jdurg

Sour and Bitter and not the same. If you look through any simple anatomy book, you will find that the human tongue can identify four distinct 'tastes'. Those are sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Acids are detected by the taste buds as 'sour' which is why things like lemon juice, orange juice, vinegar, and other acidic foods have a sour taste. Basic substances are detected by the taste buds as 'bitter' which is why many plant based compounds (such as drugs), and soap taste bitter (Since they are derived from plants, or because soap itself is a basic substance). So the taste of soap is actually the classic 'bitter' taste. If you've ever seen those movies and shows where a big heroin buyer, or opium buyer, 'tastes' the product before a purchase, that's to taste and make sure it has a bitter taste. (Since it is a plant based basic compound, if the substance isn't bitter then they know it's not real).

On the bright side, you should be able to generate some chlorine at the same time.

Actually, HCl has a sour taste because it's an acid. Basic substances have bitter tastes. I know whenever I've upchucked a bit in my mouth, the sourness was horrible.

Yeah, it will happen with any substance whose solid form is less dense than its liquid form.

Intermoleculary, yes. Intramoleculary, no.

Throw some sodium into it!

Based on that definition' date=' hydrogen still isn't a compound. Since it is not a union of elements, plural. Also, 'a distinct substance formed by chemical union of [b']two or more ingredients[/b] in definite proportion by weight' means that you have to have more than one ingredient. Hydrogen is only composed of one ingredient; hydrogen. Saying that diatomic hydrogen is a compound would be like saying that a 10-gram crystal of sugar is a different compound than a 1-gram crystal of sugar. The only difference is the amount of the same ingredient.

Thanks for the concerns, but I have a greater chance of getting cancer from the cigarettes I quit smoking than from a 0.5 gram sample of depleted Uranium. The radiation given off from Uranium isn't all that vicious. Uranium ore is actually more dangerous than uranium metal due to the daughter products of the naturally occuring uranium. The presence of radium and other high intensity gamma emitters in uranium ore makes it incredibly dangerous. Uranium is actually a good source at blocking harmful radiation. Also, with the density of uranium metal so high, 0.5 grams is only a thin shaving of it about 2 cm long and maybe half a cm wide. I've also got a small box which will be lead lined just for precautionary reasons, but in reality I could probably put it in a thick glass vial and wouldn't have to worry too much. Amazingly enough, my naturally occuring sample of rubidium is pretty 'hot' so to speak. Natural rubidium is made up of about 72% Rb85 and 28% Rb87. Rb87 is radioactive with a half-life of 4.75x10^10 years. It decays via Beta decay to Sr87. I had read somewhere that if you take some pure rubidium and place it by some unexposed film it will expose the film after a few months. Of course I had to test this theory out. So I took a few pieces of unexposed polaroid film and placed one in a far corner of my room, and the other one right underneath my rubidium ampoule. I let them sit there for a month. I then went and 'developed' the film. The one in the far corner was not exposed at all. It was just 'nothing'. The one by the rubidium, however, had a nice outline of the ampoule and while it was fuzzy, you could see that it was exposed. So that was really neat to see. (I tried to scan the images, but the 'exposed' film was just too faint to scan very cleanly).

Yeah, that was a typo on my part which has been corrected. HCl is most definitely a covalent bond. I was just thinking to myself as I was typing about how when it dissolves in water, it dissociates ionically. With your HCl, that was over a long period of time. If you were to just take a bottle of HCl and heat it up, you'd drive a lot of the HCl out of there until you get to an azeotropic point where you wouldn't be able to remove any more water.

Hydrogen Chloride is a covalently bonded, colorless gas with a VERY sharp and irritating odor. It is incredibly soluble in water and forms hydrochloric acid upon dissolving. If you got rid of the water, sure you'd get HCl back. However, HCl will most likely volatalize and evaporate out of the solution before all the water does. So you'd have to heat the solution very gradually and have a way to get the HCl away from the water because it would want to dissolve right back in there.

Formaldehyde is the commonly used name for the compound H2C=O. I guess the technical name would be methylaldehyde, but that is rarely used. Kind of like how ethanoic acid is known as acetic acid, and methanoic acid is known as formic acid.

lol. I don't know why, but I found that to be really funny. Kind of like something you'd hear on a Home Shopping Network.

It's actually a brilliant maneuver by the government in terms of cost-effectiveness. Sure they could have used gold, but that would cost quite a bit of money. They were already separating the U-238 from the U-235 to make the fissionable material, so why not make good use of the 'waste' product? You have to give them a bunch of credit for that. (In a somewhat twisted kind of way).

It's all a matter of quantity. If you have small amounts, like the .5 gram samples my friend obtained, the government really has nothing to worry about. It would take a great deal of time and a great deal of money to make anything even remotely dangerous out of that. Depleted uranium has no potential for producing fissionable material on its own, and anything that could lead to the generation of fissionable material is regulated. So the government doesn't care, and rightfully so, about a few grams of depeleted uranium shavings out there.

