Sciencemadness Discussion Board - low mess, high reward experiments?

low mess, high reward experiments?

imidazole - 2-4-2025 at 10:16

My last reactions involved too much sludge and tedium for my liking, (aldol polymerization while filtering, etched my favorite flask, ongoing secondary hotplate repair, organics messing up my nitric acid cleanup, discovered a hairline in my distillation adapter) and I've just learned a healthy respect from my first use of piranha solution (proper procedure/precautions, nothing went wrong, but holy moly!)
My next
I have decided I want to do some easier stuff between the steps to my current goal
(next steps: tar, tar extraction, tar, you get the idea)

So, What are some of your favorite low-mess reactions? Favorite crystals?

bnull - 2-4-2025 at 13:09

If you mean high reward as related to finding things out and satisfying one's curiosity, I can list some.

Your idea of making semipermeable membranes with wossnamed cellulose reminded me of something I did a few times: metathesis of esters. More precisely, metathesis of polyvinyl acetate and alcohols. This is possibly as old as PVAc itself but I didn't know at the time. Dissolve PVAc in ethanol, methanol, isopropanol or some suitable alcohol. If you smell the solution, you'll only notice the alcohol and nothing else. Add a small quantity of solid NaOH (KOH is better but I had none at the time) and stir. In a few seconds there will be a sharp smell of a volatile organic acetate. I used common PVAc glue, 96% ethanol, and old NaOH pellets (slight contamination by carbonate but pretty fine) to make ethyl acetate. I tried the same with glycerol in place of ethanol but the result was probably acrolein (a suspicious cookie smell). It also works with dried glue.
This one's from a Mir book on inorganic chemistry. Take a small flask with rubber cap (30 mL will do), put some copper sulfate and cover it almost to the middle of the flask with sodium sulfate. Put a small iron disc (or disk) on top of the sodium salt and add water up to a little above the disc. Cap the flask and leave it in a place where the temperature doesn't change much. In a few weeks, you'll have nice metallic copper crystals growing on the disc. You my have to adjust the amount of sodium sulfate to control the rate of diffusion of copper ions and the growth. I used sodium chloride as in the book but got large-ish dendrites; the resulting copper chloride was too soluble for that use.
Since I'm talking of copper sulfate, try growing crystals of "doped" copper sulfate. Make a saturated solution of copper sulfate, divide it to test tubes, beakers, flasks or whatever, and add small quantities of different crystallizable substances to each tube. Sodium chloride to one, urea to another, potassium chloride or sulfate to another, and so on. These impurities make copper sulfate crystallize in crystal systems other than triclinic.

[Edited on 2-4-2025 by bnull]

Precipitates - 2-4-2025 at 20:11

Low mess, high reward for me would be combustion experiments

Always dramatic, and as long as things don't go horribly wrong, little mess

In any case, they can serve as a nice break from tedious organic procedures - I always used to mix in a few of these experiments, typically inorganic, with the other stuff I was doing e.g., using excess reagents for other purposes etc.,

Spare red phosphorous - mix a little bit with potassium chlorate (caution be VERY CAREFUL with this mixture).

Woelen has loads of really interesting experiments on his website: https://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/index_fire....

And loads you can do with crystals - high reward in this case could be a massive ornamental crystal.

Mateo_swe - 3-4-2025 at 04:08

"Woelen has loads of really interesting experiments on his website"

Yes, his pages with experiments are really nice.
We need more of this kind on the net to show that chemistry is fun and interesting.

imidazole - 3-4-2025 at 06:07

those are some really good ideas, I'm Definitely trying the PVA one.

chempyre235 - 3-4-2025 at 06:12

Sorry to hear about your equipment troubles.

I'm wanting to try making violurate salts and derivatives. They make amazing colors with nearly every kind of cation. The SM thread can be found here. Maybe you could have a go at that?

[Edited on 4/3/2025 by chempyre235]

RustyShackleford - 3-4-2025 at 12:27

Quote: Originally posted by chempyre235

I'm wanting to try making violurate salts and derivatives. They make amazing colors with nearly every kind of cation. The SM thread can be found here. Maybe you could have a go at that?

If you or OP want some violuric acid i think i still have a fair amount left that i could send on the condition that you post pictures of whatever you make with it. Send me a DM if either of you is interested.

As for a recommendation of easy low mess reactions, i could recommend preparing Werners hexol like i did in this post . Everything in that preparation works great with little mess and you make a some nice and colorful complexes along the way.

[Edited on 3-4-2025 by RustyShackleford]

j_sum1 - 3-4-2025 at 14:18

Quote: Originally posted by RustyShackleford

Quote: Originally posted by chempyre235

I'm wanting to try making violurate salts and derivatives. They make amazing colors with nearly every kind of cation. The SM thread can be found here. Maybe you could have a go at that?

That hexol synth is pretty interesting. Very straightforward procedure. I am looking for something to do this weekend and that might be a good candidate.

imidazole - 3-4-2025 at 17:13

If you or OP want some violuric acid i think i still have a fair amount left that i could send on the condition that you post pictures of whatever you make with it. Send me a DM if either of you is interested.

As for a recommendation of easy low mess reactions, i could recommend preparing Werners hexol like i did in this post . Everything in that preparation works great with little mess and you make a some nice and colorful complexes along the way.

[Edited on 3-4-2025 by RustyShackleford][/rquote]

Cool! After checking the ones not yet listed, I could offer up my tiny quantity of gold in the name of filling out the list!