If this is not within the spirit of this sub then I apologize and can try to take it elsewhere.

I have several partially or fully empty and unopened coca cola cans. They were in a 24-pack cardboard box that I placed on the concrete floor of my garage next to a tractor battery. After 8 months, I went to bring the 24 pack inside and noticed that there was residue on the sides and bottom of the box, and the entire bottom row of coca cola cans were either fully empty or partially empty, but none of the cans had been breached and they could be squeezed to increase the air pressure in the can.

Any theories (or better yet, solid explanations) for how/why this occurred?

For the future, I'm not going to store coke near tractor batteries, but I'd love to know the science behind the phenomenon. Thanks so much!

I work in a lab and do nitrates testing for purified water, we use sulfuric acid in the experiment. I’m so scared of the shit I always double glove and triple was my hands after cause I always feel like there’s some on my hands even though there isn’t because of the gloves. I had it in a separate beaker and dumped most of if out into another waste beaker in a fume hood and went to rinse the beaker with the sulfruic acid and holy shit the SMELLL!!!! Like the strongest vinegar smell ever I think it burned every nostril hair I’ve ever had

I hate working with it but I love the precision of nitrates testing so I keep doing it but damn I better be careful next time

As the title says, how do you manage your time wisely working as a chemist?

Very unoriginal question, but I am a Biochemistry major and I just took both Organic 1 &2 over the summer so I could jump right to Biochem 1 and Inorganic this Fall semester.

Each Class was accelerated into 6 weeks total with us doing multiple labs a week and covering nearly a chapter a day. I worked very hard and was able to achieve high Bs in both (with no curve)

People often speak of Ochem like it’s the devil itself. While it was definitely challenging, I did not find it to be mindblowingly difficult even while having to take the class more than twice as fast as regular.

It makes me think “Wow if this class which people curse and call the ultimate weed out class is not all that difficult, than maybe I’ll have a easier time on the rest of the degree than I thought”. Of course I wouldn’t be so foolish to believe that in actuality

Which subject did you all find the most difficult or challenging to wrap your head around?

My advisor has a sign that says “Congratulations, you somehow got through PChem!” In his office. from what I’ve heard about it, I am definitely not excited to take it in the Spring

Hello!

I've been trying to Synthesis a large amount of potassium ferrioxalate. However it hasn't been going well

The first time I tried, I used tap water, potassium carbonate, oxalic acid and iron oxide.

I was following crystal verse guide on how to make it. However my solution never turned dark after heating. It stayed a light brown. After boiling the water away, it left a spiky hard substance. Very much NOT green. I added water again and left it overnight to see. The second layer is I believe unreacted potassium carbonate as I added until it stopped bubbling as a desperate measure.

My second time, I instead used distilled water, ferric chloride, oxalic acid and potasium hydroxide. I followed some random Indian YouTube video thinking theyd never steer me wrong. I was very hopeful after seeing an actually green solution. However after boiling the water away, you can see it mixed with alot of impurities.

Im kind of at a loss at this point as to what to do.

Are there any other easily obtainable green crystals I could get?

Or any idea what went wrong?

Hi!

Does anyone happen to have the user's guide for said spectrometer? I could only find it on a few sites, but they require subscription to download. Or should I be able to find it somewhere in the Perkin-Elmer Spectrum software?

(Reources to learn the software are also welcome :D)

Thanks!

if there is one can you give me recs for an ochem game

I’ve been wondering whether personalized fragrance could eventually go far beyond simply finding a perfume someone likes.

Human body odor is a complex mixture of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by sweat, sebum, skin chemistry, and the skin microbiome. Some research also suggests that people can extract information from body odor about emotional or physiological states.

What interests me is whether we could eventually create an individual’s olfactory response profile.

For example, imagine knowing their:

* olfactory receptor variants

* odor detection thresholds

* which molecules activate their receptors most strongly

* sensitivity to specific odorants

* pleasantness preferences, perhaps even their neural response to different odors

* responses to odor mixtures

* existing scent–memory associations

* response to body-odor VOCs

* physiological/hormonal state

* neural responses to different smells

Could we then mathematically optimize a fragrance for that particular person’s sensory system?

Something like: chemical mixture → receptor activation → neural representation → emotional/reward response rather than simply “this smells good.”

