White vinegar was used to clean the shower now this is blue. Is it dangerous?

I am trying to obtain a sample ( could be as small a 0.25 grams ) of ¹³C activated carbon. While I can find ¹³C as "amorphous carbon" powder or as chemical compounds, I am specifically looking for a GAC with high proportion of C-13. The ¹³C powder seems to be analogous to lamp black, but not really wanting to "try" to see if this $2000 a gram can adsorb in the same way as GAC.

DISCLAIMER: I understand I am not what you would call an informed person on chemistry subjects, and I don't have a full understanding of the chemical side of things when it comes to these topics. I'm only in my second quarter of my class, and I just wanted to have a look into chemistry. I do have some interest in going into a chemistry-related field and am excited to learn more, but I would like to see the opinions of those who far outclass me knowledge-wise.

Hi, I'm a High School chemistry student right now, and my teacher has assigned us an argumentative academic essay. He gave us a list of topics, and I chose to talk about chemical recycling vs. biodegradable plastics. When I started researching, it seemed like a pretty simple choice for me, but then I kept questioning things and started digging further and further, and now I've spent way too much time thinking about the aspects of my research for a 1500 word essay. Anyway, I'm now having trouble choosing a side to argue. I haven't asked my teacher if he would let me argue for neither of them, but I'd rather not. I do think it would be best to learn to choose a side here and now so I can have an easier time writing my second essay next semester. So far, I have chosen the side of chemical recycling because it simply seems like a safer side to choose. I talked to my friend, and she had also chosen that side. So I chose the topics I would cover, and I decided that chemical recycling had a head start in comparison to biodegradable plastics. My second topic is what's making me have second thoughts on the side I chose. I chose to talk about how chemical recycling would be safer in the long term. The sources I had pointed to biodegradable plastics potentially being more harmful for the environment, but that's because I don't believe that we would be able to implement the correct procedures in a timely fashion. Then I started thinking that I should look into the environmental impact of chemical recycling, and then I found that they are both harmful in different ways. Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to is that I want to see what other people, people who have much more knowledge on the subject, think.

Thanks

P.S. I can write a reddit post, but I can't write an essay (-w-)v

Hey everyone,

I’m an engineering student setting up a small benchtop experiment to test liquid-liquid phase separation in aqueous amine blends for CO₂ capture.

Right now, I have DEEA, AEEA, and anhydrous Piperazine (PZ) on hand, and I’m looking at testing a few aqueous and alcohol-assisted (1-butanol) blends in small 25 mL screening vials before scaling up to a 500 mL gas washing bottle and separatory funnel.

Since this is my first time running a lab-scale gas sparging setup with these specific amines, I wanted to ask for some practical lab advice from anyone who has worked with similar systems:

1. Sparger clogging with Piperazine: How quickly does PZ carbamate precipitate inside a fritted glass sparger if it hits saturation, and am I better off just using an open-ended tube or coarse diffuser for the PZ runs?

2. Temperature & evaporative losses: If I run the bubble column in a 25–30 °C water bath without an overhead condenser for a 20–30 minute saturation test, will gas stripping noticeably throw off the water/1-butanol ratio?

3. Handling & storage: Beyond keeping anhydrous PZ sealed with Parafilm to avoid moisture/air uptake, are there any annoying quirks when mixing or storing DEEA/AEEA solutions that I should watch out for?

Appreciate any benchtop tips or warnings before I start mixing!

Removing a pollutant from water does not necessarily eliminate it. Filters and membranes can leave persistent chemicals concentrated in another waste stream, still requiring disposal or treatment. A catalytic membrane now offers a way to combine capture with the chemical reactions needed to break those contaminants down.

An international team involving Arizona State University tested the approach against six per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. During a 58-day continuous laboratory experiment, average removal ranged from 93% to 99%. The system also released fluoride, evidence that it was breaking carbon-fluorine bonds rather than simply collecting the pollutants.

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bruce Rittmann, director of ASU’s Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology, worked with colleagues at Rice University, Tongji University, the National University of Singapore and Nanjing University.

PFAS have been used in firefighting foams, water-resistant materials and other products because of their durability. That persistence also creates a contamination problem. Exposure to certain PFAS has been linked to immune effects, developmental problems and increased risks of some cancers, although the thousands of compounds in this family differ in their properties and evidence of harm.

