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ol qwerty bastard posted:My high school chemistry teacher claims to have been knocked out by taking a whiff of a container of glacial acetic acid. I'm sure it would be rather unpleasant, in any case. I work with 90% acetic acid. It smells like someone shoving a 6" nail up your nostril but it won't knock you out. Dusseldorf posted:I'm gonna give a simple shout-out to Piranha solution: 4 parts concentrated sulfuric acid, 1 part 20% hydrogen peroxide, served hot. It does a great job if you want to clean pretty much any organic compound off a surface, but that also included your flesh right off your bones. In my old lab I used to make the stuff daily and one drop fell on my leather lab shoes and almost ate a hole clear through them (wear closed toe shoes and aprons kiddies). Doesn't hot hydrogen peroxide cease to be hydrogen peroxide fairly quickly? I would have thought it'd be better cold.
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Jan 17, 2014 06:18
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The Lone Badger posted:Doesn't hot hydrogen peroxide cease to be hydrogen peroxide fairly quickly? I would have thought it'd be better cold. Pretty sure you mix it on the spot. Saying that putting HOOH into H2SO4 is exothermic is like saying napalm is "a little warm". The more I think about it the more that stuff seems like a way to spray boiling hot acid all over the place.
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Jan 17, 2014 06:35
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Terrible Robot posted:Really loving this thread so far, even if I think reading the links in it have put me on some lists. Apart from the whole "mercury is poison" part, I'd kinda like to see what happens with mercury and an aluminum car engine. Running, of course.
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Jan 17, 2014 08:16
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Terrible Robot posted:Really loving this thread so far, even if I think reading the links in it have put me on some lists. I think the second one might be gallium. It does some of the same things to metals as mercury, only even more so.
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Jan 17, 2014 08:31
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ol qwerty bastard posted:My high school chemistry teacher claims to have been knocked out by taking a whiff of a container of glacial acetic acid. I'm sure it would be rather unpleasant, in any case. The Lone Badger posted:I work with 90% acetic acid. It smells like someone shoving a 6" nail up your nostril but it won't knock you out. Glacial acetic acid has almost no smell at all, while 90% will give you a nearly instant nosebleed if you sniff it. This can be explained by steam distillation. The vapor pressure of neat acetic acid is very low but if you add just a little bit of water it shoots up and you'll huff a ton of vinegar.
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Jan 17, 2014 09:35
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Speaking of stinky things Methyl Mercaptan is responsible for the smell of bad breath, farts, and animal feces. Ethyl Mercaptan is infamous for it's foul odor, which resembles that of leeks, onions, durian or cooked cabbage. Both are added to propane, butane, and natural gas to make leaks easier to detect. Think about the smell of your gas supply, these gasses are normally odorless, it's the added mercaptans you are smelling. For some reason, the manager at the water treatment plant I was chemist at for years had a bottle of methyl mercaptan sitting in his office. I don't know if he used it to prank people by getting them to smell it, or maybe he was making stink bombs in his spare time. And does acetic acid give anyone else a craving for salt and vinegar chips?
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Jan 17, 2014 10:57
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The Lone Badger posted:I think the second one might be gallium. It does some of the same things to metals as mercury, only even more so. The second one is actually the allotropic transformation of the beta-form "white" tin to the alpha- form "gray" tin. The change happens at temperatures below 56F. 
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Jan 17, 2014 12:07
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RedneckwithGuns posted:The second one is actually the allotropic transformation of the beta-form "white" tin to the alpha- form "gray" tin. The change happens at temperatures below 56F. Holy poo poo, this explains tin whisker issues with RoHS solders so well. I'm so glad aerospace is exempt from that bullshit. Here's the video that GIF was made from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXB83Heh3_c Wikipedia posted:The decomposition will catalyze itself, which is why the reaction speeds up once it starts; the mere presence of tin pest leads to more tin pest. Tin objects at low temperatures will simply disintegrate.
