Home Chemistry Society

Wisconsin! It's got me, Bromic Acid, it's north of Theodore Gray, it's full of cheese -- who doesn't love cheese? -- what else need I say?

Thank you Davster!

And for your comment on professional chemists: my thoughts exactly!
As for myself, I am merely an Upper Secondary school student with chemistry as one of my subjects.
Although us non- chemists chemists () could provide some useful contributions, there's nothing wrong with including someone studying the subject!

As long as the focus is in fact on the amateur chemist!

The idea of a home chemistry society sounds VERY good to me. What is most important is that the society must have a good and professional look, with a number of good write-ups on experiments, syntheses and also a lot of general info.

We should not impose restrictions on the membership. I would welcome the 13-year old starter with only KNO3, S and C as his chemicals and the professional chemist, who also does a lot of nice work at home. The only, but also very important, criterion must be that people are actively doing things at home in a non-professional lab. So, the professional chemist, who also has a nice lab at home and really uses that for experiments is more than welcome.

We also should not impose restrictions on what chemicals and apparatus are used. Instead we must add different levels marks to each write-up. I even would promote multiple level marks
1) overall difficulty of performing the experiment
2) the need for rare/specialist chemicals
3) the use of complex/expensive equipment.
An experiment can have e.g. a low score on (1) and (3), while having a high score on (2). E.g. I have some experiments with NbCl5, which are as simple as heating some of the solid in a test tube, so it has a low score on (1) and (3), but a fairly high score on (2), because NbCl5 is not a reagent which is common for home chemists.

It is important to add write-ups in all score-levels. The society must be interesting for the starters, but also for advanced persons, who have a lot of equipment and a $$$$$-lab.

The site must have a professional high-end look. The choice of template, font, and general appearance is important. We definitely must not use some murky underground look and feel. Keep in mind that home chemistry must not be something looking dark, obscure and creepy. E.g. the sciencemadness logo is not one of the things I would use as a leading logo in the presentation layer of the society. It does remind me too much of bomb-making and being geared to energetics only.

Also, all kinds of chemistry should be allowed, including energetics and all kinds of organics. I think that some form of (peer-)reviewing would be nice, before articles, write-ups for synths, etc. are placed on the site. One mechanism, which could work is to use a submission mechanism, and if e.g. at least 5 members accept the write-up and no more than 2 member reject the write-up, then it is made available for the general public online. In the initial phase I would choose to use a small group of members, who can accept/reject write-ups, but in the long run this group should become larger quickly. Criterion for being added to the group of people who can accept/reject write-ups could be a number of accepted write-ups (e.g. two or three nice write-ups automatically put the person in the group of persons who can accept/reject).

These are just some things as a result of brainstorming. Think about it and improve them .

I have a domainname www.homescience.net. Could that be a nice name for the society?

Both woelen and MagicJigPipe:
I couldn't agree more! You seen to have completed each others ideas here

The outlook of this, to me, looks very good, as the ideas are flowing, decisions are made and we are handling this very professionally.

If we keep this up, I think we can create a darn- good consept!

But please, let the discussions continue...

How is this idea for a logo? I just doodled it on a piece of paper. Perhaps somone with good photoshop skills could make a better version of it if everyone likes it.

To make sure people dont immediatly think of drug manufacture in a garage I carefully chose what was in the picture:

The sun and the lamps on the sides of the garage suggest that this is in the light, not clandestine, not hidden.

The sunflowers and shrub suggest that this is a well kept yard, not at all like the steriotypical meth lab yard.

I chose a test tube instead of a flask/beaker. Flasks and beakers are now more associated with drug manufacture than legitiment chemistry. Test tubes, however, are too small scale for drugs, so they are still associated either with chemistry sets (Fun) or chemistry class (Boring, but not drugs).

One more thing. I would like to nominate Woelen as our Website Quality Control Manager.

