inuhbad

In college it was easy to make what you needed in such a manner if you needed to... Using a condenser setup and keeping it completely sealed was the important parts. Here in the US you can sometimes go into most auto-parts stores to buy a ~1 Liter bottle of Sulfuric Acid (used to refill lead-acid car batteries) in a 30% to 40% form for very low cost. Buy a couple of them, and then boil off the water. You have to be careful about the corrosion issues related to the fuming gas that's emitted as you get closer to a 'pure' concentrated form. Typically I would get yields in the 90 to 92% range, as that's about all I needed for my purposes. In school if I needed Nitric Acid, I could just go to the supply room, sign out on the form, and take some 70% nitric acid for whatever I wanted. For personal projects outside of school it seems that Nitric Acid is next to impossible to find, and if you do manage to find some you aren't often able to be sure of its concentration. I typically use Nitric Acid (diluted), Hydrochloric Acid (diluted), and metal salts to refinish old military surplus gun parts. Having uncertain concentrations, and then further diluting thatr concentration for my purposes usually creates too much variation in the quality of your metal finish from one 'batch' to the next. Often leading to discoloration, sometimes too deep of etching in the steel, and sometimes an insufficient amount of etching for the finish to 'take'. By making your own Nitric Acid, though it has its own safety and impurity related problems, once tested, you can usually have a rather accurate assessment of its concentration. To some people it's the only way to get some, otherwise finding a source to purchase it is like trying to find hen's teeth in the US. Here in the US we have a similar cleaner, but the corrosion inhibitors, I forget their composition, but they actually ARE significant enough to have a negative effect on your experiments. Depending upon what you're trying to use the nitric acid for, it will throw off your results to an undesirable level.

Aaaah. Yeah, I think Flashman was probably envisioning this experiment a little bit differently as I was... I envisioned the coils being arranged coiled higher up, upward inside inverted test tubes where a more sizable amount of Hydrogen Gas would be trapped... And Likewise another test tube would contain the other gasses produced above the 2nd electrode. You might be able to retain a higher charge voltage, and for a longer period of time as well.

Hi, I'm new to this website, and it came up in a brief internet search, and some of the information was very helpful for me. Did AP Chem & AP Physics in HS, went into IT in college, and studied lots of Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and a fair bit of Chemistry in college. Was hoping to become a consultant systems analyst, but then the DotCom bubble burst, jobs being outsourced to India left & right, and the industry tanked. Three years into my major I switched to Landscape Architecture, and only my Physics & Calculus credits transferred! I became a super-senior graduating in 7 years! I've got a great background in physics, but somewhat lacking in the Chemistry area... I'm hoping this will help me 'fill in the blanks' when I have questions, and will hope to help contribute to the Physics section as much as I can...