jdurg

Molecular elements are elements which exist as a compound of more than one atom in their pure form. The elements H, O, N, Cl, Br, I, and F all exist as diatomic molecules in their pure form and not as single atoms like Mercury, Lead, Sodium, etc. Two other elements which actually exist as molecular substances and not as solitary atoms are Phosphorus and Sulfur. However, people generally write them out in equations as P and S and not as P4 and S8 like they should be written as. H2 O2 (O3 if it's ozone) N2 Cl2 Br2 I2 F2 P4 S8

No, your teacher is just leaving out things that are of no use to you at this point in time. If your teacher told you every little detail about every subject in chemistry, it would be far too much information at one time and make it VERY difficult to understand the basics. Learning is about building foundations from which you then grow upon. You get taught the basics and then as you progress you start to learn the details. If some of those details won't do anything but cause confusion and make it difficult to learn those basics, then they should be left out. When talking about chemical reactions, the mass does stay the same. Have you been introduced to significant figures yet? If you have, then I can just say that the mass loss is so infintesimally small that you would not be able to report that change in mass because of the limitations in significant figures. A good analogy would be if the entire population of the Earth moved to the moon, but one person died in the process. In reality, the population wouldn't be the same if comparing the Earth and Moon, but in terms of the overall change it's only about 0.00000004% (Assuming only 2.5 billion people on Earth). The change is so small that it cannot possibly be measured with any amount of certainty. Because of the limitations in the accuracy with which you can report your results, the mass change does not affect your results at all. So when you're doing calculations and balancing things out, the mass change is best ignored rather than make your calculations far more complex even though the final answer does not change. How does the mass change occur? Well, the particles in an atom are held together by various forces. As these forces rearrange when anything happens to the atom, it causes the particles to move and rearrange themselves. In order to get into the most energetically favorable state, small amounts of mass are converted into energy. This small amount of mass is so fantastically small that it cannot really be measured with any certainty unless you have ungodly amounts of the stuff. If a reaction is exothermic, it means that some mass is converted into energy and given off as heat. If a reaction is endothermic, then the reaction results in some energy being converted into mass. Again, the amount is so small that it cannot be measured with any certainty unless you are in a very well funded research lab. For any high school or university level chemistry class, you cannot observe this mass change.

That's fine. I've done it many times. Borosilicate glass is very forgiving in terms of temperature changes. I believe that Pyrex glass is borosilicate, and that stuff can handle very high and very low temperatures. You just don't want to make the temperature change too sudden. If you take the ampoule and put it at -8 and let it slowly warm up to room temperature, everything will be just fine. I've done it many times with my bromine cuz it's really neat to see it solidify and then melt. I still think seeing the liquid iodine was amazing. I still am not quite sure why it liquified in an open test tube without any pressure above the surface. The ONLY thing I can think of is that the weight of the iodine vapor on top of the sublimating solid created a good deal of pressure. Still, it was really neat seeing the thick, soupy purple liquid that was readily giving off purple vapor. Then when it was sealed and started to cool, the vapor crystalized on the sides of the ampoule. I have subsequently heated up the ampoule slightly to get the little crystals off of the sides of the glass, but at the bottom of the ampoule you see the solid mass where the liquid iodine solidified again, and against the white background of the holder you can readily see the purple color in the tube. (Though nothing beats the orange-red bromine vapor color. The setup I have holding all four of the halogens is pretty neat because the whie background really shows off the colors. For Chlorine you can see the pale green color next to bromine's intense red-orange next to iodine's pale violet vapor. The CaF2 isn't really doing anything other than serving as my fluorine sample. )

