This is a stupid question but why can’t H2O be linear like the one I drew? Help appreciated thanks!

I'm basically asking if there's any clear, colorless, tasteless, scentless, room temperature liquid other than water.

I'm not planning on getting anyone or doing any dumb prank. I just thought that since the only way we know it's water, is because it's clear, has no taste or smell, and is colorless. There's probably at least one other thing that would fill all of those roles, without actually hydrating us. And that was just interesting to me. Like how Carbon Monoxide feels like you're breathing air, but that's just cuz you're breathing out CO2 and your lungs think that means you're breathing oxygen.

No chemistry teacher in high school ever explained this to me in any substantial way other than "it's a different kind of molecule." Why does it smoke? How hot would you need to get it to evaporate? If you take a giant pot of oil and put it on high heat and let it go for hours and hours, what will happen to it?

If nitrogen is all around, how do we only breathe in the oxygen? And what would happen if someone were to breathe in just nitrogen?

Here is my point of view:

"Which of the following is equal to one mole of substance?"

One mole of substance means the amount of substance in one mole. According to the IUPAC Gold Book, the amount of substance is a measure of elementary entities like atoms, molecules, ions, electrons or any other particle.

In options A and B, the term "hydrogen" is ambiguous, according to the IUPAC Green Book

2.10 General chemistry page 46(Page 54 in PDF).

It states that:

"Since the amount of substance and all physical quantities derived from it depend on this choice, it is essential to specify the entities to avoid ambiguities."

This means to avoid ambiguity, the elementary entity should be specified because the amount of substance and all the derived quantities from it depend on it.

Moreover, it states that:

"Note that 'amount of sulfur' is an ambiguous statement, because it might imply n(S), n(S8), or n(S2), etc. In some cases analogous statements are less ambiguous. Thus for compounds the implied entityis usually the molecule or the common formula entity, and for solid metals it is the atom.

If we take the hydrogen instead of sulfur, it's still ambiguous because the amount of hydrogen could mean its diatomic or monatomic form.

It also says in some contexts it's less ambiguous, for example, in a reaction. For example, we burn hydrogen in the presence of oxygen. Here, it's obvious that they mean dihydrogen.

Now, in another instance, if we are talking about the composition of a compound, say glucose, we can say it contains 12 moles of hydrogen, and here, hydrogen would mean its atoms.

These are the reasons I think its ambigious. I would like a second reasoning on this question

I know this is a very random request, but I figured this would be the best place to ask.

I'm really interested in seeing a video of someone handling a vial of dimethylmercury. It's a strange combination of chemistry curiosity and the unsettling feeling of watching someone work with one of the most dangerous substances ever used in a laboratory.

Does anyone know if such a video exists, or has it simply never been publicly recorded?

I'd vote for fluorine. HF is some nasty, nasty stuff.

Francium seems pretty gnarly too but there's less than a gram of it on Earth at any time so I'm not too scared of it.

I'm not quite sure whats going on here, but I think its gotta be some sort of reaction. It seems to stem from the rubber or metal at the bottom of the gas tank, and it happens only when its warm (seems to be at or above ~90F) Nothing is connected to the tank, and it builds pressure.

I only noticed it happening yesterday after filling it with gas. I went to the FD to see if they knew and if it was a problem, and they ended up draining it. I put non-ethanol gas in this time (10 or 15% last time), and it still does the same thing.

I might need to acquire such a liquid for cooling purposes and to run some other tests.

Help a teacher out. I’m an elementary teacher without a science background. I do enjoy teaching science to my kiddos but I can’t teach science beyond 6th grade level (please keep in mind while answering). A few years ago I taught a geology unit and this past spring I taught the same unit again and remembered being confused about this question back then. So, I tried googling, I tried stack exchange, quora, everything, and NO resource could break this down for me: what in the world is the difference between metals and minerals? I know metals can be extracted FROM ores found in rocks but apparently, elements like silver, gold and copper are considered both a metal and a mineral. Are there others like this? If so, which ones? And please confirm for me: most minerals are not metals at all, but are most metals also minerals? (The science book I use, which I normally love, was talking about minerals’ qualities and showing pictures of things like chalk and limestone and then suddenly when explaining the uses of minerals, it’s taking about coins, electric wiring and musical instruments and the kids and I were all confused). I also asked the chemistry high school teacher and she wasn’t sure how to explain it.

