recursive

I have read the other posts about saltwater electrolysis, but I was still wondering a few things: First, how will I know what the product is and its purity without fancy equipment? I want to arrive at sodium chlorate, but not continue to sodium hydroxide. I also want to be able to get rid of most of the beginning NaCl. Plus, for electrodes, I have some gold-plated electrodes, some graphite ones (well, modified golf pencils...), some aluminum bars, some copper bars, slabs of bismuth, lead, blah blah blah... what can I actually use that isn't platinum? My aluminum did get eaten up on first try, but that's probably from the hydroxide more than anything else. What will work at least enough so that I can get a reasonable amount of reasonably pure chlorate? Thanks in advance!

Thanks. Would taking the experiment outside help?

Mmm, detonating gas. Well, I will make sure I don't breathe fire at any point during the experiment, but beyond that I don't know. I have seen/heard hydrogen balloons explode. Good way to get attention unless you are the hydrogen balloon... But really, I just won't inhale my piezoelectric sparker...

Hey c'mon, give me some credit man... I _did_ think of the HCL mist. But I know how to remove it: just run mah bubblez through some more water! You can absorb maybe 400 liters of hcl in one liter of water, so...that should work pretty well. Plus we're going to run out of helium in the next 50 years anyway...

Yeah, that's what I thought...I mean, as much as I love my gravity boots...

My other hobbies...would probably kill me faster... Well, I'm pretty good at not dying; I know I've risked invisible unpleasant death from chlorine gas in my basement. Also from battery acid in my face. And pure lithium metal. In my face... So I'm up for a challenge. We'll see...

Okay, but what's the difference then, why will h2 kill you but not helium? I know I've passed out from inhaling helium at least once...

There are so many easy ways to produce hydrogen gas. Aluminum and hydrochloric acid might be the easiest. But my question is: Is it safe to inhale hydrogen gas? Or do you just violently explode into a puff of random inexplicable dead-ness? I seriously couldn't find anything from perusing the rest of the the world wide internetwebs... So please answer or you will feel guilty when I explode from inhaling H2, with only the innocent intention of saying 'wasuuuup' in a high-pitched voice. Oh the horror! Egad! Thanks in advance, --who_needs_a_signature_when_your_name_is_already_written_next_to_your_post...--

Is this always what it's like when astronomers smoke too much pot?

I read that DMSO is produced industrially from vegetable matter or wood pulp. Is this an easy process? By 'easy', I mean soaking the veggies or wood or hay or whatever it is in a solvent and distilling. Also is it difficult to synthesize? I'm just trying to get some to play with, not medical grade or anything, just enough so that is is appropriate to call it dmso. So how can I do this without buying it from one of those kooky health places? And while I'm on the topic of solvents, how about acetaldehyde? It seems so simple, yet nothing I do gives me anything remotely acetaldehyde-ish... How do I synthesize it? edit: I think meant formaldehyde. Yeah...That's the word.

Ahh, okay... thanks. By 'proper temperature', what exactly do you mean? Is this a normal flame temperature? I haven't been able to find out exactly how hot a normal 99% ethyl alcohol lamp burns. It certainly gives me tall blue flames, so I guess it would indeed be hot enough. By the way, why did it turn brown before I finished heating it? I had some extra water in it that I was trying to boil off, and it was intensely brown and moderately viscous. There was a trace amount of iron filings in it, but that probably isn't what caused the brownification of my whatever-it-was. Baking soda is a great source, though. I'm glad it works because I have about a pound of it. I might try to do some electrolysis next. That will be fun! Okay, question: What is a good container to heat this in? Steel? Aluminum?

According to wikipedia, heating sodium bicarb gives you CO2 and sodium carbonate. Also, it says further heating will give you Sodium Oxide and water from thermal decomposition. This means that you should end up with sodium hydroxide. Will this actually work? I couldn't figure out what happened last time I tried because my test tube decided to shatter... I'm pretty sure I got some sort of alkaline solution because me hands felt soapy, like it usually does after handling a base. So...Anyone tried this? Does it actually do this? That would be really convenient!

I've been toying around with an apparatus for levitating my magnets of ownage (you know what I mean; neodymium rocks!). First off: Is it a better idea to try to levitate the silver dollars or the magnets themselves? I have a greater volume of silver, so I'm guessing I would levitate the magnets. Next: Since I don't have access to fancy building materials (obviously true; I would have bismuth otherwise...), how can I get a stable system of levitation set up? I've been just dangling magnets over the makeshift lump of silver coins and magnets. How can I improve upon my primitive method? By the way, anyone who hasn't tried this but has magnets and silver, just try waving the magnets past the silver. It's like rubbing it through maple syrup!

United Nuclear (unitednuclear.com) sells a good kit for this. It's 30 bucks, and it gives you some fantastic bismuth slabs and all the necessary magnets and stuffs.

Yeah. The problem with using another magnet to pull out splinters is that if they don't all align, I get a painful stabbing sensation, followed by... you get the point? I'm not terribly concerned. If my skin tries to grow over them, that would be interesting. Actually just using another piece of metal could work to get out the splinters, but it isn't strong enough usually.

Wow... Why the fux0rz would anybody want to amputate their own leg? AAAAAAAAAAAH! That was really strange and irrelevant. Anyway, I woke up this morning and noticed that little bits of neodymium magnet had still refused to get out of my fingers! I decided to see what would happen if I just leave it there. The only problem is the occasional neodymium splinter. FYI, metal splinters hurt like a biatch! And I am using a seriously primitive method of grinding my magnets up. 'Primitive' means bashing them up with a screwdriver. Hey, what do you expect from a n00b? Oh, and apparently it shouldn't be that bad to have NdFeB shrapnel in my hands. A medical report I read said it's mainly bad to get it in your lungs. But then again, maybe it wasn't the best idea to smoke it? Rofflz mai wafflz! (or something to that effect...) The 'subcutaneous' route, which means embedding it in your skin like a n00b or other such lowly form of animal life, is said to cause mild irritation. One interesting symptom i found is "walking on tip-toes with arched back." What the hell does that mean? Does it mean you think you're a cat? OMGWTFBBQ???!!??!!11!~!!!11eleven!!!11!1zlolcat!!11! So yeah. Well, humour me by responding!

Well, I really got myself into a mess here... I got this odd compulsion to crunch up some rare earth magnets into a powder to see if my neodymium dust would do anything interesting. I was hoping they would, for example, align themselves to form something stable on their own (it turns out you need to give it something to form on, and then you just end up with some funky graphite-looking stuff). It ended up attacking my skin. My question is this: Do I need to take precautions about neodymium toxicity or anything? Also, does anyone have any ideas about how to use ground-up rare earth magnet stuff? I was unable to find any good information about the toxicity levels of NdFeB magnets. All I found was that it hasn't really been studied. I probably should have been a bit more careful; now my hands look like they were attacked by a chimney. I guess if those weird people who implanted magnets in their fingers didn't die, then I should be okay. I hope I made sense!