[Edited on 18-3-2008 by CyrusGrey]

Hehe! Fantastic! This is definately in the lines of my thoughts!
Simplistic and realistic. Only one thing: might be a little bit childish! Of course we want to attract young chemists, but with this logo, some of them might reject the idea of even entering the site. I personally liked it very much, though

We should have a logo- competition, with board- members to assess the submissions, and for Woelen as Website Quality Control Manager: here here

a few thoughts

It's difficult to make that sort of thing independent from existing websites, such as this one and many countless other forums in many languages.

I'd suggest to focus such a site largely on video/photo representations, for which other platforms (i.e. utube) are more convenient. Forums essentially saturate the market.

Didn't I recently hear that google is giving utube essentially away to developers? Anyone can use the utube platform for their own websites.

So perhaps it should be a repository of well documented vids, and photopages, for the clueless, intermediate and professional amateur.

However, not sure if this has been ressolved - a concerted effort such as this would eventually and undoubtedly draw unwanted attention - how can this be avoided? With certain limitations as to the site's content?

Also the less effort re. the maintenance, the better, the less dependence on any given individual, the better, this way no specific person needs to update the site regularly, and dependency relationships aka dictatorships cannot develop. It is essentially self-correcting, but of course it needs some sort of mods to avoid spam and loonies...don't we know it all on this very site

Advertising is indeed the problem, for better OR worse! Like sciencegeek mentions 3rd post from top, there's a huge swath of websites showing great experiments - but noone collates these, there is no single well-known repository for links, nor any sort of rating as to their validity. This is another thing that could be addressed.


Regardless- I think the more public such a platform is, the more limited it will become, for largely legal reasons. Unless it is strictly non-pyro and non-hazardous and non-bioactive - but how many members here would be interested in such a place?

I agree with the name Home Chemistry Society for the society. The domainname www.homechemistrysociety.org is too long and does not look good. I am willing to register another domainname, but I don't write the name over here (it happened to a friend of mine, that after writing the name on a forum, someone else took it away ). I have another quite different, but to my opinion pleasing name in mind. For more info, please U2U and I'll let you know. But please don't write that name over here.

I have two options. One option is to register the domainname only and redirect it to www.homescience.net. This is easily done and the cost is less than $10 per year. I am willing to pay that. If that is done, I can supply 300 MByte webhosting with PHP5 and MySQL features, but no email under the new domain name. I then simply allow part of my own webhosting space to be used for HCS.

Another option is to take a new bundle. A nice bundle is available for EUR 47 for the first year, and EUR 33 for all subsequent years. This bundle incudes:
1) 1 GByte disk space
2) Unlimited data bandwidth for accessing the website
3) PHP5, ASP and MySQL support
4) Unlimited email addresses under the new domain name
5) Subdomains

I am willing to pay 50% of this as a starter and then we can see how things develop over the first year. If some other persons too are willing to donate a small amount of money for this, then we could arrange this bigger bundle.


One thing which we definitely should not do is become a competitor of sciencemadness. We indeed should complement each other, not compete.
The HCS website also to my opinion may contain more risky experiments (e.g. energetics, poisonous compounds involved, etc.), but the risks must be stated clearly and good guidelines for safety must be supplied. The only things, which to my opinion should not appear on the HCS website is cookery and worked out schemas for detonating and ignition devices. But a synth of a nice energetic should be allowed. That also is part of chemistry. If only idiot-proof experiments can be published, then it will be dull and interesting for nannies only.

The HCS should indeed be a democratic thing. Visitors of the site should be able to read everything on the site, members can upload write-ups for experiments. But important is that write-ups only become visible for non-member visitors when approved by at least a certain number of members, different from the person, who submits the write-up. Any member, having an approved write-up himself can approve other write-ups. In this way, in due time, the membership who has more power than just viewing the site grows automatically, and the approval mechanism is democratic. The only point is that at the start a certain group of members must be appointed, because initially there are no write-ups. For this appointment, we could select e.g. 10 members from sciencemadness (and not from other forums), a few young but eager starters, a few median experimenters and a few really experienced.