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Jan 17, 2014 14:07
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Dusseldorf posted:Glacial acetic acid has almost no smell at all, while 90% will give you a nearly instant nosebleed if you sniff it. This can be explained by steam distillation. The vapor pressure of neat acetic acid is very low but if you add just a little bit of water it shoots up and you'll huff a ton of vinegar. Yeah, I was pretty sure his story had been embellished for the purpose of illustrating his "don't sniff chemicals" point. A lot of my favourite scary chemicals have already been covered but here's something a bit different - a fictional (or is it??) story about Cold War rocketry research... http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/07/a-tall-tail
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Jan 17, 2014 15:25
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This is 'crazy chemist' story as much as it is a 'crazy chemistry story'. Ira Remsen posted:While reading a textbook of chemistry I came upon the statement, "nitric acid acts upon copper." I was getting tired of reading such absurd stuff and I was determined to see what this meant. Copper was more or less familiar to me, for copper cents were then in use. I had seen a bottle marked nitric acid on a table in the doctor's office where I was then "doing time." I did not know its peculiarities, but the spirit of adventure was upon me. Having nitric acid and copper, I had only to learn what the words "act upon" meant. The statement "nitric acid acts upon copper" would be something more than mere words. All was still. In the interest of knowledge I was even willing to sacrifice one of the few copper cents then in my possession. I put one of them on the table, opened the bottle marked nitric acid, poured some of the liquid on the copper and prepared to make an observation. But what was this wonderful thing which I beheld? The cent was already changed and it was no small change either. A green-blue liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the table. The air in the neighborhood of the performance became colored dark red. A great colored cloud arose. This was disagreeable and suffocating. How should I stop this? I tried to get rid of the objectionable mess by picking it up and throwing it out of the window. I learned another fact. Nitric acid not only acts upon copper, but it acts upon fingers. The pain led to another unpremeditated experiment. I drew my fingers across my trousers and another fact was discovered. Nitric acid acts upon trousers. Taking everything into consideration, that was the most impressive experiment and relatively probably the most costly experiment I have ever performed. . . . It was a revelation to me. It resulted in a desire on my part to learn more about that remarkable kind of action. Plainly, the only way to learn about it was to see its results, to experiment, to work in a laboratory. Ira Remsen went on to found the chemistry department at Johns Hopkins University and discover an artificial sweetener after accidentally contaminating his food with it.
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Jan 17, 2014 16:49
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ol qwerty bastard posted:Yeah, I was pretty sure his story had been embellished for the purpose of illustrating his "don't sniff chemicals" point. That has got to be fictional. And I recognize a number of quotes directly from In The Pipeline concerning ClF3 and FOOF, so I think someone's been reading the same sites as us.
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Jan 17, 2014 16:55
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I took it as a great bit of SciFi. I'd like to read more of that author. Reminds me of the old Heinlein shorts before he went loving bonkers.
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Jan 17, 2014 19:03
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kastein posted:Holy poo poo, this explains tin whisker issues with RoHS solders so well. I'm so glad aerospace is exempt from that bullshit. I've taken years of chemistry classes and worked in machine shops for other years, and I've never seen this. Cool as hell, thanks thread! What a weird threshold too, science is just the best. edit: might as well add some content. I worked in a small fabrication shop for a few years and right after I graduated, doing pretty simple fab work and some welding in steel, aluminum and plastics. We had to run our stuff to a shop downtown (Chicago) to have it anodized, and usually only made the trip with a big-rear end load given that gas was crazy expensive for the econoline we used. Realized we forgot to include a critical part from a rush order basically as soon as we got to it during assembly, and crazy small-business boss decided what the gently caress, let's anodize it ourselves, it's Just Chemistry right? Cue jury-rigging our welder clamps to some bits of metal dunked in a Pyrex full of crazy concentrated sulfuric acid and flipping the juice on. Nothing exploded, and we actually managed some deposition on the piece before my boss got mad that it was taking too long and just told the dude to wait. However I still keep my ancient work sweatshirt around because it has two bleach-white handprints burned into it from when I was taking off my gloves after the mad science was all done. Gunshow Poophole has a new favorite as of 21:05 on Jan 17, 2014 |
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Jan 17, 2014 20:41
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kastein posted:That has got to be fictional. And I recognize a number of quotes directly from In The Pipeline concerning ClF3 and FOOF, so I think someone's been reading the same sites as us. Well, it has its basis in a variety of truths. You called it on the In The Pipeline quotes, but the red mercury hoax has been circulating among various US-unfriendly parties for decades, too.
