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If you are looking for list that has at least some juridical power then search in various law databases. Also you may ask librarian in local library, do they have some printed material about laws and regulations on dangerous chemicals. Most expensive way is to go to law office and pay them for searching all the data you want.

If you are looking for list that has at least some juridical power then search in various law databases. Also you may ask librarian in local library, do they have some printed material about laws and regulations on dangerous chemicals. Most expensive way is to go to law office and pay them for searching all the data you want.

The question Gilded asks is much more complex than he may think. There are many things in the world about which no one exactly knows are these legal or not because these are somewhere near the border and legality depends greatly of context. When someone deals with such things and case goes to court then jurists most probably also do not know, is this legal or not and then they will argue with each other and look for earlier cases and will decide something and will prosecute you ( or decide that you are not guilty ) according to that decision. And even then one may appellate to higher court and arguing continues still furter. It is someway absurdic because you can't be wiser about the law than all the jurists are but so it is. Even if somewhere is list of illegal chemicals then there may be contexts where dealing with these, even if you are not licensed, is still legal. For leaarning purposes are many things legal that otherwise are'nt. Most useful information about legality may be data about similar precedents or court cases. Usually new cases go the same way as earlyer.

The question Gilded asks is much more complex than he may think. There are many things in the world about which no one exactly knows are these legal or not because these are somewhere near the border and legality depends greatly of context. When someone deals with such things and case goes to court then jurists most probably also do not know, is this legal or not and then they will argue with each other and look for earlier cases and will decide something and will prosecute you ( or decide that you are not guilty ) according to that decision. And even then one may appellate to higher court and arguing continues still furter. It is someway absurdic because you can't be wiser about the law than all the jurists are but so it is. Even if somewhere is list of illegal chemicals then there may be contexts where dealing with these, even if you are not licensed, is still legal. For leaarning purposes are many things legal that otherwise are'nt. Most useful information about legality may be data about similar precedents or court cases. Usually new cases go the same way as earlyer.

Yes, jdrug is right, but some oxides ( like Cr2O3 ) need preheating. Otherwise there will not be enough heat for reaction to continue. At high temperatures is thermite reaction possible even with sand (SiO2) and Al.

My worst mistake was probably testing for hydrogen in rather complex self made electrolyser that fortunately was made mostly of plastics. There was big bang and anything in about to 10m was sprayed with electrolyte that was not very diluted sulphuric acid plus ferric sulphate. I managed to wash may eyes and face at once and luckily had no wounds but clothes i weared got millions of small holes. Another bang was when heating boiling flask with oil bath on kitchen hotplate. It was years ago when i had not much experience yet and so i had no idea what may happen. Solution in the flask boiled a bit too much. Water got into the oil bath and part of oil flew ower the room another landed on hotplate and started to burn. Luckily i was some meters away when this happened.

You must take quite a lot of substances ( like 100g of KCl for 400ml water and then add there right qunatity of NaNO3 ). These will easyli dissolve if water is hot enough. K2SO4 can't be used because solubility of other product - Na2SO4 is even worse than that of KNO3. Seed may be needed for crystallisation to begin (but this usually is not the case). You can make seed by taking some trops of solution to piece of foil and leting it dry - with hair drier if needed, but do not put it into the solution before temperature is less than 10 C.

Possible decomposition of CaF2 my occur if it gets in contact with anything acidic especially in high temperatures. Normal environment contains always some acids. I think this is the thing those MSDS talk about but i am not sure. Teflon surely will decompose by heating but this probably is not the thing to play with. It may be fairly safe if decomposition products get instantly in contact with something they can react with. But otherwise it is very dangerous. Elemental fluorine can be made by electrolysis of molten mixture of KF and nonaqueous HF at 70...100 C. HF can be made by heating concentrated H2SO4 and CaF2 in led (!) retort. This all seems too dangerous and complicated to play with (although interesting to talk about.)

As much as i know CaF2 will not decompose by heating. It melts at 1418 C and should boil somewhere near to 2500 C. I have thought of making some fluorine or fluorides using teflon as source because it decomposes easyli at rather low temperatures. In normal conditions, when decomposing, it reacts with water and oxygen and makes some deadly gases but it may still be possible to get something useful of it. ( This is just an idea. )

Silicon can be extracted by thermite reaction using Al and SiO2. White sand is good enough but strong preheating is required.

Chlorine can also be made by mixing potassium permanganate or potassium bichromate with HCl.

