Sciencemadness Discussion Board - AU Competition #1 ~ Copper Carnival

AU Competition #1 ~ Copper Carnival

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Praxichys - 7-7-2015 at 10:26

I was kind of stoked for this one and I even drew up a whole synth map, but I had vacation plans out of town for a week and a half, which kind of killed it. I can't wait for the next challenge!

aga - 7-7-2015 at 15:05

Another Idler, as am i ...

Volanschemia - 7-7-2015 at 23:35

Alright! I have gone through the 5 submissions I received, and as far as I can see they all adhere to the rules (which is a relief I can tell you).

We have a very clear winner, with a whopping 38 compounds in his chain. Congratulations to Pinkhippo11! 38 compounds is definitely no small achievement!

The winner of the secondary prize was very hard to choose, and I was torn between a really interesting compound, and a really interesting procedure. Therefore, I have decided to award the secondary prize ($10AUD) to both.
Congratulations to DraconicAcid with his Tetramethylammonium Tetrachlorocuprate(II). Equal congratulations go to zts16 with his direct method to anhydrous CuCl₂ involving passing Cl₂ through CuI in an enclosed system.

I would also like to give an originally unplanned tertiary prize of $10AUD to mayko for the excellent presentation of his writeup.

Thankyou to everyone who entered, I definitely learned some stuff from your submissions and it was very fun reading through everyone's chains. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and I wish I could give a prize to everyone, but I don't think my bank account would cope.
I would also like to thank j_sum1, Amos, zts16, woelen and diddi for help in logistics and planning of the competition.

The writeups and pictures will be posted here soon for perusal of anyone interested.

Could Pinkhippo11, mayko, zts16 and DraconicAcid please U2U me their PayPal email addresses.

Thanks again,
TAS.

DraconicAcid - 7-7-2015 at 23:54

Woohoo!

I had ideas for a number of other compounds I could have added to the chain, but ran out of time. I can't wait to see other people's submissions.

woelen - 8-7-2015 at 02:29

Congrats to the winners and thanks to all who have contributed to this. This is home chemistry at its best. I really like this kind of competitions and I am eager to see the results of the contributions. It really irked me that I could not contribute myself, due to little available time. I already am very busy with my work and additional studies for nearly a year now and I wish I could find more time for experimenting. When you are young(er) then money is the limitation, when you grow older then time usually is the limitation, but I am quite sure there will be a time again that both limitations are removed for me (at least to some extent, within reason).

Amos - 8-7-2015 at 05:18

Wow, 38 compounds? I can't wait to see these writeups! TAS, thanks for initiating this competition, and for being so generous with your rewards. Your contribution is probably going to put a lot of formerly very obscure information right under the amateur scientist's eye. Thanks to everyone that put so much work into researching and making these compounds, too. I can't wait to make them all myself, when my hot plate stops being broken :/

aga - 8-7-2015 at 12:08

38 !?

WOW.

Very well done indeed.

smaerd - 8-7-2015 at 17:33

38 compound!? That's absurd.

That sounds like a cool coordination compound draconic acid

.

I gotta see these write-ups seriously.

Volanschemia - 8-7-2015 at 18:24

Alright, here's the competitor's submissions.
Pinkhippo11's writeup is attached and the photos of his compounds can be found in this Imgur album.
zts16's entry can be found in this dropbox link.
mayko's, DraconicAcid's and TheVolatileChemist's writeups and pictures are in the .rar files attached.

Attachment: DraconicAcid.rar (1.4MB)
This file has been downloaded 452 times

Attachment: mayko.rar (1.7MB)
This file has been downloaded 562 times

Attachment: The Volatile Chemist.rar (3MB)
This file has been downloaded 407 times

Attachment: Pinkhippo11 (Writeup Only).xlsx (16kB)
This file has been downloaded 536 times

[Edited on 9-7-2015 by TheAustralianScientist]

[Edited on 9-7-2015 by TheAustralianScientist]

blogfast25 - 9-7-2015 at 10:41

What does a tooter Luddite like me need for *.rar files?

