Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Ceasium chloride

plante1999 - 9-6-2013 at 07:47

Well' that was cheap. Sadly I found the offer 12 min before it was complete...


http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Cesium-Chloride-Ultra-Pure-BRL-/17105...


EDIT, wow the price grew so fast in the last minute, from 43 to 160.

Anyone knows where to get ceasium chloride cheaply?

[Edited on 9-6-2013 by plante1999]

Cou - 9-6-2013 at 08:07

I don't see any amateur chemistry websites that have it, at least not elemental scientific or united nuclear (BTW always buy from elemental scientific first, they are a mom and pop store and cheaper)

If you need it really bad and you are rich, you could buy cesium from galliumsource.com and make it with chlorine gas

[Edited on 9-6-2013 by Cou]

Hexavalent - 9-6-2013 at 08:22

That route to caesium chloride is incredibly expensive and dangerous, Cou....

Just because you have performed reactions with chlorine, which I do not approve of as you are unable to write simple formulae properly, this does NOT make it suitable for use in all reactions. The reactions of potassium and sodium with chlorine are violent and very hazardous to conduct, I cannot imagine it with caesium in an amateur environment.

Sublimatus - 9-6-2013 at 08:26

As an interesting aside, there's a video by the Royal Institution of cesium reacting with fluorine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLOFaWdPxB0

Pretty spectacular.

kristofvagyok - 9-6-2013 at 10:03

CsCl is a relative cheap and easily bought chemical. It is used for DNA purification at relative large amounts, so from time to time it could be found on eBay and other sites.

Another source of Cs salts is Cs-formate what is used in drilling fluids in ton quantities or another source could be Cs-carbonate what is used as a base in organic chemistry. From time to time it appears at eBay, so just check it out frequently and hope the best.

That insane idea with the metallic Cs and the chlorine is not a good idea. I have experienced metallic Cs, Rb and it's aint that easy to work with them. Some pics from working with Rb: http://labphoto.tumblr.com/tagged/rubidium

Cou - 9-6-2013 at 20:31

Quote: Originally posted by Hexavalent  
That route to caesium chloride is incredibly expensive and dangerous, Cou....

Just because you have performed reactions with chlorine, which I do not approve of, this does NOT make it suitable for use in all reactions. The reactions of potassium and sodium with chlorine are violent and very hazardous to conduct, I cannot imagine it with caesium in an amateur environment.


Fix'd, you dick. I noticed that mistake 2 days ago, that chlorine is a diatomic molecule, but I just didn't bother changing it.

[Edited on 10-6-2013 by Cou]

DrSchnufflez - 9-6-2013 at 20:36

No need to get touchy. Hexavalent makes a good point however, elemental caesium with diatomic chlorine in a home/amateur lab, one could say that it's suicide.

Finnnicus - 9-6-2013 at 20:46

It is sold for 'home-treatment' of cancer. Stuff like this.

Oh, and cou, be more creative. Please.

Cou - 9-6-2013 at 21:54

I don't see how not being able to write formulae stops you from doing a reaction though. I don't know the reaction of baking soda and vinegar, no one who does the reaction does, but they do it.

DrSchnufflez - 9-6-2013 at 22:01

Personally, I believe that not knowing the formulae involved in a reaction that you want to attempt is necessary as it demonstrates that you know how much of each reagent you need to use and that you know the base mechanism behind the reaction.
After all, most of us hobby/amateur chemists do this to learn and because its fascinating.
This is not so important for things as mundane or harmless as sodium hydrogen carbonate and acetic acid but when you are working with chlorine or other chemicals that have the ability to maim and kill it becomes of the utmost importance.

woelen - 9-6-2013 at 23:32

Quote: Originally posted by Cou  
I don't see how not being able to write formulae stops you from doing a reaction though. I don't know the reaction of baking soda and vinegar, no one who does the reaction does, but they do it.
This is a fairly stupid remark. Everyone can dump chemicals together, but is that your idea of doing home chemistry? If so, then it is best that you stop and try to find some nice video games and watch a few more campy movies on TV, just to soothe your brain cells.

If you really are interested, then you try to obtain additional knowledge. Read about the elements, about their reactions. There are nice patters to be discovered. Understanding what happens makes things much more interesting. An attitude like 'what does it matter that I do know nothing, I just throw together some things' is a really bad one in the hobby of home science. It makes you look like a k3wl and you loose all respect on a forum like sciencemadness.