Although it's kind of drastic, Uranium 238 is VERY good at reflecting neutrons back into whatever generated them. In fact, in nuclerar fission devices they generally tend to encase the fission area with a shell of U-238 to direct any stray neutrons back into main critical mass. It's kind of neat how Uranium itself is radioactive, but it's one of the best shields against the more harmful forms of radiation. (Providing that the uranium is U-238). Also, to reiterate again, Helium will not react with anything. There are no temperatures and/or pressures attainable by mankind that will cause helium to react. The only 'reaction' I know of with helium is a fusion reaction deep inside the stars.

If you do a search on the web for The Wooden Periodic Table Table, you'll come across a website by Theodore Gray who has a very impressive collection. He has a sample of just about every element you can expect to have a sample of. I myself have a sample of every element that has a stable isotope. (Except pure fluorine. I only have a salt of that). I will also be getting some Uranium in a few months once all the details and pricing are worked out. What do I do with my collection? Well, it's kind of like a coin collection. You just have them and are happy to know that you own them, and if you'd like to display them you surely can. All of my elements are in some type of container to help keep them labelled and safely stored. The really dangerous ones require special storage such as sealed glass ampoules or shielding from the light. For the Uranium, while it will only be a small 0.5 gram turning of it, I will have it stored in a lead lined box which is about 3"x3"x2" in dimension. There will really be nothing to worry about in terms of radiation. Having an element collection isn't any more dangerous than having a collection of guns, or even having a gun in general. In the hands of the stupid and ignorant, it can be very dangerous. In the hands of people who know what they're getting into, it's perfectly safe. Small quantities are also good idea. You don't need two pounds of sodium or bromine to see its properties. A few grams of each is plenty enough to see its physical representation. My ultimate goal is to build a display cabinet where I can have it divided like a periodic table with a compartment for each element. Sadly, I can't do that until I move out of my parents' home and I frankly don't have the money to do that. (I even talked with a real estate agent to try and look for a very small house or condominium I could buy, and she laughed and said that on my salary there is no way I can afford my own place). Anyway, if you want to see my collection, it can be downloaded from http://www.chemicalforums.com/~jdurg/FullPTP.zip

Because making all the enzymes synthetically is not easy, or cheap to do and the cost/benefit ratio falls way out of whack. Also, animal rights activists and various other 'protest' groups would probably go crazy if they heard that a biological entity was being used to clean up chemicals. (Even though they have no clue what they're talking about, they would just go by what little they read and go crazy about it).

I'm pretty sure aluminum won't do the same. For some reason, the body reacts really adversely to beryllium. I'm not sure why though.

Hmmm. Let me think about it. I've spent over 1000 on my precious metals (Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium, Rhodium, Ruthenium, Osmium, Iridium, and Rhenium) alone, plus quite a bit on my other elements. So in total, I've probably put over $4,000 into my collection over the past four years that I've been collecting.

Well, beryllium dust will lead to beryllosis(sp?) which is a nasy inflammation of the lungs. For some people, it doesn't cause any problems at all. But for the majority of people, the 'allergic' reaction leads to chronic, incurable intense pain and difficulty with your lungs. Cancer can result from all of the inflammed tissue.

Helium is a 100%, completely inert gas. It will not react with anything. Xenon is also an inert gas which will only react with pure fluorine under certain conditions. You have nothing to worry about in regards to your piping corroding upon exposure to helium and/or xenon.

I turn 25 later this year, and the Iridium will cost be about 390 dollars for a about 1.20 troy ounces. The uranium is still up in the air. I know that I will just want to get one of the 0.5 gram turnings, so I still don't know how much that will cost. (The turnings have a pretty nice surface area, so you can definitely see the metal, but they are also pretty small in mass so the radioactivity is 'relatively' minimized).

This has been a FANTASTIC day for me. I came into work today and the person in charge of the payouts for my football pool had a nice surprise for me in my mailbox. I wasn't expecting to get paid for my winnings until about March, but today I found my check for $535 dollars. Also, one of my many element dealers that I frequently talk with is able to get me a troy ounce of Iridium for a very good price, so with my winnings I'll be able to get myself a nicely polished 35 gram lump of 99.9+% pure Iridium metal. Finally, I found out today that I will probably be able to add my first pure radioactive sample to my table: Depleted Uranium. Somebody I know does a lot of dealing with E-Bay and had mentioned to one of his customers that he had a friend who collected elements. That customer was then able to send him some depleted uranium turnings that are about 95% U-238 and 5% Molybdenum. My friend is going to get a geiger counter to verify the radioactivity, and then he'll let me get a sample of the Uranium if it's legit. In the meantime, I need to get myself a lead lined box to keep it in, and perhaps pick up a cheap geiger counter. (I could ask my dad to let me borrow one since he works at a nuclear power plant, but he'd probably freak out if I told him that I have some pure uranium). So all in all, today's been a great day.

Beryllium is 100% harmless in a solid form. Beryllium is only toxic when its in a finely divided or powdered form. Having a lump of beryllium metal is no more toxic than a lump of magnesium metal. However, if you were to try and sand or polish your beryllium, you'd be in some major trouble.