the hydro-halogen acids, the strength of the anion as a reducing agent will help determine the strength of the acid. F- is a VERY poor reducing agent as the fluorine nucleus does not want to give up its electron. As a result, HF is a weak acid. I- is a pretty good reducing agent as the nucleus is very well shielded and will give up that 'extra' electron pretty easily. So HI is a very strong acid.

Well, there is a VERY remote possibility that it could be ammonium iodide (NH4I), but that stuff would behave pretty similarly to silver nitrate in that it darkens over time but is also VERY hygroscopic.

Good good. Important things to remember are that the reactive elements should be isolated from everything. You can store your alkali and alkaline-earth metals together, but try and keep them away from any halogens or anything else. (I.E. have a fireproof safe and put your Group I and Group II elements in there). It's also important to realize that you don't need massive samples of the elements to see everything you need to see about them. Two grams of sodium will show you all that need to see about sodium metal. Two ounces is just overkill and is a safety hazard. My elements are all contained within safe, secure vials and sealed in ampoules if needed. The reactive elements are stored under inert mineral oil the caps are never taken off of the vials, or the vials are NEVER unscrewed. Yes over time they will eventually oxidize away, but that is why I am currently working on a way to safely melt them down into a sealed glass ampoule. My halogens are all permanently sealed in glass ampoules which have been tested at various temperature extremes to make sure they don't explode. (I'm pretty certain that my bromine is safely secured since it was able to withstand temperatures up to about 150 degrees F before a test ampoule exploded). But the halogens are fully sealed up and unable to escape their surroundings. The white phosphorus is carefully stored in it's own protective container, and the rubidium and cesium are in glass ampoules which are then placed inside another vial for protection. Mercury is securely locked away as well as being inside a glass ampoule. (If you'd like pictures, download http://www.chemicalforums.com/~jdurg/FullPTP.zip and you can see my entire collection). My Uranium is stored inside a glass vial in a double layered, lead-lined box. I have a lot of respect for the damage these samples can cause if mishandled, so that is why I go by the 'bigger isn't always better' mantra. Going to see you teacher and letting him know about your collection is another good idea. He can probably give you some advice on storage and some safety tips. He may not be able to give you any samples, however, due to liability reasons. (Let's say he gives you some potassium and you accidentally set your house on fire or get hurt with it. He'd then be responsible since he gave the sample to you and I'm assuming you're under 18?) So have fun and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Collecting elements is a potentially dangerous hobby, but a really interesting and fun one once you do all your research.