Many other solvents are as good as water but water is cheapest and most throughly researched. Its not easy to find solublity data even for most common substances if you plan to use ethylene glycol or pyridine as solvent. Also environment hazards are much greater than in case of water.

Some barbeque starters are methanol. If it smells like fruit, burns with blue flame with no smut then it is almost certainly methanol but it usually contains some water.

If NaHCO3 reacts with H2SO4 in aqueous solution will it make NaHSO4 or Na2SO4? Are there other ways to make NaHSO4?

To original question: you may want to explore dangers of misuse of household chemicals. You can easily make some funny demonstrations.

Can one do anything interesting or useful with sodium aluminate? (it is byproduct of making hydrogen from NaOH, H2O and Al)

It is rather dangerous to burn hydrogen because it always mixes in some extent with air and usually it will make that same thing you described with mixture of H2 and O2. I have seen glassware going into pieces all over the room because hydrogen was not pure enough. You may better try such experiment. Take some soup plate pour your electrolyte there and add a drop of schampoon or soap. Sink electrodes and switch power on. Let bubbles get big enough, light a match and move it near to cathode to see what happens. Use only diluted acid as electrolyte becuse it may spray you all over. If you still want to burn bigger amounts of hydrogen its god idea not to use glass vessels for experimenting.

If you add it to acid you will got something like stronger acid. Explosion may result if concentrated H2O2 gets in contact with organic compunds because it is very strong oxidiser but i do not know has it ever used for pyro stuff by anyone.

Acids will eat almost everything if you add hydrogen peroxide into solution. You can also bleach some dyes with H2O2. Concentrated H2O2 is usually made by low temperature boiling in vacuum but it can also be done (in some extent) by freesing solution. Concentrated H2O2 is quite dangerous substance though. It can exploe if your lab kit is not clean enough and it is very caustic.

Try to dissolve as much as possible of Lo salt in almost boiling water. Then let it cool. Only KCl will crystllise because solubility of NaCl is almost independent of temperature but not so with KCl. This is classic way to separate these two salts.

Magnesium alloy pencil sharpeners are still available: http://www.bleistiftspitzer.com/Produkte.asp?Cat1=100&Cat2=200 I got two-hole sharpener ( exactly like pictured here ) from nearby supermarket. It was quite easy to scrap it with knife. Powder i got this way did what you expect of Mg. Note that you can test things for Mg by droping small quantities of vinegar onto it. Reaction is quite intense if metal is Mg, if metal is Al or Zn nothing happens.

Yellow color is probably due of iron or nickel ions that go into solution from those paper clips. In fact you can completely dissolve your anode this way.

Russians at 1950...1970 studied methods of making alkaline metals by electrolysis of non aqueous solutions. They did not get it quite for production because this method is like other metal plating and works well only with small currents. So its slow. Papers about those experiments are quite hard to find now. Some i still got. First experiments they did were with acetone. I do not know what salt they used but results where not satisfactory because acetone must be very cold not to react with Na too fast. Next they experimented with propylene carbonate (that is now used as electrolyte in lithium batterys, also as solvent in some desodorants) as solvent for NaClo3 and sayd that "sodium plating" they got with this solvent was of best quality. They also succeeded in making potassium this way. One more solvent they used was pyridine ( C5H5N ) for NaCl. It gave good results but is toxic. Dimetylformamide was also mentioned somewhere. This is almost all data i have. IMO this is at least worth experimenting because it may be much easyer and safer way to make alkaline metals in small lab. It may be that many other and easyer-to-get solvents will also do the work but problem is that most anorganic salts will not dissolve in organic solvents. (This is why we can not use molten candles as electrolyte) I try to buy propylene carbonate and maybe pyridine from my chemist soon and then we will see what happens.

There is one problem that no one mentioned so far. Boiling point of sodium is 883 C -thats to near to 800. Even if you can melt NaCl not heating it more than just needed your sodium will evaporate more rapidly than acetone at room temperature. Also it will oxidise almost instantly. When they produce sodium they make mixture of 42% NaCl and 58% CaCl to get melting point 505 C. Most convenient way to make sodium at home is probably by electrolysis of sodium chloride in some solvent that will not react with sodium. While it may be not very easy do get those solvents it does not need any heating or fast piking of sodium metal.

Of course this was Na2CO3. I was rather tired yesterday I still want someone to explain what happens and what does not hapen when one heats mixture of soda and some oxide mineral.