A final remark is that we should not try to do too much at once. Let's start small and slowly grow. If we start too fast, then initially there will be all kinds of (over)enthusiastic initiatives, but there is a SEVERE risk of loss of activity after such an initial period of high activitiy. A slow but steady progress can be maintained for a long time, while an initial burst soon stops when the 'new feeling' is gone after some weeks. I give this warning, because I have seen it so many times in personal experience on my work, at university and in clubs.

So, as a start, I would suggest to first implement a good framework and template, add a nice home page, add a nice portal to other websites with experiments and add a few really good write-ups on the site itself (using YouTube for videos) and provide links to forums like this. Once, we have a basic setup, the next step could be to add additional things, as mentioned above.

[Edited on 19-3-08 by woelen]

I couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks for leaving me with nothing to say at the moment

Next step, IMO, should be setting up a way to get donations to Woelen. I think having an intermediate "donation acceptor" would be better than just transferring cash directly. It's not a trust issue, I just think it should be done right, you know? How can this be done?

PS If you can obtain that domain for cheap then I think we should do it if not for any other reason to have it for later. People type names like that into the address bar sometimes when they're just curious, that way it could go to the site instead of somewhere else. Perhaps .com and .org would be best if it's cheap.

As far as the group name goes I have an idea. While telling several people I know about this, the conversation went something like this:

Me: "Yeah, I'm working with some members on a chemistry forum to try and make a hobby chemistry society."

Other person: "Cool, is this going to be something local?"

Me: "No its international."

Other person: *Raises eyebrows* "Oh wow, thats neat."

I think we should sneak the word "international" into the name.

I agree that Woelen would be trustworthy as an intermediate for cash, but we should be careful about overloading him with additional responsibilities other than that. He is already going to be hosting the website etc. I have never hosted a website, but maintenance seems like it would be a lot of work to me. Unless of course, he says he wants to do some additional stuff.

[Edited on 19-3-2008 by CyrusGrey]

I like that domain name Woelen. Do you think the name should be Home Chemistry Organization to go with the .org part?

Here is my idea for the webpage layout:

The new additions would link to a newly posted experiment write up or something.

News would discuss something new for home chemistry, or some tidbit of world news that particularly affects hobby chemistry in general.

The subscribe button would put you on a list to be emailed when something new appears in the news or new additions.

The intro to hobby chemistry would be mostly a public relations thing that tells what hobby chemistry is, why we do it, and a bit about safety.

Beginner videos would be a list of YouTube videos with the newest members in mind. It would have simple and interesting experiments you can do with kitchenware as equipment and a simple swing by a couple local stores for reagents.

Experiments to try would be a list of experiment writeups and YouTube videos that are atleast a step above beginner videos. We might use Woelen's difficulty ratings for this.

Homebuilt equipment would be writeups detailing the construction of lab equipment like fume hoods, distillation/refluxing aperratus, magnetic stirrers, furnaces, etc.

Member locations would be two things: One would be a Frappr map or something similar that anyone can put their location on. The other would be a list of members that have atleast some chemistry experience as well as basic equipment and are willing to hang out or host local meetings.

Links would have Sciencemadness forums prominantly displayed at the top.

This would all be static and manually edited to start out with, but we can add an automated system once we have the site running. What do you guys think?

[Edited on 19-3-2008 by CyrusGrey]

I don't.

