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…

I always wanted to know this! What is the real essence in saying -ous acid, -ic acid? And, if possible i want to know, whats the difference between, ite, ate, ide, etc? Thank you

Hi. Cannot find how to discern if an unmarked automobile wheel is magnesium or aluminium. Any sure way to test please ? If a drop of battery acid is applied to an alloy rim, what reaction, color, etc. is expected if aluminium or if magnesium ? Or any other simple way to tell ? Thanks, Miguel

Hey everyone, I have to figure out what prac I'm going to do as the big assessment for this year. The text books we use have many pracs, but the teacher says we must go further than what's asked from the textbook. So, flipping through the pages I see rates of reaction. I get an idea. What I want to do, is a prac which incorporates two main ideas: How concentration affects rate of reaction How temperature.. So, I would compare the two. (have many test tubes) But essentially: Have a test tube with high concentration and low temperature (lets say room temp). Have another test tube with the opposite: low concentration and high temperature. …

there`s been a few posts scattered all over the place with regards to this subject, myself included in these posters. I`m starting this one as a response to the Zinc powder and Sulphide, and other threads that skirt on this subject, as way of getting and keeping the others on topic again. thus far been discussed has been metalic sulphides, I`ll post the SFN thread URLs here as references a bit later. a note to Ice-Pheonix, with regards to the chats weve had in the forums about Zinc Sulphide in particular, there are other materials such as Strontium Aluminate (suposed to be even better!). they may be worth looking into as soon as I can build my stock of Strontium…

While experimenting with primary cells using aluminium, copper, and caustic soda both electrodes begin to gas under certain load conditions. It is common knowledge that the gas from the aluminium electrode must be hydrogen, but bubbles from the copper are larger, non-fizzy, and rise slowly through the elecrolyte. I assume it is oxygen, but researching the reaction between al and naoh gives some confusing answers, but nowhere is the production of oxygen mentioned. The copper does not appear to be consumed, and the electrolyte does not turn bluish. It is as if the "mystery gas" becomes dissolved in the electrolyte then adheres to the copper rather like dissolved air in…

from a paper: "While the redox properties of iron bound to Ins(1,2,3)P3 have not been studied, we observed in our potentiometric runs that Fe2+ in the presence of Ins(1,2,3)P3 and at pH 7 or above underwent ready oxidation (in an inert atmosphere) to Fe3+." of course i can guess/infer from the context what it means but where is the term "ready" in chemistry defined officially?

If you go to here: http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Cr/key.html (it's data about Cr, but that's not really what this is about) And scroll down a bit to the "WebElements Movie" there's an interesting video given to us by Sheffield Uni. I would like to know more about this reaction, focusing on the why part of the 'snakes' being formed (watch the video if you don't know what I mean). I know that traditionally ammonium dichromate makes a volcano effect which is visible here and I'm guessing there were 3 "mercuric" (wouldn't it just be mercury?) thiocyanate pellets as there were 3 'snakes'. Questions: 1) Why do the snakes form? What w…

I'm doing water electrolysis, i have got the appartus from the lab. I used electric adapter converts AC to DC and vise versa...What i realized the procces is too slow like it will take day to seperate hydrogen and oxygen, any reason why? So, i used salt as catalyist and the constant was 20 min. I have done 3 experiments to see the effects on effeciancy on electrolysis: using different rods, temprature of water, and voltage. I wanted to measure the amount of hydrogen that is in tube?? ANYONE KNOWS HOW.. And anyone knows any other reason why the color of water changes other than salt? what i think but im not sure, the rod is also taking reaction not only salt, if t…

Hi. What interesting thing to do with it ? It's a light green powder in a glass vial; the box is marked as "radium" and intended to mix with a clear glue also supplied in the kit. Am still alive (I think) after that stuff has been in my house for 30 years. Miguel

thank you very much!

Hi everyone Rapid question: Imagine a reaction between a 0,4 M NaOH-solution and a 0,2 M HCl-solution with equal volume. What are the concentrations then of Na(+), OH(-), Cl(-) and H(+) at equilibrium? Tried to put up a table with initial quantity, difference and rest, but can't go further... HCl + NaOH --> NaCl + H2O 0,2 0,4 0 0 0,2 0,2 0,2 0,2 0 0,2 0,2 0,2 Can anyone help me? Thanks! F. EDIT: I could sove it like this: HCl --> H(+) + Cl(-) 0,2 0 0 0,2 0,2 0,2 0 0,2 0,2 NaOH --> Na(+) + OH(-) 0,4 0 …