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Jan 17, 2014 23:24
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ol qwerty bastard posted:A lot of my favourite scary chemicals have already been covered but here's something a bit different - a fictional (or is it??) story about Cold War rocketry research... http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/07/a-tall-tail This was a neat story until it got stupid as hell at the end, and I'm the one to know. I have to imagine I'm one of a very small handful of people who've both worked with HF (undergrad project making photoluminescent silicon), loves reading about dangerous chemicals (Which I talk about at times in my SpaceChem LP) and have been to Chernobyl. That HF stuff sure was fun to deal with though. I spent more time on safety research than actual research. Then to get the lab ready they had to install a safety shower and found asbestos in the ceiling. Because if I got a drop of HF on me somehow through my spacesuit, I'm sure the first thing I'm going to do is take a shower in a room that has no drain, rather than empty a tube of calcium gluconate on affected area. Safety Regs man, good times. GuavaMoment has a new favorite as of 04:38 on Jan 18, 2014 |
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Jan 18, 2014 04:36
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Beach Bum posted:I took it as a great bit of SciFi. I'd like to read more of that author. Reminds me of the old Heinlein shorts before he went loving bonkers. I'd recommend The atrocity archives, which has some of the same feel. It's technically a short story collection sewn into a book, which will probably annoy some people; I liked it.
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Jan 18, 2014 11:03
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I'm using n-BuLi at the moment in my research, which is mildly pyrophoric (catches fire when exposed to air) but not too bad. The really nasty stuff is tert-BuLi which really will catch fire if you expose it to air or water. A few years ago a researcher in America died pretty horrifically when she pulled the barrel out of a syringe of it by accident and it set her clothes on fire. Here's some videos of people adding it to water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm4kN6I5D1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCjHtbfcMPo Also, research labs seem to accumulate a lot of things over the years that people forget about. Recently we found a bunch of corroded cylinders of vinyl bromide in the bottom of a freezer that no one knew anything about.
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Jan 18, 2014 13:40
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Computer viking posted:I'd recommend The atrocity archives, which has some of the same feel. It's technically a short story collection sewn into a book, which will probably annoy some people; I liked it. end book derail
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Jan 18, 2014 13:51
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One of the inorganic labs at my old school had a bucket of mercury just hanging out in a cabinet. Very cool looking that stuff.
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Jan 18, 2014 19:49
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They're ludicrous about the stuff in our labs. They use it in the pore volume analyser but if you so much as find a thermometer in a drawer it's a thousand dollar remediation.
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Jan 19, 2014 20:45
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DemeaninDemon posted:One of the inorganic labs at my old school had a bucket of mercury just hanging out in a cabinet. Very cool looking that stuff. I always wondered, what does a big volume of liquid mercury look like when you twip it with a probe (or your finger)? I'll never break into Qin Shi Huang's tomb, so I'll never know first person
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Jan 19, 2014 21:28
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I've always wanted a big bucket of mercury. I'm not sure why, and I don't really know what I'd do with it apart from throw things in it, but it'd be a really cool thing to have. I have the same obsession with gallium too. Phy posted:I always wondered, what does a big volume of liquid mercury look like when you twip it with a probe (or your finger)? I'll never break into Qin Shi Huang's tomb, so I'll never know first person Well here's someone chucking a cannonball in a bath of the stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm5D47nG9k4
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Jan 19, 2014 23:20
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Vitamins posted:I've always wanted a big bucket of mercury. I'm not sure why, and I don't really know what I'd do with it apart from throw things in it, but it'd be a really cool thing to have. Probably get extremely frustrated that you can't pick it up.
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Jan 19, 2014 23:29
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I wanted mercury so bad that i broke an old thermometer and collected the mercury and put in a vial. Now i have a ball of mercury in a vial which i occasionally jiggle with, there's someting absolutely enchanting about mercury.
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Jan 20, 2014 00:24
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Falukorv posted:I wanted mercury so bad that i broke an old thermometer and collected the mercury and put in a vial. Now i have a ball of mercury in a vial which i occasionally jiggle with, there's someting absolutely enchanting about mercury. I've always held it as fundamentally unfair that mercury is poisonous. Not that nature cares, ofc.
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Jan 20, 2014 00:56
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I have two old Mercury Switches that I clipped out of an old industrial machine that was being scrapped. I keep'em on my curio shelf.
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Jan 20, 2014 01:21
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Falukorv posted:I wanted mercury so bad that i broke an old thermometer and collected the mercury and put in a vial. Now i have a ball of mercury in a vial which i occasionally jiggle with, there's someting absolutely enchanting about mercury. It's a metal that's liquid at room temperature. That's pretty much the reason why it's enchanting. Despite knowing why it's the way it is, there's still a part of our minds that thinks "this shouldn't exist". Also it's the sweetest of the transition metals.
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Jan 20, 2014 07:53
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Also it's the sweetest of the transition metals. Is mercury actually sweet tasting? I know lead is.
