Inorganic Chemistry

We frequently get amateur chemists posting here thinking they have found a way to make themselves some sodium, which they see as incredibly exciting because it reacts with water. Most of these methods involve electrolysis. Let me explain, once and for all why this idea is wrong and foolish: 1) The reduction potential of sodium is very negative. This means that it likes to be Na+ and doesn't like to be Na at all. However, water has a much smaller reduction potential, and will easily be reduced to give hydrogen gas and hydroxide ions. The difference between the reduction potentials is so enormous that you will NEVER make sodium by reducing a sodium salt in water. You do h…

The hobby of the noble; collecting every naturally occurring element. As a hobby it's an expensive one, but hey, atleast there's not a steady flow of new ones like there is with stamps, trading/gaming cards and such. I must admit that I have just started and don't really have any elements but my radium and tungsten sample are on their way. Any fellow collectors?

i once saw an experiment with H202 which made me remeber the name... it must have been something cool but now i cant remember what, Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is something you can buy at the drug store. What you are buying is a 3-percent solution, meaning the bottle contains 97-percent water and 3-percent hydrogen peroxide. Most people use it as an antiseptic. It turns out that it is not very good as an antiseptic, but it is not bad for washing cuts and scrapes and the foaming looks cool. so knowing this, assuming its cheap; 1) what can i do with hydrogen peroxide H202? 2) how can i seperate it from the water? evaporation?

how do you make nitric acid using potassium nitrate and sulphuric acid

Can anyone give me some help on how I could effectively and efficiently make HCl ? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

what other type of thermites are there except the iron oxide and aluminium one and what ratio are they mixed in

Hello, I'll make this story short, I'm successfully bottling hydrogen at home using a bucket of water, an upside down gatorade bottle and a car battery charger, I'm sure you know how the setup looks. Anyways, all of that aside I'm using salt to boost the conductivity of the water. Only thing is my water is turning green/orange and it is building up orange substance everywhere, does anyone have a guess to what this is?

If a H+ ion is needed in all acidic compunds and the more H+ ions you have the more acidic something is. If you had a beaker of pure H+ ions, i.e protons, in theory, would this be the most acidic thing possible; and if so would it react even with noble gases and platinum etc.

(This is a completely different topic from Edwards) My friend once told me that during the Gulf war, US government issued uranium bullets to its soldiers. After the war, there was so much spent ammo in that soil in Iraq and Kuwait, that it was unsafe to inhabit, so our government just buried all of it in a layer of sand. This story sounded absurd to me, but is it even possible to make uranium bullets, and were they ever commisssioned for use in arms?

hey i head somewhere that you can make sulfuric acid from sodium bisulfate... this is pretty impure, does anyone have any other ways to make sulfuric acid or find a way to perfect this method?

If you had to choose ... who would be the King of the Elements ? In other words, what is your favorite element ? You can pick just ONE element. Maybe, if everyone has answered, we can nominate an element to become the King of The Periodic Table My King would be MERCURY ! The only liquid metal by room temperature, so dense and shining grey. Special but toxic. Beautiful but expensive

first, can anybody tell me where i can obtain KCl without a perscription? secondly, can anybody here tell me how much lithium i could obtain from one lithium battery? thirdly, can anybody tell me how i could do the replacement reaction that follows? KCl+Li->K + LiCl

Either today or later this week I will be receiving 60 grams of Gallium to add to my collection. Right now, I have my meager amount of gallium in a 20 mL vial as a solidified blob. My 60 grams of Ga will be arriving as two 30 gram buttons. So my task will be to melt the Ga and pour it into the glass vial where I will need to resolidify it. The problem is, Ga expands as it freezes so if I freeze it too quickly it may crack the glass vial. I'm pretty sure that it won't crack, however, since there will be plenty of room for it to expand upward if it needs to. (It's like a bottle of soda. A full bottle of soda will explode if it freezes because the liquid inside will e…

please could you tell be how to make aluminium powder at home

If any of you have any ideas about extracting or obtaining Tin metal here`s the place to discuss it. I have one, it involves using 60/40 Tin/Lead solder, melt it untill all the solder flux has burned off, then dissolve it in acid, from there simple displacement should provide the Tin, or at least that`s the plan. on the electromotive series, does anyone know which comes 1`st Tin or Lead in reactivity? or can improve upon my method at all? I only need half a gram or so, so the whole thing can be done in a test tube quite easily and no fancy equipment is needed. Ideas Welcome

