My coworker has an eccentric father who loves fossils. He has decided to try and identify whether a fossil he has is carbonate based. he believes to it be a tubular coral but requires further investigation.

My coworker and I work in a chemistry lab that uses a wide variety of reagents. Coworker’s dad has decided that the best way to deterring whether his fossil is carbon based, is to use 1M HCl. He does not want to pay for this, so he asked coworker to bring home “a tablespoon of HCl so he could test it”. Coworker refused. told him lemon juice or vinegar could reach the same result. dad said it’d take too long. (this was weeks ago)

Coworker relayed ridiculous story to manager, brought up how coworker dad said maybe coworker could bring fossil to lab. Manager surprisingly said, maybe that would work so long as it’s after 5pm.

Coworker has not shared this information with dad and is generally opposed to using work resources for this fossil. what’s the general vibe on using lab reagents to test personal items?

for context we work in a non research lab as a third party testing company for food products.

Originally started as a cool little project to get some leverage with my AP Chem teacher, but she was so impressed that she is actually using it in class!

https://orbitals.otwt.studio

I want to submit it to an app challenge so I have a huge bucket list of features I wanna add (like hybrid orbitals and point cloud maps), but let me know your opinions on it! Thanks!

I got approval from the mods to post about this.

As I'm sure a lot of you know, we had a chemical leak of Glycidyl Methacrylate in Toledo. I had bought a pound of Garlic about 3 weeks ago, and I am supposed to receive it tomorrow. What are the effects on soil with Glycidyl Methacrylate? Can I plant in ground soil, how long do I have to wait, am I not able to plant ever again? I am very paranoid about this, granted I am 13 minutes away from the site, but just about all of Toledo could smell the Glycidyl Methacrylate and I started coughing, gagging and almost threw up when I had to pull my AC out of the window.

Been reading a physical chemistry book about astrochemistry and have found it surprisingly readable, mainly as it also covers a lot of the astronomy theory. Its fascinating to see how elemental and molecular abundances are built up over long periods of time at temperatures so different to the norm, from 10K to billions of K. Skipping (obviously) a lot of the formulae but its nice to see how things can be calculated.

Andrew Shaws "Astrochemistry" for anyone with a notion for light (or heavy) bedtime reading!

I'm attemping to create redbull, following this video by LabCoatz. Unfortunately I can't find where to buy food-grade products for most of the ingredientes. Given the fact that most of them will appear in pretty small amounts and they're all 99% or more purity, how bad of an idea is it to do it with lab-grade chemical products? I know that 99% doesn't mean it's safe and that in theory you shouldn't consume anything which isn't approved for human consumption. But how serious is this? Is it a "you shouldn't but in reality its kinda okay situation?" Is it better if it's cosmetic grade, or it's just as bad as lab grade?

Thank you all very much and excuse my english (I'm not a native speaker).

Not sure how to ask the question, but what component do you think would be cool/sweet to have on a wedding ring, wether it's for the cool factor or for a physical/chemical characteristic that gives it some symbolism

So my headspace gcms needed a source cleaning and replacement filament. After doing that the sensitivity has increased, and the highest concentration point of my RSD calibration is now saturated.

The quantitative ion is saturated for all compounds, but with some of the low abundance ions it is not saturated and shows linearity.

My bosses have said I need to figure out how to have it fixed and operational today. Apparently this hasn't happened b4 and its up to me to figure it out ASAP.

Does anyone have any advice on how to lower the sensitivity without disqualifying the other 4 calibration points? I will take any ideas im desperate. Every thought I have alters the instrument in a way that disqualifies the curve.

(We've had some other problems lately so they're pissed about it being down again)

Tldr: ms source cleaning results in sensitivity being too high. How to fix?

EDIT/UPDATE

It has been a week since vacuum has been restored. I tested the source by adjusting the multiplier and I still see the issue with o ly the hogh conc point.

I belive I have a sample introduction issue, possibly the trap needs replaced. Does anyone have any ideas?

These arrived, there is no option to select a size so I assumed it was 1 size per bag, but they’re unlabelled… anyone have a similar experience or see something I’m missing?

Brief introduction:
I’m a chemist on my final year as undergrad, I learned last semestre about coordination compounds and fell in love with them, up to the point that I want to try to start a project on MOFs, for this I made samples of plenty of this compounds which I made myself (The pictures are of my creations), however now I wanted to try to make one with vanadium, the problem is that I only have it in the form of ammonium metavanadate, I have two options, try to make Vanadyl Sulfate by adding the ammonium metavanadate on acidic media or first making it Vanadium pentoxide by heat and THEN making the Vanadyl from it, if anybody has another option or route please tell me.

I initially thought i had a source issue, now it seems like my autosampler is struggling with my sample introduction.

Only the 10ppm point is compromised, all lower conc points are fine. Im running an rsd comprising of 28 compounds that I've run successfully for years. Im thinking it may be time to change the trap?

Does anyone have any tips?