One of the more interesting, and relatively simple to do, experiments is the genreation of the halogens. Making chlorine gas is somewhat dangerous, but really neat to do and you can have a LOT of fun with the product. The first way to make chlorine gas is just pour some concentrated hydrochloric acid on some potassium permanganate. That will quickly and easily generate the gas, but it uses up the KMnO4 which can probably be used for better things than chlorine generation. The better way is to make your chlorine via the reaction between calcium hypochlorite and concentrated hydrochloric acid. Both of those chemicals are found at any pool supply or hardware store and are known as 'super shock' and 'muriatic acid'. Mixing those two will result in the generation of copious amounts of chlorine gas, and the reaction can be quenched by throwing some sodium or potassium hydroxide on there. All of this just requires a simple setup where you generate the gas in one vessel and force it to move into another vessel filled with water to remove any soluble impurities in there. After the water vessel, the gas is forced to move into a vessel filled with completely anhydrous sodium bicarbonate. This will remove any water from the gas. Finally, the gas is then forced into a collection vessel where you either collect the chlorine or direct it into another reaction chamber. Knowing that chlorine is denser than air you can set all this up with a few erlenmeyers, some two holed stoppers, and some glass tubing. With your chlorine, you can react it with sodium metal and make table salt; you can burn some steel wool in the chlorine gas and make iron chloride; you can bubble the gas underwater near some calcium carbide that you've thrown in there and where the two gasses meet there will be flashes of light; you can make 'excited' oxygen gas which will glow red in the dark; you can mix it with a little bit of hydrogen and when light hits the reaction vessel you'll have hydrogen chloride gas; you can direct it over a solution of sodium hydroxide and make sodium hypochlorite a.k.a. bleach; you can direct it into a solution of a bromide or iodide salt and make bromine or iodine; you can store it in a vessel and have a sample of a pure element that you've made yourself. If you make some bromine with it, you can also use the bromine to test organic compounds for complete saturation; you can react bromine with aluminum to see a really nifty and somewhat violent reaction; you can use bromine to generate iodine from a solution of iodide ions; you can freeze bromine and then watch it slowly melt and vaporize; etc. etc. With the halogens you can do a lot of really neat and fun experiments if you just do a quick search on the web for the specifics. One thing that does need to be mentioned, however, is that the halogens are very dangerous to work with due to their reactivity and toxicity. It doesn't take much of them to make a really powerful reaction get out of hand or to make you very ill. So whenever doing any of this, make certain that there is plenty of ventillation and a way to quench any of the reactions. Having some sodium hydroxide around is a very good thing because it can cause just about all of the halogens to form hypohalites which aren't as dangerous as the pure halogen. The best 'neutralization' compound is sodium thiosulphate. It will neutralize the halogen completely and help avoid any complications.

Yeah, Lance is completely correct. You can do anything you want to a coin as long as you don't make any attempt to pass it off as anything other than an altered coin. (I.E. you can copper plate a 1943 Steel Cent, but if you then try and pass it off as a real 1943 Copper Cent you'd be breaking the law). Those EM Shrunken coins are incredibly sweet looking. It's amazing how much that guy can shrink those coins with just a really strong magnet. (I forget his e-bay name, but he constantly has shrunken coins up there).

Anyone have a scientific journal proving that it exists?

A one time, small exposure to mercury in a well ventillated area (or preferably outside) isn't anything to worry about. It's the long term, constant exposure to it that is horribly vicious. Besides, metallic mercury is not as toxic as the salts or organic forms of the element are. So if you were to take yourself outside and handle the mercury you'd be just fine. That's what I did with mine. I went outside and did the coffee filter cleaning trick and bottled everything up while outside with the wind blowing any mercury vapor away from me. When I was done I closed up the vial and continued on. If you had a silicon sealing compound you could probably clean the mercury, put it into the clear vial, then use the sealant to seal the cap on permanently and prevent any oxidation and/or loss of the sample.

Yup. Concentrated H2SO4 will readily dehydrate a carbohydrate, and as collector has pointed out, paper is many cellulose which is technically a carbohydrate. The reaction of sucrose and concentrated sulfuric acid is a classic introductory chemistry demonstration.