[Edited on 9-7-2015 by blogfast25]

woelen - 9-7-2015 at 11:00

You need the unrar tool fo reading rar files. Modern tools like 7zip (freely available) also can handle rar files.

http://www.7-zip.org/

[Edited on 9-7-15 by woelen]

blogfast25 - 9-7-2015 at 11:12

Thanks, woelen.

woelen - 9-7-2015 at 11:47

Very very good to see all these contributions with pictures

I found one error in PinkHippo's sequence, but fortunately that error did not break the chain, he just made another compound than he mentions.

Step (11) does not make anhydrous copper nitrate. Making anhydrous copper nitrate is very difficult and only in the 1960's this elusive compound was produced, by reacting copper metal in a mix of liquid NO2 and ethyl acetate and crystallizing the solvated compound Cu(NO3)2.xNO2 and then very carefully heating this compound to 80 C or so to drive off the NO2 and leave Cu(NO3)2 behind, which is a volatile covalent compound.

PinkHippo most likely made a basic cupric nitrate.

aga - 9-7-2015 at 12:14

Excellent !

Congratulations to all participants, and also to the organiser(s).

The results are wonderful, and should befinitely be downloaded & saved by all !

Amos - 9-7-2015 at 12:39

I was under the impression that anhydrous copper salts couldn't be dissolved in water again if their hydrate had already been produced. That would count as making the same compound twice.

aga - 9-7-2015 at 12:52

Solvated Copper salts are not the same thing as a copper salt complex with water in it's crystal structure, or are they ...

Sounds like nit-picking to me.

DraconicAcid - 9-7-2015 at 14:04

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

I was under the impression that anhydrous copper salts couldn't be dissolved in water again if their hydrate had already been produced. That would count as making the same compound twice.

\

No, because aqueous salts aren't hydrates. And the aqueous salt wasn't counted as a separate compound anyway.

Zephyr - 9-7-2015 at 14:43

Thanks Ben! Participating in this competition has been very fun and educational.

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

Very very good to see all these contributions with pictures

Thanks for catching that woelen, I'm glad it doesn't break the chain.

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

I was under the impression that anhydrous copper salts couldn't be dissolved in water again if their hydrate had already been produced. That would count as making the same compound twice.

In addition to it not being the same hydrate, the rules state that the same hydrate can be revisited so long as it is not counted twice:

Quote: Originally posted by Rules

Hydrations are permitted. The chain can be continued from any hydrate, even if it has already been visited, as long as a hydrate is not counted twice.
(Eg. CuSO4.5H20 -> CuSO4 -> CuSO4.5H20 -> CuCl2 is valid, as long as you don't count the pentahydrate twice.)

Sulaiman - 9-7-2015 at 14:53

great! ... congratulations to participants and organisers,
nice to have pictures with the documentation,
good to see all of the different compounds and their colours.
educational and inspiring
well done.

blogfast25 - 9-7-2015 at 15:04

Quote: Originally posted by aga

Solvated Copper salts are not the same thing as a copper salt complex with water in it's crystal structure, or are they ...

Solvated copper salts are by definition mixtures, not 'pure substances', thus cannot qualify as compounds.

[Edited on 9-7-2015 by blogfast25]

Amos - 9-7-2015 at 18:47

I was specifically told while preparing for the competition that it would be illegal to dissolve copper(II) hydroxide in sulfuric acid at any point in the chain after already making copper(II) sulfate or using it once. So how is that any different from what you all are saying?

[Edited on 7-10-2015 by Amos]

Volanschemia - 9-7-2015 at 19:20

I legalized revisiting hydrates since it would be almost impossible to react, for example, anhydrous Copper(II) Sulphate, with anything without revisiting a hydration state and because revisiting a hydrate gives you no where near as many other opportunities as revisiting compounds.

