Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Yellow powder found in hotplate

AlChemicalLife - 17-7-2017 at 18:23

Hi guys ,
Rencently when I was taking apart my hotplate stirrer to make sure the wires and such where OK on the inside and to lube the shaft in the stirrer part , there was this yellow lump of something , it resembled either sulfur or sodium peroxide in color , I knocked some off and put some water on it but nothing happened and it didn't appear to disolve. I also found an emerald green looking stain and what looked like to be a small piece of broken glass in it.
I'm more concerned about the yellow substance
This hotplates stirrer came from eBay and the seller got it from "an agricultural chemical company organic chemistry lab.
If anyone has any idea of what this is let me know , I'm more concerned because I never wore gloves when I was opening it up and don't want to have it end up being something super toxic.
Anyways thanks !
~Steven

Photonic - 1-8-2017 at 03:01

It would be hard to diagnose what you're talking about without seeing some photos. Off the top of my head maybe oxidized copper from the wires, and a little bit of insulating material but that is speculative at best.

Maybe if you had pictures some of the other guys could tell you with far greater certainty though.

That said always wear gloves when handling unknown substances!