Yeah, most of the radioactive elements don't attract my attention because in order to have a nicely visible sample, I'd be putting myself and everybody around me at risk. Radium in particular is INCREDIBLY radioactive and a one gram sample of the metal is enough to give a fatal dose of radiation to someone just looking at it. With my Uranium, it's depleted uranium and about 2 grams of it. That's less than 1.0 uCi which is less than what's in a smoke detector. (My Am-241 comes from the ionization chamber of an old smoke detector).

People who hear the words 'radiation' and suddenly freak out as if they're going to die because of it, claim that it 'harms the nutritional value of the food' but there has been no solid evidence supporting that claim. Sadly, the vast majority of the public think they know a whole lot about radioactiviyt/radiation but in reality they know very little. As a result, when they hear about their food being irradiated they immediately think that it will glow in the dark and give them cancer. The truth is, it is impossible for their food to become radioactive from the radiation dose it absorbs. In order for something to become radioactive, the nuclei of the atoms inside of it have to change. A gamma ray simply cannot enter a nucleus and cause it to break apart. The copious amounts of electrons on the outside of the nuclei absorb the gamma rays' energy before it can even affect the nucleus. Any alpha and beta radiation is contained within the container of the radiation source. And you are correct urza, the agriculture industry only irradiates the products that are ready to be shipped out to the marketplace. Anything they use to regrow their supply is not irradiated.

Gallium is considered a Hazmat material in large quantities since when molten it will quickly dissolve aluminum metal. If your plane is made of aluminum, you don't want molten gallium spilling out and eating a hole in your plane. When I melted my gallium I did so in the open air and did see a little bit of a crust form. When it was solidifying in the vial, however, I took some teflon wrapped wire and just removed the crust from the surface. The metal then proceeded to solidify with a bright, HIGHLY reflective mirrored surface on the top. I too noticed a blue color on the metal sides where it met the glass vial, but that color has now dissapeared a few days later. Strange. Still, I do like the stuff and am glad that I got some more of it. Collector, if you'd like to see my entire collection click on this link here. It's a large photograph of the elements in my collection, including a few which I don't have. (I'm using Theo Gray's photo for fluorine as I only have some CaF2 salt as my fluorine sample, and some other photos for the plutonium, technetium and promethium as I do not have those elements. I'm only fortuneate enough to have my Uranium). With your potassium, the potassium superoxides are actually a light canary yellow in color. If the rind on your K has any yellow tinges to it, then you do need to be VERY carefull with it. If you have some grayish-white oxidation, then it's usually just potassium hydroxide that may have further reacted with CO2 to form potassium carbonate or some other junk. It's still pretty dangerous and not something you want to mess with, but it's not nearly as nasty as the superoxides are. I'm trying to find a way to melt some of my sodium and potassium down inside a glass ampoule under argon and then seal it off. This way I'll have a forever 'shiney' sample of the metals.

Also, one important thing to remember is that nobody knows the full story about this situation. The media will ONLY show you what they want you to see in order to make it seem like they have some breaking news story. I can guarantee you that the facts about this issue have not been made fully available to the public.

If my ears didn't deceive me this weekend, I thought I had heard that some senators who oppose the reinsertion of the feeding tube plan on a fillibuster to delay the voting on a bill which would force the tube to be placed back in.

First he brings the goose over to the other side of the stream which leaves the fox and the corn on one side, and the goose on the other. He goes back and brings the fox over to the other side and takes the goose back with him across the stream. So now the Fox is on the other side of the stream, the corn is on the original side, and the goose is with the guy heading back towards the corn. The goose and the guy get on the other side where the guy drops the goose off and takes the corn. He heads back over with the corn leaving the fox and the corn on one side of the stream and the goose on the original side. He then goes back to the original side and brings the goose back across the stream with him to where the fox and corn are waiting.

