jdurg

That's a tough question. I believe that HCl(g) will still act as an acid if involved in a reaction. It may also depend on the definition of 'acid' being used. I was always told that an acid is a compound which will donate H+ ions when involved in a reaction. So I do believe that HCl(g) would be considered an acid. (Since pure H2SO4 is still considered an acid, as are a LOT of anhyrous organic acids).

Either way, the elements you physically produce yourself are the most fun.

Well, don't forget that iodide ions will allow iodine to dissolve in water at a MUCH greater rate than if no I- was present. So I'd make sure that the chlorine is added in excess and that no I- is present in solution. This way your I2 will ppt out and not remain in solution.

Ummm...... I think you've got Boron and Bromine confused.

Well, bromine VERY easily vaporizes at virtually any temperature, so if you have a small amount in a large bottle, it will pretty much entirely evaporate into a gas. Bromine will also attack just about EVERYTHING. If you have it a bottle with just a cap, it will eventually eat through the cap and leach out and corrode anything around it. I had initially purchased 10 mL of bromine and it was constantly leaching through the bottle and corroding the hell out of the steel container the bottle was stored in. I had the cap on super tight and full of Teflon, yet it still moved through. I then had about half of it ampouled into a glass tube and sealed shut. It has remained in the tube and not leached out at all. There is no odor coming from it, and the amount of liquid has remained the same. (The gorgeous vapor looks great in there, however.) If you can only store it in a glass bottle, I highly suggest keeping it in a freezer. This way the bromine will solidify and will have far less of a chance of leaching out and corroding everything. (I would also suggest not putting this in the same freezer as your food. lol. Pick up a small fridge with a freezer compartment and keep it in there).

Good luck with that. At least with bromine, in comparison to chlorine, you can easily see the stuff when it's being made. The vapor is so dense and dark, and has such a vicious odor. Just make sure it doesn't touch skin, or anything made out of aluminum. For long term storage, either a sealed glass ampoule, or an amber glass bottle which is tightly closed with the aid of Teflon tape and then placed into another container and stored in the freezer is the best bet. (It's actually neat seeing it freeze. It's an amber colored solid which melts into the soupy thick liquid which vaporizes into the deep red-orange gas. God this stuff is cool. All the halogens are cool cuz they have their colors.) I was also thinking about the fluorine generation again. I think the decomposition of teflon powder may work. If you have a really long, like a 60 cm long tube, you could heat it up to just about as high a temperature as it can go. You would then keep it at a red hot temperature for quite some time and place it in a box filled with argon gas in order to cool. You would also have open vats of sodium silicate in the 'dry box' to absorb any water. Now you would go and set up an ampouling apparatus. This would have your vacuum pump ready to suck out all the gas in the tube. You would then put the teflon powder in the bottom of the tube and start the vacuum to get rid of any air and water and argon in the tube. Now you would heat the bottom portion of the tube containing the teflon. This should decompose it to fluorine gas and carbon providing that your teflon is a high quality. The fluorine gas will immediately rise up to the top of the tube. When you see the black flecks of carbon on the sides of the tube near the teflon powder, you could stop the vacuum and seal off the top of the tube. There would now be a VERY low pressure of fluorine gas in the tube. You could continue to heat the teflon powder and have it decompose into the fluorine gas which would rise towards the top of the tube. Finally, you seal off the tube in an area that contains only fluorine gas. The gas would be nice and dry and really pure. Fluorine doesn't attack glass, but hydrogen fluoride does. This method of generating fluorine would all but eliminate the presence of hydrogen fluoride, therefore the glass ampoule would work. I truly think this is doable. I had put it off for a while after reading the MSDS of teflon and seeing that it decomposes into HF and various hydrofluorocarbons. But then I realized something. Those decomposition products listed on the MSDS are for open air decomposition. In a closed vessel with no air and no hydrogen containing gas in there, it can't decompose into an appreciable amount of hydrolurocarbons or HF since the teflon molecule is composed of -[F2C=CF2]- monomers. I only wish I had the apparatus to try all this...........

I have an ampoule of bromine in my collection, and I have it out here on my desk near my window. The window is closed and locked, but there is a chill coming through there. The top of the ampoule, which is sticking up out of my holder, is exposed to that chilly draft. You can see little droplets of bromine condensing where the cool air is hitting the sealed ampoule. If I put my finger where the droplets are forming, the heat from my hand makes them evaporate. But if I wait a few minutes, they come back. That is too cool!

Very true. But remember one thing, sound requires matter in order to transfer. Outer space is completely silent because there is no matter out there to transfer the sound waves. Light does not require matter as a transmission medium so it is able to traverse the long distances. (Now if you're talking about radio waves, then yeah, it could travel that distance because I believe radiowaves travel as an electromagnetic pulse which is turned back into sound with the help of a receiver).

lol. For the first few years of my life I did! Then my damned immune system said 'Enough of that!' and shut down my factory.