I am planning on making some electrolyte solution for an electroplating experinment. I have one question, How can I make copper sulfate, or a sulfate of any metal from simple household items?

would this work? (1) electrolysis water, collect hydrogen in flask [above cathode - negative] (2) hydrogen is lighter than air so the hydrogen should stay in the flask [if the flask is upside down]: (3) light match and immeditaely turn flask with hyrdogen the right way up so that the hydrogen comes up and catches fire [from the match] will you have a slow but sure mini flamethrower? or will it all go up in flames at once? or will it not work?

1, How do you test a substance whether it is or not water, chemically? 2, When Water and Phosphorus Tribromide are reacted, what reagent is water here? above are the questions that apear in my exam, and I have already done, but just want to see how you other will solve it. Albert

I'm having trouble igniting my thermite. I'm using magnesium ribbon as fuse, which is what most people use, so I'm guessing that it has to do with the ratio of aluminum powder to rust. I don't have a scale of any sort so I used the densities to calculate the approximate volumetric ratios which came out to be (I may have miscalculated) about two parts of rust to one of aluminum. What am I doing wrong?

I have a quick question. I would like to remove the copper coating from a modern U.S. Penny in order to obtain the zinc inside, but with the form of a penny. Is there any easy, relatively safe, way to remove the copper without damaging the zinc? I was thinking of electro-plating the copper off of it, but I figured that the zinc would react with the copper and displace it from solution. Is there a simple chemical way? Could I just soak the penny in bleach, and every day or so take it out and remove the copper chloride/hypochlorite that builds up on the surface until all the copper is gone? I'm just having some cerebral flatulence with this one.

Today I tried the following experiment: 20% HCl+NaOH+NaClO3(the latter 2 were in a solution of draino) I distinctly remember it turning white and fizzing as the HCl was added. I also remember faintly smelling (i ran the other way after adding the HCl) a strange odor. Then I coughed a few times (nothing bad). Was the gas produced Cl2? Could somebody write out the reaction? Personally, I think it's HCl+NaOH->NaCl+H2O Of course, I say this assuming the NaClO3 doesn't react.

What is the most efficient way to create Hydrogen and Oxygen gas from the electrolysis of water? I have done much research on the internet in this area, though what scare information i found of any value came from basic science experiments done by elementary school children. This distressed me much, as I wish to try and find an effeicent way to electrolysize water into hydrogen and oxygen for an experiment I am conducting. My reasearch and limited knowlege on the subject has turned up several facts, the authenticity of which i cannot be 100% sure of. 1) Use of NaCl (table salt), Baking soda, or Sulfuric acid in an aqueous solution will increase production of e…

is there anyway to speed this reaction up at all? I`ve one reaction going for 2 years now, and I had a look today and I finaly have FeCl2 crystals. ok it was from when I was on holliday by the sea and tied a string of large powerfull magnets to a rock as the tide came in and collected the particles that stuck to it, they were washed and put in a sealed jar along with 30% HCl. now I have 30% HCl and old iron screws in there, other than making them look a little cleaner, there`s no visible signs of a reaction, I added a few drops of Nitric acid to this (literaly 3 drops in 100ml of HCl) hoping something would "kick-off", Nada I don`t want to warm it up as that…

Does anyone knows how I could make some Bromine with Sodium Bromide and sulfuric acid and MnO2. I also need to know wich glassware I have to use. (It should be done in a lab).

Greetings I've been reading a few posts down about separating KClO3/O4 from match heads. i get it all except for this part 4. Boil it some more, until the potassium chlorate/perchlorate starts to form i dont get it. Will the boiling create some big blob of this stuff or what. Thnx LP Aspirin