Chemistry

Not the romantic kind, I mean the scientific kind! I just thought it would be fun to discuss things like elements and other aspects of chemistry here.

Has anyone ever heard of the "melting gallium spoon" prank? It's because gallium melts at a temperature that's around 84 degrees F, which is less than body temperature but more than typical "room temperature." So a prank I've heard of is to give someone a gallium spoon to stir their tea with, and if it's hot tea (or any other kind of hot drink), the spoon will melt into the drink! I think it melts in the fingers, too. Luckily I've heard it's pretty much non-toxic, unlike something like mercury. Here's a video of the gallium spoon thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaJ_Yxj9bG8

Chemistry is truly awesome. It's a pity I never studied it past High School level, I'd really like to try my hand at it sooner or later.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

There was once a couple of students in my class working with Cadmium sulfide suspended in an oil that polymerizes into a solid form when exposed to oxygen. Instead of using proper instruments for applying the solution, these students were actually using their bare fingers, ignorant of the carcinogenic properties of cadmium. When they failed to completely wipe away the materials, they went to the sink and flushed the toxic water into the sewage.

edited 6th Jun '11 7:26:43 PM by victorinox243

I once forgot to wear gloves when working with chromic acid. Then I spilled some on my hand and freaked out, remembering that chromic acid is carcinogenic. It stained my finger yellow and I think I spent all that month worrying that I'd get hand cancer.

Why use Gallium when you can play with Cesium?

I wonder if anyone's ever tried to stir tea with a cesium spoon.

edited 6th Jun '11 7:46:27 PM by storyyeller

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I think you would be able to tell by looking at their burned faces and hands.

how about material engineering, the practical side of chemistry? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5_n6bOuXkY

I always wondered, is it possible to prove chemistry with physics? Or is there still a mysterious gray area?

edited 6th Jun '11 9:28:29 PM by abstractematics

Now using Trivialis handle.

One time in Chemistry class we were boiling acid, which should be done under a fume hood, but we did not have enough fume hoods, so our T.A. was just like "Yeah, try not to breathe that in."

I once spilled acid on my hand, but it was just Citric Acid.

Yes, you can explain chemical behaviour through quantum mechanics. This is what Quantum chemistry does. I do not know much about the topic, but as far as I know it works pretty well — the main problem is that the computation cost of calculating "from scratch" the interactions between complex molecules gets insane pretty quickly.

edited 6th Jun '11 9:38:33 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

physics and chemistry kind of blur together when you start getting down to the subatomic level anyways. at that point you need a lot of physics knowledge to figure out what the electrons are doing.

I used to work at charging up lead-acid batteries for the Navy. They came dry, and you poured in anywhere from several cups to half a gallon of sulfuric acid into the things. A couple of times, when my hands got extra dirty from oil or grease, I'd use the sulfuric acid to wash my hands clean, and then do a dry rub of baking soda*

to neutralize whatever was left over.

Cleans like a charm. Also hurts worse than isopropyl alcohol when you get it in an open cut. Also, sulfuric acid when poured on a black widow dissolves their legs but leaves the body mostly intact while it leaks their insides all over the floor.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

Another interesting chemistry joke is to drink some water and then tell non-chemistry people "I just drank some dihydrogen monoxide!" Or else give someone a glass of water and tell them they drank "dihydrogen monoxide" after they've taken a drink. Another one is to make it sound like it's something dangerous like in this Snopes article:

http://www.snopes.com/science/dhmo.asp

Interesting how just calling something by its chemical name can make it sound scary! Although this case might sound scarier because more people might be familiar with "carbon monoxide poisoning" and so they might think that anything with "monoxide" in the chemical name is automatically dangerous.

edited 7th Jun '11 9:45:22 AM by Rainbow

Of course, if the person knows what kind of BS you are trying to pull, it just makes you an ass.

Well, no, it's not a very nice prank, although most pranks aren't very nice anyway. I can see how it would look stupid or insulting, or someone might be offended that they were panicked for no good reason.

About the cesium spoon thing mentioned at the start of the thread, I just looked it up and cesium melts at 82 degrees F, which is pretty close to gallium's melting point. Although in that case you'd have a spoon that would probably explode before it would melt if it was used to stir a hot drink.

edited 7th Jun '11 10:51:13 AM by Rainbow

The Dihydrogen Monoxide thing is so old, I'm surprised that not everyone's heard it yet.

Anyway, the melting point of Cesium is slightly lower than that of Gallium, though the joke was that it explodes on contact with water.

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I just thought it was interesting that it was another example of a metal that liquifies at a surprisingly low temperature. I knew it was soft but I thought it was interesting when I read that cesium also is an example of "melts in your hand" metal, though I doubt it would be safe to hold it bare handed.

I knew that Cesium had the lowest melting point above room temperature, I was just really surprised to discover that Gallium was so close behind it.

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Forgive me for necroing, but I thought this merits discussion.

Reading the Hellfire trope's real-life section introduced me to these two compounds. Never in my life has chemistry made me so terrified. I mean, they burn right through glass and water without oxygen's help.

And then I find that some apparently suicidal surely-a-Mad Scientist had tried to react the two togther. Allah have mercy upon us all.

edited 20th Apr '13 4:13:14 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Hydrofluoric acid (HF) is one of the few substances that can corrode silicon dioxide (SiO₂), of which glass is made out of. And these compounds easily turn into HF

edited 20th Apr '13 4:16:56 PM by SeptimusHeap

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Corroding glass is very different from setting glass on fire outright (and again, even in the absence of oxygen), and it's the latter that those two compounds do.

Did I mention that it does its no-oxygen combustion work on contact at room temperature?

edited 20th Apr '13 4:22:22 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Actually, it does a lot of its reaction well below temperature. Not sure about glass, though.

You're talking about dioxygen difluoride. The other compound, chlorine trifluoride, can do most if not all of its reactions at room temperature, and the former compound is explicity said to be even more reactive than it — apparently the only reason they cool it down to around -100 degrees celsius is because above that temperature it remains in a solid state, and also probably because if even at that temperature when it's supposed to have a lot less kinetic energy than normal, it's still quite prone to violent explosions^note Quoting A. G. Streng from 1962, Temple University: When 0.2 (mL) of liquid dioxygen difluoride was added to 0.5 (mL) of liquid methane at 90 K (-183ºC), a violent explosion occurred., then what would happen if they managed to react it with the same substances at room temperature?

edited 20th Apr '13 6:11:49 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Considering that the reaction does produce a lot of heat anyway, I don't think it would change as much.

My understanding is that the reaction wouldn't be much more vigorous, just more hairtriggered.

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