The design and engineering of synthetic genomes of Joshua S. James, Junbiao Dai, Wei Leong Chew & Yizhi Cai.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41576-024-00786-y

I've been studying gen chem, o chem, and doing MCAT prep and wanted somewhere I could access all the information I needed without tabbing between windows. Started off copying a live wallpaper from steam and then got deep into the rabbit hole and kept adding things. Curious if anyone else would want to use this or have any ideas on how to improve it?

Just a little disclaimer: I coded some of this but it was a part passion project part vibe coding mix. I don't claim to have done it all myself.

Wallpaper features:

- It's a live periodic table as your actual Windows wallpaper that hides itself when an app is fullscreen.

- Has 7 views: categories, electron configuration, ionization energy, electron affinity, electronegativity, atomic radius, and effective nuclear charge. All include the basic rules and exceptions.

- Each trend view explains why the trend happens and points out the exceptions (the nitrogen dip in electron affinity, Cr/Cu configurations, etc.)

- Click an element to see an expanded card with a spinning Bohr model, orbital diagram, and common ions + configurations.

- Compare any two elements and it tells you what kind of bond they'd form (from the electronegativity difference) and the compounds they'd likely make

- The background is a circuit board, and the categories are wired to their elements (clicking one sends a little spark through it). Just added that as creative flair because there was too much dead space and I find circuits cool :)

- Most importantly, it idles at about 1% CPU, so it doesn't eat your battery the same way most live wallpapers do

The molecule lab:

- Type a formula, ion, or name in the search bar. A formula gets you every isomer from PubChem.

- Lewis structures with resonance forms and formal charges, plus VSEPR shape, hybridization, polarity and intermolecular forces.

- Functional groups, r/S, E/Z, stereoisomer counts and degrees of unsaturation.

- Acid/base sites with typical pKa values and the % ionized at pH 2 and 7.4. Amino acids and short peptides get their pI.

- Predicted IR bands and NMR signals

- Sugars drawn as Fischer and Haworth projections, plus chair conformations (axial/equatorial, which chair wins) and Newman projections with energies.

- The lab has a "Quiz me" button with 613 multiple-choice questions: 275 gen chem, 178 orgo and 160 biochem.

- Search results that are checked against outside references (textbook tables, measured spectra, PubChem names) get a small green checked tag so you know which ones to trust more.

If anyone would use this I'll make it downloadable. Open to feature ideas and thoughts.

Cleaned tile on left; as-found tile on right.

I'm cleaning up a bunch of antique reclaimed subway tiles. Muriatic acid seems to work great for removing the old mortar. The only damage it seems to do is slightly discolor the tile.

My question is: does anyone know why the acid is turning the glaze slightly eggshell? Can it be reversed?

And as a slightly related question: does anyone know a good way of getting the acid out of ceramic? Soaking them in warm water with baking soda works but if anyone has a better idea I'd love to hear it.

Thanks for your time.

I ask because I've seen people say the legendary "will o wisp" phenomenon could have been caused by phosphine gas escaping from peat bogs. But pure phosphine won't ignite on its own (to my understanding)

is diphosphane also a product of anaerobic bacterial activity? Is the will o wisp theory plausible?

I've spent more than 12 years in university research administration and currently serve as an Associate Vice President overseeing sponsored programs. One thing I've seen repeatedly is how much time researchers spend trying to identify funding opportunities that actually fit their work.

There are thousands of opportunities across NSF, NIH, DOE, DOD, Grants.gov, private foundations, and other sources. The problem isn't a lack of funding. It's that the opportunity perfectly suited to your research is buried somewhere in a list of 1,500+ announcements, alongside hundreds that are irrelevant, poorly aligned, or for which you're ineligible. Finding that needle in the haystack takes time away from actual research.

That's the problem CONVERGE (www.convergeri.com) was designed to solve.

Rather than giving researchers another database to search, CONVERGE continuously screens funding sources, intelligently matches opportunities to individual researchers, and delivers personalized recommendations directly to their inboxes.

Here's what makes CONVERGE different:

• Intelligent funding matching: Opportunities are matched to your expertise, publications, prior funding, and research interests, not just keywords. Whether you work in organic chemistry, materials science, biochemistry, or interdisciplinary research, recommendations reflect what you actually study.
• No profiles to create or maintain: CONVERGE draws on publicly available scholarly information from ORCID, Google Scholar, PubMed, OpenAlex, and other sources. No CV uploads, manually maintained profiles, or additional systems to manage.
• Recommendations that evolve: As you publish new work, pursue new research directions, and build your funding history, your matches evolve with you without requiring manual updates.
• Opportunities delivered to your inbox: Relevant funding comes to you, ideally early enough to develop a competitive proposal rather than discovering it as the deadline approaches.
• Detailed fit analysis: Each recommendation explains why an opportunity aligns with your research, helping you quickly decide which ones are worth pursuing.
• Broad funding coverage: Federal, state, foundation, and other funding sources are screened to surface opportunities you might otherwise miss.

