jdurg

Bromine is near impossible to keep in any type of container. Even in a sealed glass ampoule it will weaken the glass and slowly eat through it. My Br2 sample is in a thick glass ampoule embedded in an acrylic resin casting. Over time, if you just keep Br2 in ANY type of openable container, it will leach through it and corrode EVERY metal in the area. (well, EVERY meaning anything you would commonly keep it near. Yes, I know there are some exceptions). It's really amazing how it is the houdini of elements. It WILL find its way out of any openable container you put it in.

I think helium is inert to fluorine, though I might be wrong if you put the right conditions on it. In fact, my fluorine sample is 6% fluorine with the rest being He. It actually prevents reaction with glass in that mixture for some reason.

Not true. P is a regulated chemical due to its use in Methamphetamine production. Another instance of ****ing drug users ruining home chemistry. Still, there is no differentiation between the allotropes of phosphorus and the legality of owning it. Still, I'd rather have a pound of red P lying around than a pound of white P. (BTW, the can stating that red P is shock sensitive and explosive is only true when in combination with certain chemicals. It's just that in the litigous society of today you have to mention even the remotest of possibilities to avoid being sued into nothingness).

Well, in a plasma you have only ions and not positive AND negative charges. Granted, that's nitpicking but it is true.

Yeah, liquid CO2 is some pretty neat stuff. Got a chance to see it when some Dry ice was put under pressure and it actually melted. It's pretty neat seeing it when you were always taught that it only sublimes. Liquid Iodine is neat too. You don't even need a lot of pressure to see that. Just put a lot of I2 in a narrow test tube and heat it a little bit. The standard pressure of gaseous I2 will cause the iodine to form a liquid.

It's strong compared to aqueous Ammonia, but I wouldn't classify it as a "very strong base". It's more a strong base with NaOH, KOH, RbOH, CsOH, and some other bases taking the claim of very strong base.

You're probably not going to get an explosion if thrown in water. Lithium will hiss and fizz for a while, but it is VERY difficult to get it to ignite and explode like it's more reactive brethen.

Yeah. Because Rb and Cs are denser than water, if you get a shallow enough vessel the gas formation and heat can cause a rapid expansion of gas leading to the explosion. In addition, a relatively thin (compared to the ceramic substance of a bathtub) glass container will do a fine job of breaking. I think to get the damage shown in the Brainiac skit in a bathtub you'd need a prohibitively expensive sample of Rb or Cs.

Granted, there is a lot of "doom and gloom" and the future doesn't look too bright, but as a species we have been able to deal with issues when it truly becomes a "critical issue". There will be rough times ahead, but good things will come out of it. There will be a breakthrough in some regards, and the lucky chap who discovers it will be quite set for life.

Yeah, sodium hydroxide is a CO2 magnet. It is why you don't prepare standard solutions of NaOH using old bottles of solid NaOH, or you don't make standard solutions ahead of time if the concentration is critical. All of the alkali hydroxides do a good job of removing CO2 from the air. I believe that most chemical CO2 scrubbers are KOH or NaOH.

Also keep in mind that silver tarnishes very easily, and the thickness of the plated silver layer you're bound to get means that the first time you go to remove the tarnish you'll remove the whole plate. Most jewelery that appears to be silver actually has a thin palladium or rhodium coating on it. Pd and Rh salts, however, are not very cheap though.

I've done the Iodine and Sodium reaction, and have to say that it is VERY boring and poor. I took pure sodium metal just taken out of the oil and rubbed dry. I pressed some pure iodine crystals into the metal until they were completely surrounded and then heated the mixture up. Nothing happened. The I2 just evaporated and the sodium oxidized. When I added a tiny speck of water to the reaction, however, it went off in earnest but nothing too shocking. Kind of disappointing. Potassium in Bromine would be interesting, but also INTENSELY dangerous. Br2, with a drop of water in it, is one of the most reactive substances on Earth. Throwing in some reactive potassium would be more dangerous than demonstrational.

I've had some bad experience with diethyl ether. Spilled about half a liter on my coat in organic lab many years ago. Let the ether evaporate in the fume hood, so I thought. A few hours later, lab ended, I put my coat on now numb to the odor, and went outside to light a cigarette. Quickly lost my eyebrows and any exposed hair on my body. Flash fire from the fumes coming off my jacket. Barely even felt it. Just got this warm feeling and then noticed my hair was gone. Ether is VERY flammable stuff.

Well don't forget that ozone is a very strong smell so you don't need a lot of it to notice the odor. (Though you get a better whiff of it if you walk into a room with old photocopiers or other electronic devices). In addition to an ozone smell, you can also smell various nitrogen oxides which are created when lightning strikes. These are typically the smells I notice once a thunderstorm has passed. I've honestly not noticed any odors prior to a thunderstorm approaching.

Same thing with mercury, I believe. Air-transport just simply isn't allowed. Gallium can form some strange alloys with reactive metals which could make it quite readily able to burn in air, but then it wouldn't be the Ga burning. It would be whatever it was alloyed with. Also, don't take MSDS sheets too seriously. What they state is generally true, but they don't indicate the likelyhood of something happening. They just indicate what could happen if the conditions are right. In many cases they'll indicate something horrific that a substance could do, but they don't tell you that it would require other conditions that would be just as bad, or even worse for you, than what the substance could wind up doing.

Since when are we paying people here on these forums? Have you ever thought about taking the time to explain WHY your method might be better? I don't know about you, but I'm not about to listen to what some random schmuck on an internet messageboard says unless there is some logic behind it. Take a mere five minutes to explain WHY your method is probably the better one and not come across as an arrogant cock and perhaps people won't find each and every one of your posts to be incredibly demeaning and offensive?

Guys, please don't EVER put someone down for performing a calculation in a different way than you would have done it, as long as their result is correct as well. Everybody should know multiple ways of solving problems otherwise they get stuck in a "plug and chug" type of mindset and if a problem is slightly different than the ways they're used to solving problems they sit there like a retarded rabbit.

Because the toxicity and "nastiness" of plutonium and plutonium compounds has been VASTLY overexaggerated by media and people who don't really know a whole lot about radiation and/or chemical toxicity. (I.E. the people who think that uranium metal is horrendously radioactive and will cause cancer if you even look at it).

"Karat" is used to define the purity of gold alloys. One Karat is one part in 24 of gold. So therefore, 24 karat gold is pure gold. Diamond weights are measured in "Carats" which are COMPLETELY different from the "Karats" in gold. Not even remotely close.

Actually, that is wrong as well YT. (CO3)2 is only viable if the cation has a charge of +4. For a group 1 element, it would be X2CO3 where X is equal to Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Fr.

There actually are some pretty detailed explanations to all of the questions that have been asked, and many of them involved math and physics more than chemistry. To answer them all here in one post would flood you with facts and theories and information and make your brain cry.

Ummm....... I don't think so, unless the Carbonate ion suddenly went from having a -2 charge to having a -1 charge. CaCO3 is the proper formula.

But isn't this a mixture of NaHCO3 and NaCl? That surely wouldn't have a pH of 7.

It's early so my brain may not be fully functioning yet, but I don't think a titration to a pH of 7 will work here. The titration is between a strong acid and a weak base so you will have the equivalence point somewhere off of 7. You'd need to calculate what the expected equivalence point would be based upon the dissociation of the bicarbonate ion. This is where a standard would come in VERY handy.

The acetic acid would not be ionized to any appreciable extent, so having it as CH3COOH(aq) is perfectly acceptable. In addition, CaCO3 is not a soluble compound so that would not be aqeuous either.