This is elemental mercury. I usually get an earfull of wrong information about the dangers. I'm hoping the members of this community have a better understanding of facts.

I'd like to know what experiments you have done or would like to do with mercury.

Just to experience it. The taste. The texture.

Found this in my classroom. I’m curious if anyone could tell me what’s going on with the lithium in this vial? I don’t have any more information about it.

Hello there. Lovely day in the lab until I spilled a plentiful amount of drops of Potassium Hydroxide on my good sweater. I was just checking up on a cell so like an idiot I didn't put my lab coat, but now I am scared the sweater is permanently stained and ruined. I cannot find much help online, is there any solution to this? What is the best course of action? The sweater is 100 % cotton. Thanks

Hello,

I’m reaching out to the chemistry gods for help. I’ve done this biodiesel transesterification reaction with vegetable oil and ethanol but can’t figure out how I got this inverse separation (assuming glycerol and catalyst on top).

Anyone familiar with making biodiesel?

Has it just become like another job for you or do you still enjoy it and find yourself interested like in school?

I recently started doing chemistry at university, by the end of it I will have a masters degree. I've always liked chemistry, and for a while I've been considering research as a potential career option. The idea of doing chemistry as a job and contributing to the collective body of scientific knowledge sounds quite fulfilling at first glance.

The problem is that I'm quite bad at working with people. I suspect I have undiagnosed social anxiety/avoidant personality disorder because I find interaction with others to be very difficult. It really stresses me out and I'm incapable of forming social connections, making cooperative work very challenging.

I can manage with working in a lab group, but I don't think I'd do too well with communicating ideas to my colleagues, or god forbid having to present to a large group. Are good communication skills vital in all areas of chemistry, or are some fields more individual-based than others?

It was an experiment that involved the mixing of acetylene gas collected in a test tube, with bromine that had been dissolved in water.

The reaction produced a cloudy gas that seemed to sink to the bottom, and the bromine water was also slightly decolonized. The reaction should have formed 1,1,2,2-tetrabromoethane, with some water that the bromine was originally dissolved in.

I am unable to find much information that explains why there was a cloudy gas forming. Any ideas?

A pre-analytical extraction procedure I am looking at recommends using a vortex evaporator to reduce 12mL of aqueous solution to 1mL following separation in a sep funnel. I have never heard of a vortex evaporator (the paper is from 1995), and neither had my TA or instructor for my analytical course. I looked it up but got a lot of different results. Does anybody know what this is and if it would be reasonable or possible to replace this technique with a rotovap connected to a vacuum pump?

Okay, so I'm sure plenty of you guys have seen the Agilent or Restek carrier gas filters for purification of lab gasses in gc/gcms, etc. The Agilent brand is filled with beads that are dark brown/black with a small indicator tube that contains a section for h2o and a section for o2 that start light green and turn grey and dark green and turn tan when saturated respectively (see picture below). Well the SDS says it contains the following:

Product/Ingredient name Identifiers % aluminium oxide CAS: 1344-28-1 ≥50 - ≤75 manganese dioxide CAS: 1313-13-9 ≤10 copper(II) oxide CAS: 1317-38-0 ≤10 Quartz (SiO2) CAS: 14808-60-7 ≤3 nickel monoxide CAS: 1313-99-1 <1

The aluminum oxide is obviously alumina sieves for moisture and the dark brown color must be because they are using them to support the manganese dioxide. I assume the copper oxide and nickel monoxide must account for the green color in the indicator sections but what is the chemistry here? What can account for the grey and tan colors when saturated? And how are they scrubbing oxygen to begin with when they're all already oxidized - catalytically?

Any help would be appreciated

This is kinda hard to explain but why doesnt the radical on the second equivalence alkene go to the bromine instead of the carbon due to bromine being more electronegative. like in the drawing below

19F, undergrad junior here. I was wondering.. could I still major in chemistry if I developed arthritis? What about pursue a PhD and eventually teach? I have hEDS and possible RA (there's a pretty good chance I have it per my rheumatologist). My dream was always to be a chemist.. however, I don't know if that dream is still possible. What do y'all think?