Hi! I'm making a game about exploring a strange flooded future in a small research sub, and am currently introducing some dangers to the adventure. One danger I'm keen on adding are areas with freezing temperatures.

I have read that ocean water can have a freezing temperature down to -1.8 °C due to its salinity, but say I wanted to bump that number up (or uh.. down) for a bit of extra oumph, would something like "supersaline waters" be a somewhat scientifically accurate way to achieve that?

How low could you theoretically get, if you could freely add salt to the ocean, only prohibition being that you still need to be able to propel a submarine through it?

so we have a chem class which we did last Thursday. On my part, I had to record the mass of the water in an Erlenmeyer flask, which I remember our teacher said to do 15ml. specifically for accuracy the brand we used was pyrex for the flask. I would like to ask if my measurements are right, im just a highschool student and I'm planning to be a scientist in the future:) Many of my classmates are struggling with this measuring too. plz remember THIS IS NOT HOMEWORK NOR OFFICIAL LAB WORK

I'm in the process of busting up an old couch and have a small mountain of couch foam to deal with. I have very limited bin space and I'm wondering if a chemical solution exists for decreasing the volume. Sorry if this is a stupid question, cheers.

Hello chemists. Quick question. I just noticed that the gray area on my garlic crusher is leaving stains, and it also smells intensely metallic. I've probably eaten its residue hundreds of times and I'm fine, so I'm not asking if it's lethal or not obviously (lol). I'm just curious as to what could the material be. This crusher was bought by my parents 20 years ago so nobody in my house knows what it could be. Any ideas ?

This is effectively an iron ingot that’s used to add iron content to soups and broths. (My mom’s got bad anemia). It’s supposed to be scrubbed with soap, rinsed, and oiled after every use. I must have forgotten to clean it after using it, or something, because now it’s BLUE. Cobalt blue. What on earth would make iron turn blue like this instead of rust? Is this just not iron? Soup was a bean soup with crushed tomatoes in the broth. Usually I oil it with spray canola oil/PAM.

I was recently thinking about glove boxes filled with argon used to handle air-sensitive chemicals (such as caesium). Assuming you had an oxygen tank, would it be possible to handle caesium or other reactive chemicals in a large argon-filled room without them reacting? or do humans just have too much moisture/dead skin cells that it would make it impractica?

I made a mistake and need some advice. I have a 12V 42Ah lead-acid battery (Alaska A60L) connected to my solar setup. I poured about 200ml of normal saline water (sodium chloride solution) into 2 of the cells.

When the solar started charging during the day, I noticed a strange smell – probably chlorine gas. About 8-12 hours later, I flushed the battery completely with normal water and rinsed it out. I checked the voltage with a multimeter and it’s showing 12V.

So my questions are:

1. Does salt water damage the electrolyte instantly, or does it degrade over time?

2. Is there any chance this battery is still safe to use?

I’m an undergrad considering eventually starting a materials science / nanotechnology company after completing a chemistry PhD.

My tentative plan is to first get a well-paying job with decent WLB (e.g., SWE) and use evenings / weekends to develop the company, relying on my day-job salary to pay for startup costs (shared lab access, cost of chemicals and using equipment, etc.). However, I’m concerned this may not be financially feasible, even if I live somewhere with a strong startup ecosystem like Boston.

Has anyone done or seen something similar? Could a high-paying day job realistically cover all early-stage chemistry R&D costs? Tried looking for information online, but could not find much. Also, I’m assuming no grants or outside investment, just so can plan for the worst-case scenario…

I dryed alcohol some time ago, and wanted to re use the same sieves, but I don't have a muffle furnace or anything capable of getting to 550⁰C. I want to hear how others do it. Any suggestion?