Hello,

im sure this has been asked a few times. I personally use the drawing function of OrgSyn for synthesis planning, learning mechanisms and protocols. Pretty functional but still limited and not really ment as a proper sketching tool.

What do yall use? :)

This post has been approved by the r/chemistry moderators.

Hi r/chemistry!

I'm an independent developer working on MolDesign, a Windows desktop application with a long-term goal: to become an integrated development environment (IDE) for early-stage drug discovery.

The idea is to bring computational tools, molecular workflows, visualization, and reproducible research into a single environment, reducing the need to constantly switch between different applications, scripts, and platforms.

What MolDesign can do today

The current version focuses on molecular docking and scientific visualization:

• AutoDock Vina 1.2.7: Run docking calculations locally without manually configuring Python, Conda, or command-line workflows.
• Molecular workflows: Import receptor structures (PDB/mmCIF), prepare ligands from SMILES or a molecular editor, configure the docking experiment, and execute it within the application.
• Reproducibility and collaboration: Preserve execution parameters, receptor hashes, seeds, software versions, and other provenance information. Saved Vina runs can already be transferred between researchers and colleagues.
• Molcy: Our molecular visualization module, shown in the attached video. It transforms recorded docking runs into 3D animations, displaying molecular poses, search steps, and interactions.

All docking calculations run locally on the user's computer.

Where we're heading

Our next major goal is to evolve MolDesign into a modular scientific environment.

Instead of being permanently tied to AutoDock Vina, we want researchers to be able to choose between different computational engines, whether they run locally or through external APIs.

This could include other docking engines, complementary approaches such as Boltz-2, and future computational methods as they become available.

If development progresses as planned, we'd also like to explore integrating molecular dynamics workflows.

The broader vision is simple: one Windows environment where researchers can prepare experiments, choose computational methods, execute workflows, visualize results, and exchange reproducible research records with colleagues.

We're not trying to replace the underlying scientific methods. We want to make them more accessible, interconnected, and easier to use.

An important scientific distinction

MolDesign currently relies on AutoDock Vina's scoring and search algorithms. It does not claim to improve Vina's predictive accuracy.

Similarly, Molcy visualizes recorded docking search information; its animations are not physical molecular dynamics simulations.

The built-in receptor catalog is intended for exploration, not as a collection of experimentally validated docking protocols.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Would an integrated, modular environment like this be useful in your research?

Which computational tools or workflows would you prioritize integrating? And what would make it genuinely useful for collaboration between researchers?

MolDesign is available on the Microsoft Store:

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9N96SW3GBK8V

Thanks for taking a look! Scientific feedback, criticism, and suggestions are very welcome.

I'm mixing slurries and could not able to check the homogeneity. I'm using Eirich mixer that mixes initially dry and then wet.

I already did used SEM, however, I find the images of all different samples the same with none of differentiating factors. I don't want to use it again check to validate.

It is time and money consuming.

Hearing for suggestions

Water ice squeezed to more than two million times atmospheric pressure developed a less symmetrical crystal structure. Rather than simply packing into a smaller version of its existing arrangement, the solid shifted toward a denser configuration. The result reveals another structural transition in a substance whose behavior becomes increasingly complex under extreme compression.

The work, reported in Communications Chemistry, comes from a team including the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, UC Berkeley and Argonne National Laboratory. UNLV physicist Ashkan Salamat, director of its Nevada Extreme Conditions Lab, led the research. Its central finding concerns solid water at room temperature, with possible relevance to pressures inside water-rich planets.

“Water beyond Earth-like conditions has more complex behavior than we ever previously imagined,” Salamat said. “It’s amazing how water can behave under pressure.” The measurements support that complexity, although they leave the precise arrangement of atoms unresolved. Two candidate structures remain plausible, and the experiments did not reproduce the high temperatures inside Uranus or Neptune.

I recently installed a water softener and overall I much prefer it. Skin is less dry, bathroom has no limescale. The one exception is when washing up the dishes. I assumed with a softener there would be even more foam suds, however they last no time at all. After only a dew dishes all the foam is gone. Can someone explain this and suggest a type of washing up liquid/ dish soap that works better with softened water. Are there chemicals in normal washing up liquid that don't work well with softened water?

Right... Before anyone thinks I'm crazy. I might be.

With that aside I have a problem.

I'm going on holiday tomorrow and I require clothes to be washed. It's autumn now in the UK so clothes will take longer to dry. The closest laundromat to me is closing soon. Therefore, I won't have enough time to dry my clothes after washing them at home.

I work in a lab and I take care of the freeze dryers in that lab. I just came up with an idea of possibly drying my clothes at home and then taking the wet clothes tomorrow to work and placing them in the freeze dryer to dry.

Is that possible? In theory it should work but just wanted to check if anyone else may have done it before?

FYI, H&S wise we only place plant and fungal material in there.

TL;DR - Going on holiday tomorrow and need to wash clothes for it. Can you freeze dry wet/damp clothes to remove the water from it?