Yeah, my ire isn't exactly towards Eli-Lilly. It's more towards the immoral fiend George W. Bush. I had actually forgotten about Aventis, but I use insulin glargine so I use products from them as well. Very few companies make insulin, because as you've stated, it's not cheap to make and they don't feel they can profit off of it. Canada has a nice system where EVERYBODY gets basically free health-care. The only problem is that you pay a LOT more taxes to get that benefit. I just feel that companies should charge more for drugs you don't need to survive and make their profits with them as opposed to charging more for the drugs people need to live. You don't need oxycodone to live. Sure it will help get rid of intense pain, but you can survive and see the next day without taking oxycodone. I can't survive and see the next day without insulin. That is the frustrating part. Why can't the companies just decide to not make a profit off of insulin when they can certaintly increase the price of things like pain killers and make their profits there? I don't know. It's just really, really frustrating.

Speaking of light, I've always found it interesting how when we look up at the stars at night, we're actually looking back in time (Since if a start is hundreds of thousands of light years away, it takes the light hundreds of thousands of years to reach us). For all we know, many of the stars we are looking at may have gone 'BOOM' a long time ago. I always found that to be neat.

For diabetics in the USA, it doesn't matter. You're going to pay a boatload of money for your prescriptions. Most insurance companies give you a limit on how much money they will cover, after that limit is met, you pay for it all out of your pocket. I've been a type I diabetic for about 22-23 years now, and every September that 'prescription fund' runs out and I have to pay hundreds of dollars each time I get a script refilled. It's annoying, it's obnoxious, and it's frustrating that I have to pay so much money for something I need to LIVE. Meanwhile, things like Darvocet, Vicodin, Oxycodone, etc. are dirt cheap. You don't absolutely need them to live, a full script only costs about 15 bucks. That's outrageous. Drug companies know that if someone needs something to live the next day, they'll be forced to pay anything. That's the situation I'm in, and there really are no 'generic' brand insulins over here. Eli-Lilly pretty much has a monopoly on the insulin market, and they are taking advantage of it. It's downright sickening how much money I'm forced to pay just because I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic.

Happy to help. As most people know, liquids will evaporate even far below their boiling point. Look at mercury and bromine. Those two have very high vapor pressures and will evaporate far below their boiling point. I'm fairly certain that the salt did evaporate after the time it spent on the heating element. Perhaps you should execute the 'experiment' again and see if you get the same results?

Perhaps the salt melted, and then since it was such a small amount and there were no salt vapors in the air, it evaporated. (Since any liquid does have a vapor pressure, little bits of it can evaporate). Perhaps the salt liquified and then evaporated?

I know that when the liver processes ethanol, it gets converted into acetaldehyde which isn't all too pleasant to have around. The acetaldehyde is then processed into the acetate ion thanks to various liver enzymes and good ol' NAD and NADH. However, if you drink too much there won't be enough NAD around to help break down the metabolites so the acetaldehyde will stick around in your system and make you very ill. In actuality, there are a LOT of things in relation to drinking that will make you feel ill the next day. The best cure, which has already been mentioned, is to drink a lot of water. The hydration will help lower the concentration of the alcohol and its metabolites, and will also help prevent dehydration. For me, when I start pissing what looks like water, it's time to start drinking a few glasses of water instead of beer/booze.

Well, that's true with everything. heh. If it were that simple, I wouldn't even have a job! (I work for a Clinical Research Organization where we process data on clinical trials of drugs prior to their submission to the FDA. If things were simple and went the way they were supposed to, there'd be no need for clinical trials and I'd be out of a job. )

Acetaminophen and Acetylsalicylic Acid are probably two of the worst things you can take with a hangover. They are more toxic to your liver than ibuprofen is, and if there is still some alcohol or alcohol metabolites in your liver when you take those drugs, it can create incredibly dangerous hepatic toxins. Whenever I drink, if I absolutely need to take a painkiller it's Ibuprofen since it will not interact with the alcohol/metabolites to any extent and create those dangerous hepatic toxins.

Another reason the drug's structure is 'altered' is to affect its absorption in certain parts of the body. For example, if you wanted a drug to be absorbed in the brain instead of the muscles, you'd want it to be less polar since there is a higher fat content in the brain area than in the muscle area. So a non-polar drug will be more likely to absorb into the brain than it would into other, 'less fatty' organs.

Perhaps it's because the teacher didn't document the findings or report it to a proper source. There are a lot of things in chemistry that were 'discovered' by people other than the one given credit. That's because a lot of times the true 'discoverer' never documented the process of discovering it, or didn't provide a way for others to discover it as well. Therefore, there was no way to prove that they found it. Along comes another person who properly documents the procedure of the discovery, and reports it properly. They then get the credit.

I personally think that Physical Chemistry is the toughest form, with Organic coming a close second. With P-Chem, you need a STRONG knowledge of complex mathematics as well as physics. A lot of the topics are fairly obscure as well. There are so many equations and exceptions that you have to learn and memorize that it can drive you nuts. If you have a good memory, O-Chem isn't all that tough. It is, however, very difficult in regards to memorization of structures and names for those structures. Still, it doesn't compare with how P-Chem can drive you nuts. heh. Personally, I think analytical/instrumental chemistry is fairly easy. It's all logic and some basic math. I found it incredibly enjoyable and very easy since my brain works in a logical manner.