Chemistry Blog

Cake From Lab Chemicals

The Nottingham crew that has brought the entertaining hair-stylings of Martyn Poliakoff with their series of Youtube videos on each element in the periodic table (periodicvideos.com) has celebrated its first birthday. In honor of the occasion they made a cake out of lab chemicals. The only non-hazardous labeled materials used were butter and eggs, which are impossible to find an appropriate lab substitute.

Although chemists don’t have a chemistry rock star, Youtube has made Martyn Poliakoff as close as we’ll get. Unless someone is bold enough to go the Paris Hilton route.

Safety Notes: The cake baker, Samantha Tang, has no gloves on although she has a lovely accent and introduces me to a new interjection, “Pants!” In the background there are other lab workers without lab coats and their personal protective equipment.

Phil first covered the website earlier this year: The Periodic Table of Videos

Mitch

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Safety Chat: Nitric Acid Waste

We’re going to be taking time out of our regular blogging schedule to remind everyone about better lab safety practices. Recently at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory someone poured isopropanol into an acid waste container of aqua regia. Aqua regia contains nitric acid, and the reaction for those unfamiliar with nitric acid’s oxidizing power is thus,

Due to the pressure in the waste container, the bottle blew and spewed its golden goodness throughout the room. It fractured the safety sash, and could have really hurt someone.

The lessons you should take home:

• Get rid of strong oxidizing acid waste as you generate it.
• Do not trust others near your waste bottles. Don’t let others add to them.
• If you generate strong acid wastes, probably a good idea that everyone from the undergrads and lab techs to the postdocs are made aware of the incompatibility of organics and nitric acid. You can’t expect chemists to have this knowledge anymore.

Mitch

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Consolidating Chemistry Labs

Our lab is consolidating into 2/3 of the space we once had to make room for a new faculty hire starting this fall. That means finding room for all the things that used to fit in much more space. We started by consolidating our inorganic shelves by combining duplicate containers and submitting waste for things we’ll never need.

All of which allowed the opportunity to uncover some really, um, interesting bottles of things.

Talc.  Maybe we’ll refinish our lab counter tops.

Chunk marble.  Seriously.  Quarter sized chunks of marble.  In a labeled bottle.

But the best…..

Oh… 50-75 milliletrs of elemental mercury.  Nice.

Have a great week, everyone.

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Shifting Constants

“]One of the first things that pops up in chemical education at the high school level is stoichiometric equations where a student is supposed to determine such things as yields, coefficients, and amounts of substance on a purely theoretical basis. This quickly becomes old hat for many students. In high school, my stoichiometric technique (if you could call it that) left a lot to be desired. I tended to “divine” my answers on tests and quizzes by playing with numbers until an answer made sense- then using it. It worked surprisingly well- and I got through classes learning very little but with decent grades. At the time, I wasn’t terribly interested in chemistry, and the class really was boring up until the end, where we got to learn about electrochemistry. I didn’t realize at the time that the subject matter wasn’t being done any justice. To me a mole was a mole was a mole. I just knew there were these numbers that I used to divine answers.

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Oxygen, the “Gilligan” of the Periodic Table [Video]

The video was made by Christopher Hendryx as his thesis for Ringling College of Art & Design.
Link: http://vimeo.com/4433312

Mitch

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Survivor: Mechanisms (now accepting logo submissions)

I read an interesting article in May’s issue of J. Chem. Ed. titled “Can Reaction Mechanisms Be Proven?” by Allen Buskirk and Hediyeh Baradaran of BYU.  Intriguing.  So I pop open the pdf and a Note from the Editor is boxed at the top of the page before the article starts.  It says:

“Can Reaction Mechanisms Be Proven?” generated spirited responses from its reviewers. The reviews were approximately evenly divided, and all were of very high quality. The authors agreed with the editor’s proposal that the reviewers convert their reviews into rebuttals or affirmations of the authors’ position for publication along with the article, which has been revised based on the reviews. Most agreed to such a process and their comments appear here. We hope that publication of this paper and well-reasoned rebuttals such as those provided here will initiate a wide-ranging discussion. JCE will provide an online forum for further discussion of the issue. Our hope is that both faculty and students will contribute their opinions and ideas to this discussion. -JWM

Huh.  You don’t usually hear about that happening too often.  So now I had to read the article.  It’s pretty fascinating, and I encourage you to read it all.  I’ll summarize and give my thoughts below the jump

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My Attempt At a Periodic Table

Inspired by azmanam’s recent post, Alternative Periodic Tables, I’ve decided to make my own periodic table. I freely admit I didn’t improve much on the old Mendeleev design. The only unique difference with this table is the color coding for the valence electrons

The Basics
s-blocks are blue, d-blocks are green, p-blocks are shades of purple-pink, f-blocks are red. Black are for the elements that have never been studied chemically.

The Exceptions
The d-metals that are missing an s-electron in their octet are teal (green + blue). The f-metals that have an extra d-electron are brown (green + red). The super brights Palladium and Thorium gained or lost two electrons not in their native octet.

It was always difficult for me to remember where in the periodic table the electron configurations do not conform to what I would naively assume. I would hope this type of periodic table keeps it more in the mind of students.

Mitch

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Alternative Periodic Tables (Updated. Now with a Final Thought!)

There’s an article in the current issue of Nature Chemistry that discusses some alternative ways of depicting the periodicity of the elements. There’s the IUPAC recognized Mendeleevian periodic table that everyone knows. There’s probably 3 in eyesight of you right now, isn’t there?
(click for larger)

d

d

d

But how many alternative periodic tables can you think of.  Hint: there’s A LOT.  More below the jump.

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