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Jan 20, 2014 08:07
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 Fun stuff.
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Jan 20, 2014 08:08
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There are different kinds of mercury. Some are worse than others, some are pretty benign. You use to could get mercury that you would swallow to help you poo poo. It doesn't get absorbed into your body. You just collect it after it's forced you to defaecate.
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Jan 20, 2014 08:27
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Johnny Aztec posted:There are different kinds of mercury. Some are worse than others, some are pretty benign. You use to could get mercury that you would swallow to help you poo poo. It doesn't get absorbed into your body. You just collect it after it's forced you to defaecate. Purestrain mercury.
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Jan 20, 2014 08:45
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Johnny Aztec posted:There are different kinds of mercury. Some are worse than others, some are pretty benign. You use to could get mercury that you would swallow to help you poo poo. It doesn't get absorbed into your body. You just collect it after it's forced you to defaecate. Some people used to wash the mercury and use it over and over again.
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Jan 20, 2014 09:00
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My favorite FOOF:  quote:From U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, 15 May 2001: quote:From U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters, 15 May 2001:    Full story here: http://www.cargolaw.com/2001nightmare_mre.html
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Jan 20, 2014 09:04
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It won't help, but it may make you feel better.
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Jan 20, 2014 09:08
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Vicodiva posted:Full story here: http://www.cargolaw.com/2001nightmare_mre.html
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Jan 20, 2014 10:23
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Dusseldorf posted:Is mercury actually sweet tasting? I know lead is. According to my sources, yes.
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Jan 20, 2014 10:50
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The Lone Badger posted:It won't help, but it may make you feel better. We had a magnesium fire in a chemistry lesson in 6th form (Long story short, Most metallic pencil sharpeners are made of magnesium because it's super easy to cast since die casting it is really easy and cheap, and someone managed to get one of them to ignite by holding it in a bunson for like 20 minutes) and the only way we managed to put it out was by piling up asbestos heat-proof mats on it to starve it of oxygen. Still burnt a fist sized hole through a solid mahogany desk though.
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Jan 20, 2014 12:11
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Drone_Fragger posted:bunson  For content, Bunsen burners are named for Robert Bunsen, who sounds like he'd have enjoyed working with some of these compounds. Some of his earlier work was on cacodyl (Tetramethyldiarsane , which sounds ominous enough), which wikipedia merely describes as an "oily substance with a garlicky smell, which will undergo spontaneous combustion in dry air". He came out of it with arsenic poisoning and minus one eye, though with the results he wanted. The goal was to study methyl groups, under the then-current idea that functional groups like methyl would stay near-permanently together as units ("radicals", not to be confused with what's now called the same), and combine/separate to form larger molecules; he apparently found supporting evidence. Bunsen posted:The smell of this body produces instantaneous tingling of the hands and feet, and even giddiness and insensibility...It is remarkable that when one is exposed to the smell of these compounds the tongue becomes covered with a black coating, even when no further evil effects are noticeable". He's more famous for having discovered cesium and rubidium through spectral line work (a field he helped start) - and after the above, that does sound safer. Incidentally, the Bunsen burner was crucial for it, since it gives a cleaner and hotter flame than earlier models. edit: In other news, I just discovered that I've never actually used a Bunsen burner - all ours were apparently Meker-Fisher burners (on little camping-style blue cans of gas). Computer viking has a new favorite as of 13:35 on Jan 20, 2014 |
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Jan 20, 2014 13:23
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It's a metal that's liquid at room temperature. That's pretty much the reason why it's enchanting. Despite knowing why it's the way it is, there's still a part of our minds that thinks "this shouldn't exist". Check out Gallium, Indium, and Woods Metal, which is an alloy of bismuth, lead (next!), tin, and cadmium (nope! gently caress this poo poo.) Radium, cesium, francium, and rubidium all have pretty low melting points too as I recall but I do not recommend playing with them.
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Jan 20, 2014 15:50
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I just remembered one of my favourite chemistry demonstrations from when I was in school. If you take a bottle of concentrated hydrochloric acid, take the top off, and sit it next to an open bottle of concentrated ammonia, you'll get funny white clouds forming and depositing a layer of ammonium chloride. This is tastes very salty and is used to flavour some weird kinds of liquorice in some countries. It's a pretty cool demonstration on how you can make relatively harmless products out of some horrible reagents, and also reinforces the point to keep the lids on noxious chemicals. 
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Jan 20, 2014 17:11
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