Fantasma4500 - 10-6-2013 at 05:37

back to the actual synthesis of Cesium chloride..
now one should think that cesium and flourine the 2 most reactive elements would make a pretty violent reaction right?
somewhat it is and yet not that violent as i would have expected.. probably it would be very different if liquid flourine was used.. anyways .. behold Cs + Cl2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLOFaWdPxB0

i would say due to the fact that chlorine is potentially less reactive than flourine the Cs + Cl2 would be even less energetic and plausible last less time not that practical always applies with theoretical

Cou - 10-6-2013 at 07:00

Quote: Originally posted by woelen  
Quote: Originally posted by Cou  
I don't see how not being able to write formulae stops you from doing a reaction though. I don't know the reaction of baking soda and vinegar, no one who does the reaction does, but they do it.
This is a fairly stupid remark. Everyone can dump chemicals together, but is that your idea of doing home chemistry? If so, then it is best that you stop and try to find some nice video games and watch a few more campy movies on TV, just to soothe your brain cells.

If you really are interested, then you try to obtain additional knowledge. Read about the elements, about their reactions. There are nice patters to be discovered. Understanding what happens makes things much more interesting. An attitude like 'what does it matter that I do know nothing, I just throw together some things' is a really bad one in the hobby of home science. It makes you look like a k3wl and you loose all respect on a forum like sciencemadness.

NO. I know the formula for all reactions I do, but we shouldn't even have to be discussing this because I knew I did the wrong formula in my signature but I didn't bother changing it. I didn't expect a reaction like "YOU ARE LAME AND A KEWL BECAUSE YOU FORGOT THAT CHLORINE IS A DIATOMIC MOLECULE, I HOPE YOU NEVER TOUCH CHEMICALS AGAIN." Literally, the first thing I said after putting that formula in my signature was "Whoops, I did it wrong..." but I didn't feel like changing it again so I opened up minecraft and had some fun.

[Edited on 10-6-2013 by Cou]

[Edited on 10-6-2013 by Cou]

Hexavalent - 10-6-2013 at 08:48

Anyone who does not know/"forgets" that chlorine exists as a diatomic molecule should not be handling chlorine. Simple as.

Your other posts on this forum also portray a negative image of you, i.e. the rows you have with your mother, you referring to her as "Stupid", you "open[ing] the cork on the flask filled with chlorine and breath[ing] in just a tiny bit", and your questions such as "I know that inhaling lead fumes stunts the brain for children, but how about someone my age?".

"I did the wrong formula in my signature but I didn't bother changing it" and "I know the formula for all reactions I do"

Reactions are represented by equations, not formulae.

"Not going to be making lead chloride anymore"

Thank God for that.

"I'm smart"

Ahem.

"CANNOT make toxic gases by decomposing copper carbonate"

Carbon dioxide, the main gas formed, can actually be fairly hazardous.

"She also doesn't want me using the stove because "DA CHEMICALS WILL GET IN MY FOOOOD""

One of the first priorities in a home lab should be separating home from lab, including not using kitchen/food equipment for lab purposes.

"It was just a small concentration of fumes from evaporating sulfuric acid, probably SO2 or SO3"

How ignorant of you. You cannot write simple equations, but feel competent enough to boil down sulfuric acid in your house? No wonder we have limited access to chemicals as amateurs.

"The problem here is that when I actually do have a dangerous accident"

I've been doing amateur chemistry for longer than you, and have never had a dangerous/serious accident. You make it sound as though you have them frequently.

"it really wasn't enough to cause pulmonary edema or anything"

A 14 year old doctor, qualified to give medical diagnoses. Marvellous.
You could quite easily have caused some serious damage to your respiratory system or other bodily components.

and finally...

"so I opened up minecraft and had some fun."

You carry on with that, k3wl, before you kill yourself.

Cou - 10-6-2013 at 08:50

I am not leaving this forum because of yyoouu. So stop trying, I am not a kewl and I will not accept that. I'm not a kewl, I'm a chemistry noob. Before you accuse me of being a kewl, try learning what kewl means first.

Kewl: "OMIGOSH EXPLOSION, I LOVE EXPLOSIONS, WHERE CAN I GET NITROGLYCERIN SO I CAN MAKE BOMBS?"

Chemistry noob: "I'm just going to mix these two chemicals and see what kind of crystal forms.

[Edited on 10-6-2013 by Cou]

[Edited on 10-6-2013 by Cou]

Hexavalent - 10-6-2013 at 08:54

You: "Oh, I'll mix some hydrochloric acid and bleach without proper safety equipment, with limited idea what I'm doing, before I boil down my sulfuric acid, and proceed to kill myself and then my family."

I'm not asking you to leave, but to take some responsibility for what you are doing.

chemcam - 10-6-2013 at 09:21

Nobody on this board is trying to be mean, we all just care for your safety. Some of the reactions you have done are seriously dangerous and very well could have killed you and your family. I, personally, do not believe you are a k3wl but simply an uneducated kid trying to learn with the big boys although the way you describe interactions with your mother does make you seem like an k3wl, you only get one mother and she brought you into this world so respect her. I think you were just upset at that moment and can probably redeem yourself eventually.