The Volatile Chemist - 10-7-2015 at 10:37

Wonderful job everyone! PinkHippo's prep deserved the win, great job! I don't really want to download his xlsx file just to have to upload it to Google drive to read it (I have Open Office only), did he reduce the copper(II) ferricyanide to a copper(I) compound at the end before heating? Darnit, I thought I was unique in figuring out that procedure... It works for producing some strange Cobalt compound when a Cobalt(II) salt is used instead.

Texium - 10-7-2015 at 16:16

Quote: Originally posted by TheAustralianScientist

I legalized revisiting hydrates since it would be almost impossible to react, for example, anhydrous Copper(II) Sulphate, with anything without revisiting a hydration state and because revisiting a hydrate gives you no where near as many other opportunities as revisiting compounds.

Yeah, I had planned out the part of my chain where I produce anhydrous CuCl₂ from CuI and Cl₂ before that was added to the rules, and had decided to dissolve it in methanol to avoid making the dihydrate a second time. Turns out it worked in my favor, I guess! Good job, everyone else who participated. I just got back from vacation. I have a lot of reading to do on here.

Volanschemia - 10-7-2015 at 16:28

Quote: Originally posted by The Volatile Chemist

[...] did he reduce the copper(II) ferricyanide to a copper(I) compound at the end before heating?

No, Copper(II) Hexacyanoferrate(III) wasn't in his chain. The last three steps in his chain were Copper(II) Dichromate -> Copper(II) Chromate -> Copper Chromite.

Texium - 10-7-2015 at 16:49

I thought that copper(II) dichromate wasn't a thing...

Amos - 10-7-2015 at 17:26

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

I thought that copper(II) dichromate wasn't a thing...

Yeah, I'm thinking that was just a mixture of copper sulfate and dichromate in solution.

Zephyr - 10-7-2015 at 20:59

Quote: Originally posted by Amos

Quote: Originally posted by zts16

I thought that copper(II) dichromate wasn't a thing...

Yeah, I'm thinking that was just a mixture of copper sulfate and dichromate in solution.

Possible, but in that case I'm not sure what my precipitate was.
Maybe copper hydroxide, although I used a stoichiometric amount of NaOH so that would be unlikely.

Texium - 10-7-2015 at 21:09

Yes, adding the NaOH precipitates copper(II) chromate, which is definitely a real compound, but this copper(II) dichromate that you claim seems unlikely. As Amos says, it's likely just a solution that happens to contain copper and dichromate ions, though it is unlikely that this would crystallize as a genuine copper dichromate. Not that it really matters, since even without that, you still have the most compounds.

DraconicAcid - 13-7-2015 at 10:18

Hey- PinkHippo had two reactions starting from copper metal.

Zephyr - 13-7-2015 at 17:37

Yep, I didn't count the first one though, I was only counting the products. Honestly I just didn't have any copper acetate laying around and it was easier to start from the metal.
As for the copper chromate, that's probably the reason.

Volanschemia - 13-7-2015 at 17:45

Huh, you're right. I must have missed that one.
Technically, the starting material counts in the chain, but it still makes no difference to whether you win or not, even if you remove the first step and start from Copper(II) Acetate.

The Volatile Chemist - 16-7-2015 at 12:57

Good job everyone! There were some cool compounds I wanted to make, so I mixed up a whole bunch of CuCO3 to isolate, and...well, the 'cakes' of it from my new vac. filter kit turned to a slushy of Cu(OH)2. Maybe experimental chemistry isn't for me

(Or at least, for my basement... :/)

aga - 16-7-2015 at 14:48

You got a Buchner setup now ?

Cool !

Add a trap for crap before it gets into the Oil of the vac pump.

My pump oil is a funny colour now.

Still works, but better to make trap out of a jam jar or something.

DraconicAcid - 24-4-2016 at 09:22

We going to do this again this year? It was fun.

The Volatile Chemist - 30-4-2016 at 09:24

Quote: Originally posted by DraconicAcid

We going to do this again this year? It was fun.

Heck yeah it was! I'll contribute a few dogecoin to the reward pot (it's all I've got, sorry...)

Aga, yeah, though it's a hand pump. I could set up a trap with one of my dinky 50mL filtering flasks.....

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