Your layout looks good to me. As for the nice chemistry saying or something, maybe
one could use that space to display molecules and have it link to an experiment
which involves that compound. For instance, show a molecule of methylene blue and
link to the blue bottle experiment or a molecule of acetone and link to the pyrolysis
of calcium acetate, etc. The molecule could be changed monthly, weekly.
or whenever depending on how much time someone has to update this.
And I am glad that there is a rubber ducky --- no lab is complete without one

The idea of starting with manual links and automating later sounds reasonable.
As for automating, my experience in and around PlanetMath could be helpful.
In particular, I think that some things like automatic linking, ownership model,
and corrections could be of here as well and I would be glad to help with this
when the time comes. For now, you might want to have a look at our website
for ideas on how layout and what not:

http://www.planetmath.org

Maybe I am getting ahead of myself here, but I would like to see not
just links top other websites but cross-referencing of the experiments
and other information. For instance, it would be nice to look up
all experiments which use a particular chemical or apparatus, or
upon seeing a chemical or piece of apparatus listed, have it link
to a page describing its synthesis or construction (automatic linking
could be useful here),

Speaking of syntheses, it would be good to list syntheses of frequently
used lab chemicals which are difficult for the home chemist to
obtain. For many chemicals, one can find how to make them in
preparatory manuals like our old standbys, Brauer and Vogel or
on the Organic Synthesis website, The only problem is that often
these will use some chemical like CS2 which one might not have,
so it would be good to supplement these excellent sources with
preparations of such compounds form commonly available chemicals.



[Edited on 19-3-2008 by microcosmicus]

Yes! Unless there is a major backlash against increasing regulation, we might live to see a day where all practice of chemistry without a special lab permit is banned, all pure chemicals removed from the shelves except the most inconspicuous, the knowledge of chemistry restricted, and all people who have knowledge of chemistry would be watched carefully by the government!

I admit, its a worst case scenario, and probably not likely to occur to that extreme. Maybe that is what hell looks like?

Applause to Woelen!

Sorry Woelen. I talked to my dad about this, and he said that he does not know how to fix your problem, and that he would have to look through his texts on the subject but is too buisy to do so. When he said he could help I thought he would be more, well, helpful.

He told me he has just started learning PHP5 for something my sister is doing, so it sounds like hes in the same boat your in.

If there is anything else you need help with though, let me know. I feel like I'm pretty much useless with programming though, so I'll probably just try and make some videos.

I think this is an extremely good idea. But there is one thing: how are you gonna attract attention to the site. Ofcourse we know it exists, and maybe some other fellow scientists. But the general public... Or even better, the government!!!
Mail me if you need any help woelen, but preferably not the next 2 months : final exams

I agree. I was not trying to imply that we should do large amounts of advertising right off the bat. Just answering an inquiry.

Transfer delay of 60 days!!!

This is totally insane

I am not allowed to move the homechemistry.org domain for the next 60 days to the new hosting bundle. This is due to US-regulation and this limitation only exists for .net, .org, .com and .biz domains. According to regulations (which have to do with personal integrity) no modifications may be made to such toplevel domains at a frequency larger than once per 2 months. I never heard of such limitations (I also have a .nl domain and I never found such limitations on this).

So, we are stuck with this situation and I can only use the limited option with the use of my existing webspace for the upcoming 2 months.

I will continue the process of setting up a nice hosting bundle for the domain, but it will take 2 months before it becomes active

In the meantime, we can continue. I can make a first setup of a webpage and link the domainname homechemistry.org to my current webbundle (www.homescience.net/HCS) and after these two months, I can transfer the webpages to a new provider.

I do not see the rationale behind this type of regulation of domainnames. I paid for it, and now I am not even allowed to use it in the way I want

The problem is not the webspace, I also have 700 MByte of free space and 300 MByte of that can be used for HCS, but the main problem is that when the domainname is not really attached to the webhotel, in which the domain is stored, then the use of the domainname is severely limited. This has to do with the fact that most hosting providers host multiple websites on a single host, and when the host is addressed, then the webserver looks at the domainname used for addressing the host, and the domainname then is looked up and the correct webpages are sent back to the webbrowser, connecting to the webhotel.