Back on track now, when I started performing reactions for the first time I too just jumped right in but I at least understood the risks and how to properly handle everything. I know it may sound boring but the best thing to do is take it slow, read a chemistry book (from chapter one) and start with safer experiments. I believe the best way to start in home chemistry is to begin isolating elements, it's fun, fairly safe and you gain experience in addition to learning about OTC chemicals.

elementcollector1 - 10-6-2013 at 09:46

For someone who claims you're not a k3wl, you sure act like one. This board is for science, and we're supposed to act like scientists. Not whiny little 14-year-olds who start putting capslock on just because they don't recognize the dangers of their own experiments.

I remember when I was like you - I believed I was nothing short of immortal, that no known chemical mixture created by my hands could hurt me. And when I look back - holy shit, the amount of times I came close to dying was enormous!

I always edit my posts if I can when someone calls me out for it - doing otherwise, or claiming that you didn't care enough to change it, simply makes you look lazy. Hmm. A lazy chemist who just wants to mix things together for cool results, and doesn't care about the actual science behind it. Where have I heard that definition before?

Oh, right. A k3wl.

Before I start any given reaction nowadays, I make goddamn sure to calculate the balanced equation, stoichiometry, and sometimes enthalpy of the reaction (or reactions, if I have to do multiple). After triple-checking those calculations with known values, I then go on to try it out myself. Stoichiometry is never not useful - it solves a lot of problems, even if you think it doesn't.

Endimion17 - 10-6-2013 at 10:47

OK, guys, calm down.

Yes, the reaction of caesium with chlorine can be spectacular, but it doesn't have to be. The chloride can be synthesized from the elements even in the amateur environment, but it would require lots of skills, decent equipment and prior knowledge.

You're all aware that simply throwing an ampoule of caesium into a large volume of chlorine might cause an explosion.
However, if you purge the apparatus with argon and then introduce chlorine heavily dilluted with argon, a blob of caesium will simply turn into an ember, depending on the concentration of chlorine and the flow speed of the mixture.

The main problem is the manipulation of caesium. Unless one has a decent glovebox and lots of argon, no pure chloride can be made. That's the whole point. There'll be hydroxide present.
One could simply let very small bits of caesium "rot" on air (as sodium, if small enough, it will drown in its own hydroxide goo) and then react the goo with HCl, and evaporate the liquid. Voila, chloride.

Caesium won't explode or immediately turn violent on contact with air unless you've got a bucket of shreds and you throw them in air.
It's not a scary supernatural evil thing that causes nuclear explosions when you snap the ampoule in normal atmosphere.

When handling caesium on open air, it rusts immediately and then it catches fire after a while, depending on the geometry of the sample and atmospheric conditions.
It's a metal fire. If you've seen sodium on fire, you pretty much know how caesium fire looks like. It's more intensive, but that's it.
Contact with water is another thing and I'm not talking about that.

You could cool the ampoule to 10-15 °C and then open it, pick the metal with tweezers and manipulate it, thought you must do it quickly.
The reason why every time you see caesium manipulations you see argon and vacuum is because it's fucking expensive, and you don't need air leaking in, destroying your yields or whatever. People who work with caesium are the ones that work in the labs. Get it? Work. Not play. Work. It's about optimizing the costs.

WP fire is a lot more dangerous because it spurts blobs and actually looks like fire. Ask Pyro, LOL.
Fires are caused by vapors. WP boils below 300 °C, sodium above 880°C, and caesium boils above 670°C. The greater the temperature, the less dancing vapors are emitted because the heat is dissipated well enough.
It's the same reason why ether fires are so graceful and huge and metals ember.
Also, if the oxides are not gaseous, they bury the burning matter. Sodium is a nice example of such behaviour.

To conclude, Cou, you could react caesium with dilluted chlorine, but your experience is not great enough so that the chances of something going horribly wrong are low enough. Do you understand that?

Simply stated, don't do advanced shit unless you've got the skillz.

Caesium chloride is a dreadfully boring chemical. It's like a heavy table salt, but colours the flame light blue.
Cs<sup>+</sup> is boring, Cl<sup>-</sup> is boring and stupid.
Unless someone is reducing the caesium, I see pretty much nothing one can do with this chloride at home.
Its concentrated solutions are used for centrifugal separation of DNA/RNA/protein fragments because caesium ions are so heavy that when you apply huge centrifugal force on the container, there is actually a measurable gradient of density formed inside of it, so the fragments separate.
Interesting to know, but not very interesting to watch because you see nothing, LOL.