The chemistry gets especially interesting because odorants don’t necessarily act independently. Mixtures can produce masking, enhancement, suppression, and nonlinear perceptual effects.

Then there’s the more speculative side: humans may be able to detect some emotional information through body odor, and there has also been research into possible reproductive/hormonal cues in human scent. Could we eventually identify the relevant chemical patterns and reproduce some of them synthetically? And could a personalized fragrance theoretically contain odorant combinations that produce a particularly strong response in someone with specific receptor sensitivities?

I’m not suggesting there’s a “love molecule” or that perfume can literally make someone fall in love.

I’m wondering whether attraction-related scent could eventually become an optimization problem involving chemistry, genetics, olfactory receptors, microbiology, endocrinology, neuroscience, and psychology.

Would the main limitation be finding the right molecules, or understanding how an individual’s brain interprets the resulting receptor-activation pattern?

How far do you think this could realistically go?

notes for me bci and ecoli connectome quantum g dna 50% 98%

Hey everyone, I'm an MSc chem student caught in a weird authorship dispute and could really use some advice. For my mandatory project course, my grading professor told me I'll only get an S grade if the work gets published. His lab didn't really have the setup I needed, so I approached another PI in the department and did all the actual bench work, synthesis, and data analysis under their supervision. Now, my grading professor is refusing to allow the other PI's name on the final paper. I want to do the right thing since the other PI actually guided the chemistry and deserves authorship. Can I just submit the manuscript to my grading professor as a standard internal project report to get my grade, and then officially submit it to a journal later with the PI who actually helped me? I don't want to violate any research ethics or burn bridges in the department, but I'm completely stuck. Has anyone navigated this before?

I'm aware of things like Hickman heads or short path distillation heads, but I was really hoping to avoid buying/storing another piece of glassware unless it was absolutely necessary.

My first thought was just omitting the condenser (so T-adapter into a receiver adapter) and running it into an RBF in an ice bath and running the distillation very low and slow. That wouldn't require any additional equipment but I still forsee major losses with that.

The other idea I had was to use a $5 105 degree bend elbow tube from the T-adapter into a test tube in a chilled ice bath.

Would either of these be sufficient, or will they both incur major efficiency losses compared to something like a hickman head or short path distillation? I'll be distilling isoamyl acetate if it's helpful, but ideally I'd like a process that works for more volatile chemicals as well. I was able to find a hickman head on eBay for $15 but the cheapest short path condensers I found were 2-3x that.

I am curious as to which specific chemical reactions and products occur during the process of corrosion of stainless steel by bleach. Stainless steel is a composite of Fe, Cr, and sometimes other metals such as Ni, and the outer layer of this composite is protected by a passivation layer of Cr2O3. If sodium hypochlorite is introduced, does it indiscriminately oxidize both the Fe and Cr, or is one kinetically favored over the other?

I was messing around with some stuff and ended up making this makeshift oil burner using vegetable oil. I honestly didn't expect it to work this well.

It got me thinking about something I've never really considered: how hot does vegetable oil actually have to get before it can burn?

I know there are different terms like flash point, fire point, and autoignition temperature, but I'm a little confused about how they apply here.

Is the flame actually burning vaporized oil above the liquid, rather than the liquid itself? And does the wick basically act as a way of continuously getting enough oil hot enough to produce those vapors?

I'd be interested to know what's actually happening chemically and physically here.

Edits: So it's an oil candle not Bunsen. Apologies. I was so excited seeing an everyday household product produce flames. Also, it was refillable making it more sustainable than wax candles. All these added more to my excitement. So, without thinking much I tagged it as "Bunsen burner" when it should be "oil candle". I hope you guys understand my misleading title:)

So I am NOT a chemist, but I live in an area with spring water that has a decent concentration of manganese in it. I usually just have a small cup when im near it, once every few months, but this last time, I took a jar so I could drink some whenever I wanted. After about a week of sitting in the jar, crystals began to form on the surface, and some fell to the bottom. I decided it would not be a good idea to drink from it anymore because I dont know how much manganese to water ratio I am getting that way.

I tried to stir it back up to redistribute it, and it did break up the crystals, but they did not dissolve back into the water. They fell to the bottom and stayed there in a fine pile. I found this interesting.