If I e.g. would go to the IP-address on which I have www.homescience.net, and I go there with www.homechemistry.org (which is possible, because I can set the IP-address of www.homechemistry.org to any address I want), then the webhotel on which www.homescience.net resides does not know the name www.homechemistry.org, and if that is the case, then some standard page is displayed.

This 60-day period really is a nuisance, I am still angry about this

Quote:

This is totally insane I am not allowed to move the homechemistry.org domain for the next 60 days to the new hosting bundle. This is due to US-regulation and this limitation only exists for .net, .org, .com and .biz domains. According to regulations (which have to do with personal integrity) no modifications may be made to such toplevel domains at a frequency larger than once per 2 months. I never heard of such limitations (I also have a .nl domain and I never found such limitations on this).

It is not clear to me what they are meaning with this, but the 60 day period is very real

Go to google and type the following in the search bar:

transfer domain name 60 days

Read some links and you will become quite unhappy with this. Summarizing it, when something changes with a domain name record (registrar, administrative contact, owner), then the domain is locked for the next 60 days. This only is true for .com, .org, .net, .biz and .info domains. No such limitation exists for other toplevel domainnames.

I read a little further, and this limitation apparently is imposed upon us by ICANN:

http://www.icann.org/transfers/dnholder-faq-03nov04.htm

[Edited on 2-4-08 by woelen]

I now have the new hosting bundle with the 1 GByte disk space and all other goodies.
The domain, however, still is NOT transferred to the new hosting provider, but they already gave me disk space and login codes.

I put the following on the webspace for now:

http://www.homechemistry.org/

I asked the hosting provider if they are willing to keep this webspace up and running for me. I simply pointed the IP-address to the host on which the domain will be hosted, but this is not a legal construction from the point of view of the new hosting provider. They normally only provide hosting space if they also are the registrar for the domain. Hopefully they will be lax about this. I asked them to take the money from my account for the hosting bundle, but till now they didn't. Normally they only charge if the domain transfer is complete and they are the registrar.

So, technically it works and we could do all with the domain we want, but from an administrative point of view this is not a kosher situation and if the new hosting provider does not like this, they can simply remove all of the site, I have no foot to stand on right now . I'll keep you updated and I really hope that this issue will be resolved in a satisfactory way.

I read on Internet about horror stories about such transfers. The worst thing I read was from a Dutch woman, who has to wait for 193(!!!) days before the domain was set free again for transfer to another registrar. Every time, something went wrong and the stuff was reset again. F*cking rules

Temporary solution, thumbs up for one.com!

I think I have some good ideas for the webpage design. I have been working on learning how to make webpages, but don't have anything to show for it yet. Sorry if I implied that I knew what I was doing. I did suggest an idea for the template though on page 3 of this thread.

I would like to help in any way I can. My skills with making stuff on the computer are bad though.

I also have experience with wikis where one cannot create accounts, but the admin has to set up accounts. If things are growing wild, then that is an option. But let's see how things develop. The current situation is more friendly and it means less work for me . If more stringent policies need to be used, then people have to ask me for setting up an account, but I really hope that this is not necessary. Of course, I also keep on eye on it.

Woelen, I agree. Let's keep it simple at the moment!

Also, I am in the process of making a simple blog where I can gather all my videos which are currently on YouTube, so that my site can be linked to as well

Thank you very much, Jor

There is quite some suction from that kitchen exhaust, but of course not comparable to fume- hoods as the suction is from below.

Experiments that are "not too good to do inside, but it's cold out" are perfomed straight underneath the exhast! As an example: The Synthesis of Mercury Fulminate is done not more than 10 cm below the exhaust, although it doesn't appear like it!

Luckily my exhaust doesn't do that

Great idea with the lab equipment- pictures. I can see if I find time to take some and send them to you!

Can't we just do it more like Wikipedia does it: No disclaimer or anything like that on the front page (that sort of thing belongs to the "About" page), but instead News, Recent Articles, Fun facts and so on...

Any feedback on this?