cv-pls NC chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/426/…

@Manishearth a related anecdote: my grand-father, who was already 90 when I chose a chemistry curriculum at university, was adamant that I refresh my knowledge of German as “it's the lingua franca in that field” (he was a researcher in medicine)…

@fx interesting.. I think physicists used to learn Russian for the same reason. Dunno about that now. And mathematics gets French(right?)

In the end, did you learn German?

I like learning languages :) Though learning French overwrote my Spanish (had it in school, moved so I couldn't continue)

And I need to refresh my French bigtime :/

Just one more rep. Then I can edit! :D

@Fx In german, sterochemistry is E-Z!

:P Good 'un

I never miss an opportunity for a bad pun

Well, that was a punny pun :p

/is looking at a51 stats

Only 7% have fulfilled commitment. That's...not good.

Still, 28 active users.. Not too bad for the first three weeks :/

@Manishearth - I did my part

"They're doing their part - are you? Join the mobile infantry and save the world. Service guarantees citizenship."

hi all

like every single time, just when I come in, everyone has gone to play somewhere else

I'm here, typing a post

@Manishearth well, you have a new answer on your S/O catenation question

it's a nice one (the question, I mean)

Hmm, will check out

Thanks :)

@Fx Hmm, your answer makes sense, I'll wait for any other takers as usual :)

@RichardTerrett Just yesterday, on The Tavern (MSO chat), we were discussing how lots of SO medium-reps still don't know the policy. Alluding to a practice in Israel(a guy in the Tavern told me about it), I suggested "compulsory army service" on MSO so that you learn policies :P

@Manishearth - I have an acquaintance who had to do compulsory service in israel

@Fx Good day F'x

@RichardTerrett hi

Thailand also has that afaik, so a thai artist I know of dropped off the planet for 2 years

@Fx by ^1O2 what do you mean?

@RichardTerrett singlet oxygen

@Fx ah

I wasn't too sure if I was allowed to list it as an allotrope, but Wikipedia does

...interesting

@Fx i certainly wouldn't consider it to be an allotrope

@Fx Wikipedia lists metastable stuff as allotropes. And weird stuff. That's cheating

@Manishearth re: your comment - don't feel stupid!

you obviously understand the stuff, I wasn't trying to dumb it down

@Andrew I know, but now it strikes me as obvious

yeah, story of my life - as soon as someone else says it, it's totally obvious to me

Exactly :P

@Fx so, which singlet state? :D

@Fx BTW, your answer is great

@RichardTerrett THE single state

“30 days under review”, says the website… man, I wish peer-reviewing was faster

@Fx ?

Oh, submitting a paper

I still remember learning about molecular orbitals for the first time with oxygen

@Andrew - I thought they would have started you on H2

lol i self taught MO theory

basically sat in my car with a chem book for a few hours

@Andrew - ah right

I never claimed to be normal!

and hey, i had to do something while I was waiting

@Andrew - is that with or without group theory?

@RichardTerrett I never remember, but I suppose the ∑ one is lower in energy than the ∆ singlet?

@Fx I believe so

@RichardTerrett oh man, I hated spectroscopy and excited states

@RichardTerrett without at least initially, easy enough to get the main ideas even without symmetry considerations

the only fun thing about it was group theory, if molecules are nonlinear… but diatomics, yuck! that shouldn't even be considered chemistry :)

@Fx Actually wiki says the delta state is lower

@Fx Hang on, wikipedia contradicts itself

do we trust wikipedia or hund's rule?

@Fx Reading that report for the slush hydrogen question made me sad

@Fx Like reading my 'prospects for fusion energy' book from the late 70s

@RichardTerrett I want those flying cars now!

@Fx flying cars are overrated. also, moller skycar has been around forever

@Fx I've got this guide to space published by the tasmanian department of education in the early 60s, it's gold

@Fx There's another one on radiation, part of the same series, which says stuff like how in the future we'll have walls painted with radioactive+fluorescent paint

@Fx of course, your walls will have blinds/curtains mounted on them so that you can 'turn off' the light

@All I encourage you to reguarly check the questions from new users (and answers)

this allows us to upvote the good ones, edit/comment/vote-to-close the not so good ones

@Manishearth I see what you did there… editing without my approval, congrats! ;-)

Second edit since 1k (fiked another of Ashu's posts) :D

@Manishearth - you're out of control!

that CHCl3 + nitrile rubber questions annoys me… it seems so easy that there should be something on that already Somewhere On The Internet

@fx I don't think we need the review section yet , the main page is good enough--not that much activity yet :/

@Fx I was long under the impression that nitrile gloves were suitable for stuff like chloroform

I know that latex gloves are quite porous to dichloromethane

@Rich wait till I reach 2k.. Then you'll all be DOOMED!

having DCM boil inside one's glove != pleasant

@Fx doesn't it just dissolute the polymer? I'm not really sure what the questioner was looking for

but incidentally, that's why you have to change nitrile gloves frequently when you work in orgo labs

@Andrew I think it does, but I don't have direct data to back it up

@RichardTerrett nitrile gloves will last for a while, but eventually they'll form holes, usually on the timescale of an hour or two depending on the concentration

@Andrew Ah, good to know

I have found an article on permeation, which shows that chloroform goes much faster than e.g. acetone through nitrile rubber (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/ceat.200900268/asset/…)

it's pretty self-policing in lab - when there's a huge bubble on the glove, you change it :-P

I remember an undergrad lab where we made benzocaine. Half way through the fingers on one hand went numb...