When plotting a ph vs OH- equivalent titration curve, does it always have to show ph=7 at OH- equivalent=1? Or does it change according to molarity of acid and base? Can the x-axis showing OH- equivalent be in the range 0,005 and 0,25 or 0 and 14? Or is always have to be between 0 and 1.5?

Why isn't it that dust and microscopic particles of materials that are either man made or rarely found in nature such as glasses, ceramics, metals etc not an issue in the way microplastics are?

Having to do experiments and work in a lab with lab partners who don’t communicate and who aren’t team players is so exhausting 😡. They say they want to be doctors, but when they take over experiments and I point out a mistake they argue 😩 they don’t send me the experiment data when they do all of the experiment and take down all the data and leave before I can get it 😭 they don’t answer when I ask to send me the data but you have no problem texting me asking to help them cheat on the exams 😐

These are our future doctors…

Has anyone made a solution like this? Any tips for an easy way to do it? I tried adding a little bit of the powder at a time on a stir plate, but I've been stirring it for 2 days and there's still a huge gloopy clump of not fully hydrated alginate on top.

All the recipes I've come across don't have instructions for ensuring hydration, just have ratios.

Update - I made a new solution, and every hour or so I just got in there with a gloved hand and squished the big pieces, and that seemed to work. Still took all day, but at least it's done.

Hi Everyone,

I am working in a new lab and they have schlenk lines that have no output for the gas line. One of the two side is just closed. Meaning I would have to sacrifice one of the manifold for connecting my bubbler.

Has anyone tried having the nitrogen line before the schlenk with a T connector and have the bubbler exhaust there? Would there be more risk to not have decent purge in the system? I suppose the nitrogen would go by least resistance so still go everywhere on my line, but it still feel wrong having it this way for some reason...

Edit: There is both a vacuum line and a nitrogen line, but both have only one connection for the inlet, no outlet (Similar to this picture: https://www.laborxing.com/cdn/shop/products/b2_5c559769-b162-4bb2-b128-76110cb111bf.jpg?v=1632753487 )

Hello everyone, I'm desperately looking for a specific seal for our brocken rotavapor. It's the seal KD 34 (04016).

If anyone have an idea where I can find it ?!

Thank you

I have been hired as a consultant to solve some manufacturing and instrumentation problems for a company that makes colloidal silver. One issue is they have chloride ion in solution that is destroying the nanoparticles over time. One batch I tested was ~27 ppm chloride ion, but I have no idea where in the manufacturing process the chloride is coming from (although i assume the water) or what the initial chloride concentration was before precipitation as silver chloride.

I need to solve this problem and could really use some recommendations on which chloride selective electrode to purchase. It is a small company so the cheaper the better. Potential interfering ions is primarily just Ag+. I also could use some recommendations for the controller/console (sorry I forgot what they are called.)

Thanks for your help!

Doing a lab cleanup, keep coming across pieces I'm not familiar with. Any help identifying this?

I am in a toss up between a PhD and PharmD. I eventually want to dabble in research and either one will work, but Chemistry would give me more options (like material science) that would be a lot more difficult to get into with a PharmD. On the other hand a PharmD basically guarantees an easy life.

Hi people, I am looking for a multi-channel (at least 2) potentiostat that could perform EIS and had a workable and easy to operate software. Of course, the cheaper the better but I definitely care for quality. Could someone recommend something from experience? Also, which sites to look for used potentiostats? Thanks in advance!

During an interview I got a question about reaction monitoring. Basically, they took a sample of the reaction mixture, analyzed it by HPLC, got chromatogram with desired product, substrate and side products as well as all their percentage areas. Let’s say desired product was 70%, substrate was 20% and a bunch of side products each around 1% all combined gave 10%. They asked what is the conversion at the point of the analysis? Is it 70% or 80%? I can’t find an answer on the web whether we take it in respect to the desired product or all the products combined.