I am currently battling something which I'm not sure whether or not it's the flu or a REALLY horrendous cold. On Thursday of last week I felt great. Lots of energy, no signs of any impending illness. I woke up on Friday with an incredibly sore throat and just a feeling of 'blah'. As the day went on, the sore throat got worse and worse and I noticed that it began to hurt when I took a breath. As evening approached, I began to cough and couldn't stop for minutes at a time. It was really freaking me out how quickly whatever this is came upon me. I was actually driving home from work when it really took me on and my mental capacities started to fluctuate. I was passing by a medical clinic so I stopped in to get looked at. They asked me a bunch of things, took my temperature, listened to my lungs, swabbed my throat, etc. etc. They came back and said that it appeared as if I had a flu but they couldn't conclusively say that. So they gave me a bunch of OTC cold/flu medicines and some antibiotics. I took the stuff they gave me and pretty much slept the entire weekend. My chest hurt, my head hurt, my temperature was elevated and I had ZERO energy. So I spent the entire weekend in bed eating ice-cream, taking cold/flu medicine, and drinking gallons of orange juice while eating large quantities of chicken soup. I slept all day on Saturday and for a good portion of Sunday. Last evening, just as soon as the symptoms came on, they began to go away. The coughing stopped and my energy returned. The headache is gone and my fever has subsided. I still have a little bit of tightness in my chest, but it's not a constant pain like it was this weekend. I have a little bit of a stuffed up nose and sinus passage, but the sore throat has subsided as well. Perhaps the only thing still left is a somewhat impaired mental capacity as I have been spacing out all day long and can't concentrate on too much. They could also be a side effect of all the medicines I'm taking to relieve the symptoms. Still, I'm not really sure what it is that I have. I figure that a flu would last a LOT longer than just over the weekend, but I don't think that a plain old cold would cause the fever, coughing, chest pain, weakness, headache, and other ailments that were affecting me. I'm just happy right now that the worst part of it appears to be over as this entire weekend was utter hell.

That's because the Hazmat fees and fines you get for trying to avoid the Hazmat fees are insanely high. Trying to ship things like mercury, alkali metals, bromine, chlorine, arsenic, etc. is a bit iffy due to the reactivity and toxicity of the stuff.

Yeah, I think Helium is one of the only elements that cannot exist as a solid at atmospheric pressure.

Why do you need a license to drive a car, own a gun, run a business, etc. but just anybody can go out and have a child?

Hehe. Well, radium and promethium are exceedingly dangerous in the quantities and forms that I would want to have samples of them in. (I.E. multi-gram quantities of the pure metal). Not to mention nearly impossible to get. With thorium, I just haven't found a place to get a large enough sample that won't cost an outrageous amount of money to purchase from. For vials, once again I'll say talk to Dave Hamric. Nearly all the vials I have were purchased directly from Dave, or Dave has made a special order for me for a set of vials. Shoot him off an e-mail and say that you are looking to purchase some vials and would like to buy some from him. Or just purchase an element or two from him and ask if you could also buy some empty vials at the same time.

Yes. The excess potassium in circulation messes with the blance of potassium ions in the muscle cells of the heart which causes the heart to stop beating. Potassium is crucial for muscle contraction and too much of it will just prevent them from contracting at all, while to little will make them cramp up. If you've ever had a lot of leg cramps, you might notice that eating bananas on a daily basis will cure that constant cramping due to the potassium in the bananas.

Well, if you want some gold I'd suggest saving up pretty quickly and buying it now. The price of it will only go upwards so it won't get any cheaper. I'm really pissed at myself for not getting a few ounces when it was down at around $250 an ounce. Now it's about $450 an ounce and getting more expensive. Same can be said of Platinum. With the commonly traded PGMs, your best bet is to purchase them as soon as you can because they will only get more expensive as time goes by.

The minimum lethal dose is a LOT. It takes an ungodly amount taken orally to produce death. However, if a concentrated solution of it is injected intravenously then it is quite effective. I'm just not sure on the exact amount.

I've got a full set of the elements and I've probably spent over $3,000 on them combined. I don't have an exact tally, but because of the sizes and prices of the PGMs that I have and some of the diamonds I've purchased, it's been quite a bit of money. Still, my other hobby of playing poker has helped pay for this hobby of element collecting.

KCl is also used in lethal injections to stop the heart of the condemned.