Sciencemadness Discussion Board

New to the forum, quick blurb about me

FluoroPunch - 13-4-2019 at 18:40

Hi All,

New amateur chemist here, finally got around to making an account. I think I stumbled upon this forum a while back before I was seriously into chemistry and I figured it's about time to join in.

I read all the FAQ's but I'm still new and I don't want to piss off other people by being a noob. So I have a couple of questions...

1. Firstly, is this the right place to be posting this? I figured either here or in beginnings would be most appropriate...
2. What are some kinds of questions that are frowned upon? I know drugs are a touchy topic, but what about things like collaborations? I'm in ON, Canada and would LOVE to do some collaborations with someone more experienced. (Anyone want to collab? ;) )
3. How does one get street cred around here? I see some people with lots of stars and I really want to dive in to the discussions but I'm worried I wouldn't be taken seriously.

Guess that's all I can think of off the top of my head...

Bit about me:
-almost finished a degree in chemical engineering
-not enough chem in my program since I became obsessed halfway through the program
-have a home lab with some surprising diversity in glassware/chemicals
-so many projects...never get around to them

Most significant projects:
-flaming colored swords (still WIP)
-distilling sulfuric acid thanks to an overpowered heating mantle
-Purification of KCl by precipitating using the common ion effect using a HCl gas generator
-hydrogen balloons

[Edited on 14-4-2019 by FluoroPunch]

[Edited on 14-4-2019 by FluoroPunch]

BromicAcid - 13-4-2019 at 21:15

Welcome to the forum:

1) This works well enough, beginnings might have been a little better.

2) Drugs and direct precursors thereof are frowned upon. Academic discussion of explosives and their preparation is fine but demolition discussion is also frowned upon. If you can find the people to collaborate with, collaborate away. Lots of people have met in real life from this form, usually the only thing getting in the way is geography.

3) People come and go, sometimes it's hard to keep track of them. Using punctuation and correct technical terminology goes a long way. The strange thing about this forum is that you should feel free to post to old threads, I mean real old threads, stuff a decade old is still fair game. Find a thread that you can contribute something to, or better yet carry out some experiments and post results. Actually getting out and experimenting and posting back here means more than being just an arm-chair chemist. The stars come automatically with post count as do the titles. Unless you are exceptional then you may have one bestowed upon you.

Best of luck!

Edit: Your title could use some editing, it sounds like spam at first. Try to make it a little more descriptive. Note that you can edit your posts for a rolling 24 hour period. Every time you edit it you get to refresh that 24 hour timer. Beyond that you'll need to contact an admin.

[Edited on 4/14/2019 by BromicAcid]

j_sum1 - 13-4-2019 at 22:58

Welcome.
You seem like you will fit in just fine. :)
I actually ce here to delete spam: you are lucky it wasn't autodeleted with a title like that. I recommend changing it.

Why not take some photos to post in the "tour my lab" thread. And while you are there, browse for some ingenious and practical ideas.

FluoroPunch - 14-4-2019 at 08:23

Oh thanks a bunch guys... I already screwed up on the title :P

Yeah I looked at some other new guy posts and that thread seemed the way to go. I'll probably get around to taking some pictures after exams.

How do we find out who's and admin and how do we contact them? U2U? I hope I won't have any problems this early in haha. If a post gets taken down accidentally for spam, can it be recovered?

The only "drug" that I had interest in was aspirin because we made it in a Chem Lab at uni. Unfortunately we used acetic anhydride which is used to make street drugs too apparently :mad: pretty frustrating when all you want to do is repeat something you already did legally... (Obviously just for fun/experience, never for consumption)

Also, as a self respecting amateur... energetics seemed fun. :P However the payoff never seemed to be quite worth the risk. Even assuming I could do it safely, I'd have to worry about the noise, which would really ruin the experience...Also I read a post a while back where a guy lost most of his fingers when some erythritol nitrate solution caught fire.... pretty scary stuff. Oh, related to that ...I made some manganese heptoxide with a friend and upon heating with a small torch (it was winter at the time) it just went off...the test tube didn't shatter amazingly but it made my ear ring and startled me quite a bit.... needless to say I don't think I'll be trying that again for a while...

Magpie - 14-4-2019 at 09:27

Don't worry about making acetic anhydride. I show how to make this in Prepublication. If we started restricting ourselves to only chemicals not used in drug synthesis we would hardly be able to do any chemistry.

hissingnoise - 14-4-2019 at 10:52

Ahem, and why exactly you should consider using wood acetylation as an excuse in procuring acetic anhydride for synthesis...

S.C. Wack - 14-4-2019 at 12:22

> What are some kinds of questions that are frowned upon?
Those asked and answered in 5 threads already. There have not been problems with intelligent discussions of any chemical; it's problematic to have an intelligent discussion about extracting meth or its precursors from chicken feed, salt licks, or gun bluing.

FluoroPunch - 14-4-2019 at 12:25

Quote: Originally posted by Magpie  
Don't worry about making acetic anhydride. I show how to make this in Prepublication. If we started restricting ourselves to only chemicals not used in drug synthesis we would hardly be able to do any chemistry.


Oh oops. I found it now, you rock!!!

@hissingnoise
And damn, that's actually not a bad idea. Thanks for the tip ;) Come to think of it that sounds kinda interesting, I might wanna try it haha

FluoroPunch - 14-4-2019 at 12:29

Quote: Originally posted by S.C. Wack  
> What are some kinds of questions that are frowned upon?
Those asked and answered in 5 threads already. There have not been problems with intelligent discussions of any chemical; it's problematic to have an intelligent discussion about extracting meth or its precursors from chicken feed, salt licks, or gun bluing.


Yeah I kinda saw that being a trend. The search works pretty well IMO (for the little time I've used it haha).

And yeah meth is only interesting since it's illegal, the molecule itself isn't thatttt cool. I don't really care for it.

MrHomeScientist - 15-4-2019 at 07:17

The one thing that will really put you on people's radar for 'street cred' is posting well-written experimental writeups. No matter how basic the experiment, if it's written scientifically with lots of details and (ideally) pictures of the setup and product it will be well-received. A lot of people here are armchair chemists, which is fine if you aren't in a position financially or otherwise to have your own lab, but actual experimentation is great to see. Welcome to the forum!

FluoroPunch - 15-4-2019 at 07:34

Quote: Originally posted by MrHomeScientist  
The one thing that will really put you on people's radar for 'street cred' is posting well-written experimental writeups. No matter how basic the experiment, if it's written scientifically with lots of details and (ideally) pictures of the setup and product it will be well-received. A lot of people here are armchair chemists, which is fine if you aren't in a position financially or otherwise to have your own lab, but actual experimentation is great to see. Welcome to the forum!


Thank you! I try my best to keep a detailed lab notebook where I go through the theory/ calculations first and then add notes later on why things went wrong. Currently still have a few past experiments to write down.... :( :P

I'm hoping I can write a pretty unique procedure for making Wood's metal with OTC sources. I totally see how there's a lot of armchair chemists, cuz I have it all planned theoretically but haven't gotten around to it :P

Tsjerk - 15-4-2019 at 13:19

Quote: Originally posted by MrHomeScientist  
The one thing that will really put you on people's radar for 'street cred' is posting well-written experimental writeups.


I second that! I would also like to stress that you can perfectly talk about imaginary experiments when done in a scientifically appropriate way.

And don't worry about anything that might seem borderline illegal (or straight down illegal is some jurisdiction). The founder of this forum and still the owner of it, Polverone, made a comment about it not too long ago. Check his post in this thread .

[Edited on 15-4-2019 by Tsjerk]