Im thinking about commiting to going back to school for a chemistry degree, what field and specialization still TBD. I've taken a few courses and done very well at community college. I find myself very motivated to continue working on a degree but I'm concerned I will be passed over for internship opportunities because I'm older than the usual student. And encounter further difficulty getting a beginning job at approximately 34. Any thoughts?

I am not a chemist but I have a question about alcohol concentration in perfumes/ body sprays. What I already know is the higher the alcohol concentration, the longer a perfume lasts because alcohol has a low boiling point and the heat of your skin helps the fragrance last and project. So if I add more alcohol to a body spray or a perfume that doesn't last long, could it make it last longer? and if that would work how could I do that?

Hi

I am working in some heterogeneous hydrogenations with different catalust and the product is highly unsoluble and temperature labile so I cannot heat a lot.

I had some impeesions of having product but not possible to isolate as was potentially retained in the filtration.

Can I avoid the filtration in celite and use other methods?

I’m thinking of doing my HL Chemistry IA (International Baccalaureate chemistry class of suffering) on radon self-phosphorescence, comparing the calculated emission spectra (just visible light) vs the actual emission spectra. I have a decent understanding of the principles of how one would compute the assumed emission spectra (I know what the functions/equations mean, but they’re annoying for me to do, despite my ‘thing’ being physics/math), and I’m working on actually being able to do it. Anyway, that’s the computational part, not too bad. The experimental part is, as I’m assuming people are going to say, is of course much more challenging. There are of course the direct challenges of nuclear material, and cooling a vessel down to -71 C, and then having an accurate enough spectromater. The biggest hindrance though (how I see it) is actually having a radon source. I know some labs use pieces of nuclear material, and I don’t have academic clearance —nor thousands of dollars to spend— to view the papers that do discuss radon chemistry and sourcing it. I live in an area that has environmental radon, so I might be able to gather samples (gaseous or for decay extraction depending on how complicated the separation is). While this is an extremely advanced experiment outside of a dedicated lab and I don’t have my heart set on this for my IA, it overlaps a lot of my interests and my teacher thinks that if acquiring a radon sample isn’t extremely challenging I could do it. Any help and/or information is greatly appreciated as I haven’t seen a ton of papers on radon chemistry, sourcing, or its self-phosphorescence.

Out of curiosity: Does anyone know some degradation products of doxycycline which are of brownish color? Seems to be temperature- and or photosensitive. Left one is after ~5 hours at room temperature, right one is after the same timespan but stored on ice and protected from light. It's in aqeous solution with mM concentrations of MgCl2, NaCl, KCl and HEPES. The DC itself is concentrated at 500 uM. Thanks and Cheers!

Hello!

I am a writer in my free time and I have been working on a magic system that revolves around manipulation of energy. The basic jist of it is that magic is potential energy that is perfectly manipulatable (it will always follow your intention perfectly, to the best of your understanding).

The reason I am here is because I am trying to figure out the answer to some questions (more for me to understand what kind of limitations I would need to put on the magic). Assume that the underlying mechanics of the world are the exact same as ours--the only difference is that some people have the ability to add energy to a system to do what they want.

Suppose I wanted to break apart a chemical. How do I calculate the amount of energy needed to break a bond between any atom pair? Using H2O as an example, how do I calculate how much energy is needed to break that first bond between the oxygen atom and one of the hydrogen atoms. Extrapolating further, how do I figure out how much energy is needed to break the bond between any atom with any other atom?

Thank you for the help! I appreciate it!

I was going to attempt making conc. nitric acid by NaNO3+H2SO4 --> NaHSO4+HNO3 method and I realized I don't have any glass condenser or pipes but I have PVC ones (I'm going to make PVC pipe thru some cold water to cool it down) to sum up, will conc. nitric acid harm my PVC hosing?

The top one is an „old“ chemical, opended february 2022, the botton one is opened today. it is the same chemical, N,N-Dimethyl-1,4-phenylene-diammonium dichloride. I use this as a colourimetric reagens in sulfid analysis. what happened to it? and is there anything „wrong“ with one of the both?

I’ve been trying to light a few Bunsen burners in my classroom for the past couple of days. Some I can’t get to light at all and a few will have a flame also coming from the needle valve at the base of the burner. I’m not sure what the problem is or how to fix it. Context: I inherited this classroom from a chem teacher who taught for 30 years. Most of the supplies are old and have gone through countless experiments. Are the Bunsen old and faulty? Are they dirty or is there something wrong with the schools gas line? Any guidance will be helpful because safety is my highest priority.

Is it possible to say anything in general about maximum allowed noise level (in decibel) for laboratory equipment only used for a minute or so now and then?

(I need this for a list of requirements for a coming purchase of a dynamic imaging analyzer where we have at least three brands to choose from. These DIA machines can be quite noisy when the powder is sucked into the machine and pushed through the detector with an air jet.)

Looking for help estimating the time frame for an experiment. I'm deliberately trying to saturate some carbon filters in a fume cupboard. I've decided on using acetone to do this due to it's availability and low boiling point. I've calculated that the filters will be able to adsorb around 4 litres of acetone before they become saturated.

If i was to place the acetone in a tray, say 1m long x 50cm wide, how long would you expect it to take for the acetone to fully evaporate? I'm trying to get the experiment done in one day. I could also gently heat the acetone using a hot plate, which would obviously speed up the rate. I was thinking to 30-40 degrees C to keep the risks low.
I'm looking for a really vague answer, I'm aware the flow rate of the FC will affect the time along with many many other factors, but i just need to see if it is feasible to do in one day.

Many thanks in advance

I am looking to expand some products and I honestly don't want to deal with a consultant/office is there a software that can generate an SDS?