@Fx nice find. The manufacturers usually have a chart somewhere that shows which gloves to use with which chemicals and how effective they are

benzocaine is nasty stuff to work with. The fumes drive me nuts too

I didn't encounter any fumes

@Andrew here for example

yup that's what i was thinking of

I remember the day I discoveredwhat chloroform does to your skin... Spilled some while pouring it, burned and froze at the same time . How harmful is it, exactly?

@Manishearth not too bad, but wash your hands! it's cold because it evaporates and burns because it's reacting with your skin

@RichardTerrett we were synthesizing it, so most likely the fumes were from the heating of the entire solution, but it reminded me of a bad cough drop

@andrew yeah, I figured the volatility part.. Didn't know what the reaction was, but washed my hands :) Felt tickly.

what temperature does diethyl ether boil at?

every time we dealt with chloroform someone would make some joke along the lines of "hey, does this smell like chloroform?" while holding a paper towel to someone else's face

ah, 36 C

@Andrew - I hate your workplace already

@RichardTerrett wikipedia says 34.6 C en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diethyl_ether

oh

haha that was undergrad...

I don't think i've ever used chloroform, only DCM

anyhow, yeah, people used to drink ether

now that's hardcore

My bench at the lab was right opposite the organic reagents counter. Extremely convenient, but, well, people had a tendency to leave bottles open.

And since the quantity diffusing out is less, you only get a chloroform-headache at the end of the session :p

my bench was right next to the dicyclopentadiene cracker.

in high school i did chem olympiad, one of the lab practical questions was to identify 5 liquids

so naturally, i sloshed some of each of them on the bench and watched how fast they evaporated

ether...check, acetone...check, water...check!

Oh oh I sometimes do reactions sans test tube

@Andrew - what were the other two?

i'm not sure, it's gotta be online though

Is the salt a carbonate? Dump on table. Pour HCl. If salt bubbles- you're good. If table bubbles, not so much :p

aqua regia.... check!

lewisite.... check!

haha

they were all benign, i think the other two were an alcohol and something else equally harmless

Two of my friends went for India's chem olymp selection camp (one of them is going international). The other one regaled me with stories of lab fun :)

doctorjang.com/uploads/2/8/8/9/2889123/…

found it!

yeah, i did the US chem camp in 2005

but i wasn't one of the international competitors

)Someone blew up an oven because they forgot to wash a compound (think it was acetyl acetonate something

so no ether, hexane instead

@RichardTerrett reminds me of picric acid, whose "name comes from Greek πικρος (pik' ros), meaning bitter, reflecting its bitter taste"… two sentences later, they say it's a carcinogen :)

@Andrew I've once spilled liters of hexane in the lab (while undergrad), I suppose I will always recognize its evaporation rate…

@Fx Yeah it's concerning that we know what some substances taste like

my biggest gaffe was definitely filling a buret with NaOH for a titration and not closing the stopcock

:p

got it all over my hands and shoes and pants...

and all i could do was pour faster since it was filling so slowly...

Gtg, be back in an hour

"What is this?" "This is a chemical burn."

@Fx There's an apocryphal story that K. Barry Sharpless once ate osmium tetroxide

my biggest one was after a entire day of organic synthesis… we filtered the solid on a fritted glass vacuum pump thingy, but it wasn't yet perfect. So it took the wash bottle to add some more liquid, except I got acetone and everything dissolved and went through the filter

hehehehehe

I've had a few "benchtop extractions" and usually my yield is off the charts

purity not so much...

I once saw a student connect a buchner funnel stem to a hose, and the hose directly to a vacuum line

haha

the worst part is that they were supposed to collect the liquid, iirc

@Andrew - done a water bath extraction?

ouch, can't say I've ever done that

sounds terrifying

I've seen it done, with a very very large thistle funnel

also, I remember once: “me: the solid is so stuck at the bottom of my glassware, I can't get it out — prof: get it out — me: can't — prof: I'll do it. Nope I can't either — me: what do I do? — prof: well, the glassware is expensive and the starting products for the synthesis are not, so you redo it — me, thinking: is my time worth zero?”

I think I stopped organic chem after that :)

back when some of the professors i worked with were students, breaking glassware directly affected grades

i.e. for each dollar of cost, one point came off the grade

okay, I've added an answer to the "nitrile gloves" question… even though it's not a great answer, it's better than nothing and this is (as someone else said) our most upvoted question so far

Our high school had a policy that everyone pays for a breakage. Nominal amount, but it adds up. My class, being a bit more well behaved, hadn't broken much and was enraged at the fees. So, a lot of them broke extra stuff that day (since the fees were already decided and paid). :P

@Manishearth - that's a bit rough

@rich I know.. I wasn't a part of it

Basically some people in my class were angry that they had to pay for breakages done by other classes :/

They didn't wreak havoc though.. Just a few test tubes each

well, I've learnt something today! chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/437/30

@F'x: Picric acid: bitter, carcinogenic, and also a high explosive. :P

(IIRC)