[Edited on 10-6-2013 by Endimion17]

elementcollector1 - 10-6-2013 at 11:11

Still, why bother? It'd be far cheaper to buy it than to make it yourself, and the danger is so much less. Avoiding the combination of the elements is best, even if they don't blow your face off.

plante1999 - 10-6-2013 at 13:28

Well, you can make the chlorate.

But more importantly, the ceasium can be use to make weird compound, or compound that are unstable with other alkali, such tetrachloro iodate.

Cou - 10-6-2013 at 16:47

Final note: This whole thing has been a long straw man. I just said that I forgot that chlorine is a diatomic molecule, but you pretended I said something more along the lines of "I don't know any chemical formulae, I just mix chemicals and watch what happens, I don't even know what is that white stuff that comes out when i put aluminum foil in chlorine, but it looks good, so i'm gonna stick my nose in the flask and breathe it in" and attacked that. Just looking for an excuse to call a 14 year old a kewl, so you feel better about yourself for never forgetting that Cl is actually Cl2.

[Edited on 11-6-2013 by Cou]

elementcollector1 - 10-6-2013 at 21:53

No, we called you out for the following:

Not knowing/caring about formulae, equations and math
General disrespect to fellow members
Suggesting to mix cesium and chlorine as if this was a completely safe idea
Not caring about crossing your ktichen with your lab
Insulting people when they call you out for being wrong
Breathing chlorine (I learned not to do that the first time...)
Use of capslock to the point where you would find a better home in the comments section of a given video on YouTube
Not knowing the reaction between baking soda and vinegar (for more information, please regard the FAQ of this very site, as well as looking it up on Google - it should take you all of five seconds)

As you can see from the list, we have lots of reasons to call you a k3wl. You have, however, demonstrated (to some extent) that you show a genuine interest in chemistry, unlike (as you stated) the regular definition of a k3wl.
In other words, you might not be in it for the bombs, but you appear to have the typical 14-year-old mentality (which for most tends to persist to college) that math won't help you. It will. Believe me, it will.

woelen - 10-6-2013 at 23:10

@Endimion17: Cesium salts are quite interesting to my opinion. Some years ago I also though that cesium ions are boring and that they are just somewhat larger potassium ions without redox chemistry and without colors. But I found out that cesium ions are able to form many remarkable salts from plain aqueous solutions, which are not possible with potassium ions, ammonium ions or even substituted ammonium ions (which are large as well).

Some examples:
CsBr3 (a bright orange/red tribromide)
CsICl4 (a bright yellow multihalogen compound)
Cs2CuCl4 (a bright red copper(II) compound)
Cs2CoCl4 (a bright blue cobalt(II) complex)
These are just some examples, I made more quite special compounds with very uncommon anions.
Solubility of some cesium salts is quite low and allows for preparation of beautiful crystalline glittering solids. Some examples are Cs2Cr2O7 and CsCr(SO4)2.12H2O. Especially the latter is really nice if you mix solutions of e.g. Cr2(SO4)2 or KCr(S)4)2 and CsCl and allow the beautiful small crystals settling slowly, giving a strange purple glittering 'snow' in the liquid.

Of all of these salts, I could not isolate the potassium salt or any other cation salt, except KICl4, which however is much less stable and gases out ICl3.

CsCl sometimes can be had for a decent price (appr. EUR 30 per 100 grams). I was very lucky once, when CsCl was sold for GBP 8 per 100 gram, but I never have seen such a good price again on eBay.

@Cou: It never has been my intention to make a mockery of you or call you a k3wl. I just want to tell you that you need more education. If people are not (yet) educated, then that is no problem at all. Everyone once was without education, we all need to learn. What I do dislike though is people who are without education and do not want to become educated and simply want quick and cool results. You give me the impression that you are eager to learn more about science, but that you don't have the right idea where to start and just pick up snippets of ideas and knowledge from all kinds of places and try to apply that. A good structured read (e.g. a chemistry book for a high school) would be a much better source. Try to read something about basic concepts, such as
- atoms
- molecules
- elements
- chemical symbols for the elements
- chemical symbols for molecules (the so-called formulae of compounds)
- chemical reactions
- chemical equations, which describe reactions
- stoichiometry (which is related to the subject above)
- acids and bases
- redoxreactions
- electrochemistry (e.g. electrolysis)
While reading about these subjects you'll read about examples of all kinds of compounds and then you can try experimenting with these. There are many interesting experiments to start with, which can be safe and quite entertaining and you can even show your parents some of these experiments without producing nasty fumes or dangerous situations. Some examples are:
- electrolysis experiments
- precipitation reactions with copper salts (easy to obtain and fairly benign)
- making gases (CO2, O2, H2, all are non-toxic but quite interesting)

[Edited on 11-6-13 by woelen]