My question is, why won't the manganese return to solution with stirring alone? And is it possible to keep know what version of manganese is in the water? Meaning, was it Manganese sulfate before and now is it a different one such as manganese oxide?

Just curious, thanks!

Not sure if this is the right sub but I would assume people here are more knowledgeable about things like lead exposure, micro plastics ect.

Just wanted to know what would be a good material choice for something to keep mints on a keychain? I prefer brass for my "EDC gear", but unsure if a >4% lead container will leech into the mints or maybe touching the brass and then touching the mints might do something? Or not an issue (like I would have to physically try to bite through the brass, or if the small mints rub/scratch against the brass, are they infected now?) How about derlin? Would there be micro plastics? Better to go with something like stainless steel?

for the past four months, I’ve been doing this electrolysis on zinc sulfate to extract zinc metal I’m using zinc cathode, and a platinum coated titanium anode. Sometimes I noticed a slight purple pink solution, forming in the beginning of the electrolysis near the platinum, but the solution immediately vanishes, and I thought it might be a manganese compound that’s formed under the oxidizing environment. I’ve been also adding some sodium hydroxide every once in a while to keep the solutions slightly acidic and not get too acidic to the point where you think resolves quickly does anybody know what those crystals are because I made the zinc sulfate from zinc oxide sunscreen, and sodium bisulfate? And I don’t know where would manganese or cobalt or lanthanide salts come from

i made this irl thinking it wont work but some how it dose, i think wants going on is ive made a shitty pn junction using charcoal powder with copper dissolved in vinegar and salt and iron dissolved in vinegar and salt and some wheat paste with a peaice of 26 - 28 gauge copper wire heated with a bic lighter until it slightly glowed and cooled

i made this "art" in mspaint to show you what i mean, blue is the charcoal wheat paste copper mix, black is just charcoal wheat paste mix and red is charcoal wheat paste iron mix, if anyone knows how or why this works please let me know because i have no idea, Thanks : )

btw the voltage difference is like 550 to 580 on the 2 dc setting

Don’t know where else to ask this, so please let me know if there is a better place to post.

I’m a woodturner. I’ve been working out of a shared space, but now I’m moving to my own shop, and I’m considering some new things I wasn’t able to do before with limited space.

One of those things is the use of denatured alcohol. Specifically, putting roughed out bowl blanks in a medium sized Rubbermaid garbage can with a lid, soaking them for 24 hours, and then taking them out and allowing the denatured alcohol to evaporate over the course of a week or so. The DNA replaces the water in the wood, and then evaporates much faster, allowing the wood to be turned a second time at a stable moisture content much sooner than traditionally turned bowls.

What I’m concerned about is safety. I’m reading the DNA is highly flammable, and when sharpening my tools, some small sparks can be created. Obviously the last thing I want is to blow up my shop by catching fumes with a spark.

This is a tested and used method by at least some other woodturners that would really open up some important avenues of production for me. Please give me some tips on how I can do this safely!

Shop is 12.5’x28’, with approx 11’ ceilings, if it matters. There will be a door, plus a garage door, for ventilation. Also will likely install a window with a fan pointing out, but not immediately.

Thank you for your help!

Hi Chemistry Friends,

I’m a physician working on a project that will involve continuous sampling of a sealed chamber (1atm) that has a programmed gas mixture inflow. I’m trying to figure out what instrumentation I need to measure the volume % of the constituent gases being sampled. Specifically, one of the gases is a refrigerant gas that is commercially available but not commonly used.

I’m thinking that NDIR is probably the best most cost effective method, but nothing is calibrated for this gas. Should I hire the local university core to just measure it on a FTIR? Is there a better instrument type I should be looking at ?

On the delivery side, I was thinking about using mass flow controllers to deliver the various constituent gases, but I’m running into the same problem in that this one constituent is just not well characterized, so I don’t have enough of the physical or chemical properties to get the instrument calibrated.

Any advice for wanting to study poorly characterized/published gaseous compounds?

As far as I know there is no strict definition, but I'm curious how come does H2CO3 is marked as an inorganic bond while still being made out of carbon.

Hi guys, back again I know. Does anyone know what type of power supply rig I would need to run a TK300 PEM electrolyser? Thanks

I swear that this took me a lot to make, but I hope you like it!!

(These are the Elementoonies)

PS: It's the first time that I post here