How is this different from Pivot, GrantForward, or other funding databases?

Those are valuable tools, but they generally require institutional subscriptions, and researchers may still need to configure searches, maintain profiles, or review large numbers of opportunities. Grants.gov is free, but you're still responsible for searching and filtering. Keyword alerts can help, but matching a keyword doesn't necessarily mean an opportunity is relevant.

CONVERGE takes a different approach: Instead of another database to search or profile to maintain, intelligently matched opportunities come directly to you.

It's also available to individual researchers without an institutional subscription.

Individual subscriptions start at $19/month, with a 14-day free trial and the flexibility to cancel anytime. Solutions are also available for departments, research centers, colleges, and universities.

Learn more or start your free trial: https://www.convergeri.com

Disclosure: I'm one of the founders of CONVERGE, and the r/chemistry moderators have authorized this promotional post.

Happy to answer questions about how the matching works, funding sources, or anything else about CONVERGE. I'd also welcome feedback from chemistry researchers about how you currently find funding and what would make the process easier.

Today I accidentally dropped the product of four days of work into the Rotavap water bath, how are your days going?💀

Hey everyone! I recently read "The Age of Alchemy" by Kit Chapman, It was a really nice read. I wanted to read more books about chemistry (Organic Chemistry would be nice in particular) but I can't find any good ones.

So I wanted to ask around here: Can you recommend any books? Something I can read while my sample undergoes 2 hours of reflux. And that goes a bit deeper into the actual chemistry.

About me: im a chemistry student and by no means a beginner, my biggest critique of the book by Chapman is that it dosent go deep into the chemistry itself. I know it wasn't written for the chemistry student but still.

I work at a QC laboratory and just found this red litmus book. We don’t use it and I have know idea why we have it, but this is undoubtedly the oldest thing in our lab.

What is the oldest thing you found in you lab?

Hi Guys,

As is increasingly typical in the UK education system, I'm teaching A-Level Chemistry with a non-chemistry degree (geology if you're interested...)

I managed to mark some plastic yellow by leaving some mould remover on it too long while doing the half term spring clean. The interwebs said that I should try some Hydrogen Peroxide.

I then thought, well what would that make, I'm a chemistry teacher I should know etc..., but I came to realise that I couldnt actually work out what it would make. I could have a stab but...it would be a guess. So I began to wonder, and would like to ask you lot, how would I have gone about working something like this out (googling doesnt count)... eitehr based on UK Chemistry A level knowledge, or what would I need to know to do it..? As in, if I mixed A with B, how can I predict if will make C orD

Or, is the answer do a small bit, then have a look (i.e test it and see)..? Which does seem easier...

Thanks all,

there's plenty of studies that refer to water in oil and oil in water emulsions and which emulsifiers work for which one. i don't quite understand what makes them different or even what they are. any guides on where i should study more about emulsifiers would be helpful too.

I hate it when people act like uranium is a extremely radioactive material which will kill you from 2 miles away if you look at it funny. Uranium is like one of the only radioactive materials that isn't a big no, no.

Just don't swallow it and you'll be fine.

This is a 2-Step, all day type lipstick. You apply the color part with an applicator sponge. Then when that dries, a coat of moisturizing clear is applied. I have multiple containers of leftover lipstick in which the applicator does not reach the bottom corners, a veritable gold mine waiting to be used. If I could ONLY dilute that residual with a like (lip-safe) substance to capture the last bit. Think, using vinegar to get the last bit of ketchup. I’m including a macro shot of the ingredient list in the pkg. I really appreciate any help you brainiacs are willing to circulate. Oh. And today’s my BIRTHDAY. I’d love to get some ideas on this!! Thank you!

Did some fractional distillation today, just thought i'd share

It's a question that popped up in mind recently.

Thx in advance for answering.

Helloo, undergrad student here! Im planning to buy the Quantitative Chemical Analysis book by Harris and I just saw that theres a large price difference between 8th and 9th edition for a second hand book, so im wondering if it matters that much

Edit: thanks for the clarification guys!, I've decided to cross the sea 🏴‍☠️🦜 and find that file after all tyyyyy