Hello. I am by no means a science expert. Just a really worried mom hoping to get some information from people who know a thing or two about chemistry and perhaps it’s effects on the human body. I recently read a report where one of the laundry detergents I have been using for my baby’s clothes contains 10,000 ppb of 1,4 dioxane, which is apparently the maximum amount recommended as considered “safe” in these types of household products. Based on the fact that I’ve been using it since my child was born, I’m nervous that this is a significant amount for a child. I know it can be absorbed via skin or inhalation amongst other ways. Does anyone know how much…

Hello, can I purify the potassium nitrate from this fertilizer? 14-5-38 nitrogen(N): 14% phosphate(P2O5): 5% potash (K2O): 38% Boron: 0,014% chelated copper: 0,011% chelated iron: 0,07% chelated manganese: 0,035% molybdenum: 0,007% chelated zinc: 0,035% Chelating agent (ethylene damine tetraacetate): 1% Thanks.

I was just wondering about the reaction of soft-acids and soft bases. Like generic acid/base reaction give a salt and water/neutral species, does soft acid and soft bases give a salt or they would give an adduct/complex? Lets say that the soft base is NMe3 and soft acid is a diradical oxgen molecule. Is this similar to the reaction between ammonia and diradical oxygen which goes like this 4NH3 + 5O2 -------> 4NO + 6H2O? Second question is more of a thought really. Why do we want to look for electrons when we look at an atom. I am asking this question as a quantum mechanics student. Does position or state of an electron give us all the information about a wh…

2Mg + 2NaOH -> 2MgO + 2Na + H2 Aqueous solution of NaOH or something else?

Hi, my laboratory specifies particularly that we use 38% HF as a standard to carry out QC checks on our titration equipment. Anyone knows what is the significance of HF at 38% concentration? It is because i have tons of stock HF at 50% and 49% and thus i would rather use 50% to directly carry out the check than preparing 38% HF from 50% HF then carrying out the QC check. So i want to know what is so special about HF at 38%?

The Periodic table of elements may be arranged in 3 dimensions as a stepped pyramid. Each chemical element is represented as a cubic block. The Janet Periodic Table aka the “Left Step” Periodic Table may be re-arranged into four square matrices. Each matrix is a different size. Each cell within a matrix represents an atomic element. A cell may be represented in 3 dimensions as a cube. The matrices may be stacked vertically so the “cores” (2x2 cells) are aligned vertically. The result is a “stepped pyramid” (Pyramid Table). One element is associated with each cube. The location of any cube within the structure is defined by location numbers. The atomic number of an…

Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me out here. My chem book says that there are 88 naturally occuring elements... but other places say 90, or 92, or 83! Does anyone know what the 88 are and how they distinguish "naturally occuring" ? Thanks!

Some solvation reactions are quite energetic (either endothermic or exothermic). Does it allow us to create an energy storage (similar to battery) in which energy would be generated when metal atoms pass to a solution through an ion-conducting membrane? If yes, how much energy may we expect to obtain and what about reverse-ability?

One of the final issues that I am trying to resolve is the KNO3 for the nitric acid. The sulfuric i can pick up in 12M quantities at lowes. The idea is to make everything from ingredients available at common stores, so ebay or pre-purified KNO3 are not what I'm looking for. I was thinking saltpetre if I can find it. I read that it is around 94% KNO3 and I was wondering how I could purify it; would simply heating it in water, decanting, and filtering work? I don't think it should be dangerous at all, if I'm not mistaken KNO3 doesn't melt until up in the 300's ©. As always, the help is appreciated. -Doug

I want to share with you a nice experiment with a colored gas, which contains chromium. It looks like bromine, but in reality it is a very volatile metal-compound! http://81.207.88.128/science/chem/exps/volatile_chromium/index.html Have fun. If you repeat the experiment, please be very careful. The gas is really toxic!

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density This wiki page says the "specific energy" of Hydrogen is 123. What is the specific energy of all the elements on the periodic table? It also says the energy density of Hydrogen gas is 0.01005. What is the most dense you will find Hydrogen in the largest possible gas giant(just before it would be considered a brown dwarf star? If your able to answer this for all the gases on the periodic table, even better. http://www.periodictable.com/Properties/A/Density.html This page says the density of Titanium is 4.507, it also says the density of Carbon in graphite form is 2.26 while the density of diamond(also carbon) is 3500.…

Ok, I've never done this before (use a forum website). I'm in school and we have to conduct our own demonstrations for 4th graders. I am using liquid gallium an I want to pass an electric current through it using immersed electrodes. However I don't know what electrodes to use as I know gallium isn't exactly "friendly" with most other metals. I don't know what materials it might be friendly with. So what electrodes should I be using. I'm in middle school and very new to this.