I am running an experiment between different rust remover, but I am not sure how to properly dispose of the used chemical solutions once I'm done. I'm using Rust-oleum Rust Remover, CLR, and Evapo-rust for this experiment. The problem is the disposal instructions state to follow local or state laws, but I have no idea what that means for me, nor what law to even look up. I'm in Denver, Colorado. What do I do? Can I pour this down the drain?

Fell down the "cyanide smells like bitter almonds" rabbit hole recently, and I'm genuinely curious. Can anyone who has smelled cyanide describe how it smells to you?

I am no chemist, I am a biologist who has used potassium cyanide kill jars to collect bugs. To me it smells what I can only describe as 'pungently sweet'. It's a sharp smell, but a very very sickly sweet that hits you like a truck. I haven't heard of others describing it as sweet before, maybe bitter, or like chlorine.

Edit: I've never smelled bitter almonds so I have no clue what they're supposed to smell like lol. Might have to go track some down and take a whiff.

I just transfer to uga and I heard all these stories about how the chem department is super hard and how it sucks. I didnt think it would be bad considering I did well in my gen chems, bio and physics class at my previous school. Im currently doing very poorly and this is the worst ive ever done in a class. I feel like I might end up getting a D in the class and that is very alarming considering Ive never gotten a C, let alone failed a class. This class is making me rethink medical school and possibly switch to AA. Has anyone else failed ochem or any prereqs and still made it out okay? Im very worried about my future and my career. Also would AA be a better route if im struggling this bad in Ochem 1. I take full responsibility of maybe not studying enough or effectively, although I feel like all I do is eat, sleep, breath ochem. I feel very discouraged

I have a solution of water and an unknown percentage of plant extract (basically shredded plant matter, ran a ultrasonic assisted extraction process for 30 minutes, and then strained out the solids). Its a murky brown liquid and I want to know what my extraction yield is in terms of total dissolved solids as a percentage of total.

What is the best way to confirm total dissolved solids within the solvent? Can I simply take measurements before, boil off all the water, and then measure again and compare ending mass of solids to starting mass of solvent?

Does this process change if I use ethanol or an ethanol / water mix for my solvent?

Thanks!

It does I could not find a clear answer anywhere so I thought I would just throw my findings out here

I put one of those in a travel container a while ago now I don't know which it is. Is there a way to test it, other than see if I get sunburnt? Not much smell to it so that's inconclusive

Who is your favorite chemist of all time and why?

Just getting a feel, I know any grad program is difficult to be accepted to, but I wanted to see if anyone has any insights on schools (anywhere in USA) that are slightly less competitive.

I am a wannabe amateur chemist. Do you guys have any experiments that I could do that are fun and teach me something that is important. I can get proper equipment and can handle dangerous things with care.

Hello,

question: Should you always charge a regular 12V lead battery for the car FULLY or is this problematic for some reason?

Of course I know that you should not empty or half empty a lead battery, that can kill it. The question is, however, whether this means that you always keep 100% and every % less tends to be not good

The option would be to always fully charge and then charge when at 80%
or
Only charge at 80-90% and charge at 70%-80, but more often

greetings

Hey, beginner's question, I get that this is nitpicking, but in general I find it easier to remember names when their etymologies make sense.

Electronegativity is defined as the tendency of an atom of a given chemical element to attract shared electrons (or electron density) when forming a chemical bond.

That seems a bit off to a newbie. I would assume that an (electro)positive particle would tend to attract more electrons. So electronegativity is defined as the tendency to become (electro)negative? Isn't that a bit circular?

And if I understand correctly, do they really always become (electro)negative, e.g. in the case of Cl₂? 🤔

I tried to find some sources, even asked the latest GPT o1-preview, but it wasn't very useful…

Thanks in advance for any hints and stories. :)

Hello there. Soda lime is the standard chemical co2 scrubber in anesthesia breathing machine. It is treated with ethyl violet that reacts with co2 and turns the soda lime purple as an indicator that it is saturated with co2 and no longer useful. This reaction is deemed irreversible. There is evidence that ethyl violet is photosensitive, and exposition to uv lights may break the molecule, being that the soda lime will still absorb co2, and it’ll not change color to indicate saturation. So far so good- this information is all online no big deal. My question is: once soda lime is already dyed by ethyl violet, iv light exposure can still break it and the lime can return to original white color, am I right? It is a photosensitive pigment, right?

Why it matters: old soda lime canisters may be poorly placed in a well lit area for some days, the whole thing would look good to use and then it could be once again connected to a anesthesia machine as if it was new, but it saturated and the color is lost.

Thanks for your insight on the subject.

Hey fellow chemists. I was extracting barium and strontium from ferrite magnets, i dissolved it in HCl and everything was going perfectly fine. then I thought I'd precipitate iron using zinc but due to my lack of experience, forgot to neutralize the acid, so it dissolved like 500grams of zinc. realizing my mistake, i neutralized everything using sodium carbonate to precipitate everything and let future me deal with extraction. now its future me talking. is there a way for me to electrochemically recover all the zinc to with minimum acid use? i was thinking to dissolve tiny amount in HCl again, electroplate zinc on cathode and somehow regenerate HCl to continuously pump fresh acid to dissolve more zinc carbonate? i dont want chlorine evolving, but I'm not sure how to achieve this. i dont want to use sulfuric acid as that would precipitate my barium and strontium without any chance to further use them in pretty much anything. any other alternative acid or alternative approach? any help is well appreciated. thanks.

Hi, I am just trying to study charge distribution in things that range from actin that's found in our cells to synthetic polymers such as PVC.

Is there any database, simulation, etc. that might help?

I can elaborate further if necessary, but I hope this is enough information!