happycamper723
Harmless
Posts: 10
Registered: 23-4-2012
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Mood: Curious
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Mysterious substance found
I love diddling around with chemistry. I am usually very meticulous about labeling things, but I found an old plastic cup with some white granules in
it. I dissolved about 5 grams of it in about 40 ml water (it does dissolve in water quite well, perhaps better than sugar or salt) and tested the pH.
It did not appear to change.
I thought it might be some old KNO3, but when I mixed it with sugar and put a lighter to it, some odd yellow-clearish liquid seeped out.
To test it further, I put a lighter to the original substance I'd found and it yielded the same fluid, which then turned orange, then red, then black
and began bubbling and doing all sort of strange things-all within about 30 seconds.
It gives off no detectable smell or fumes naturally, and when heated a stinging and smokey odor was released. It has a crystalline structure.
"Science, eh? Hmmm...I think I read somewhere that science is used to make BOMBS! TERRORIST!!!"
-Homer Simpson
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99chemicals
Hazard to Others
Posts: 174
Registered: 24-3-2012
Location: In the Octet
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It may be an organic sugar like glucose, fructose, or sucrose.
Try mixing some with KNO3 or KClO3 and see what happens. I have heated sugar in a test tube before and it changedff different colors and when it went
to black it stated decomposing into water and carbon.
I think that because of its colorlessness and low melting point it is deffinatly an organic compound.
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Hexavalent
International Hazard
Posts: 1564
Registered: 29-12-2011
Location: Wales, UK
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Mood: Pericyclic
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I second what 99chemicals has said . . .to confirm if its a sugar (either the monomer, dimer, trimer etc. but not the polymer - a starch), dissolve
some up in water, add Benedict's solution and heat in a hot water bath. A positive test will yield a brownish/orange colour IIRC.
"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill
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