DionSukhram6
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Ideas for experiments based on chemicals?
Well I had a bit of birthday and Christmas money left over so, like any person with their priorities in order, I decided to restock some chemicals for
myself and get a few new ones. A lot of them are pottery grade since they're cheap and fair quality for most of what i'm doing. But, since pottery
suppliers often have less common chemicals for very good prices I just couldn't help myself and now I have a bunch of compounds (at least 100 grams of
pretty much all of them) that I have no idea what to do with and a few others that I've just started running out of ideas for, especially with my
limited experience. So, I was wondering if anybody has done anything special/interesting or knows anything to do with these, besides element
extractions
-CeO2
-Sb2O3
-ZrSiO4
-V2O5
-TiO2
-Cr2O3
-Li2CO3
-K2Cr2O7
-BaCO3
-SnO2
-SrCO3
-Eugenol
-Vanillin
-Salicylic Acid
-Oxalic Acid
or anything else that I could get easily
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ninhydric1
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You can decarboxylate salicylic acid to phenol, which is a useful precursor for many organic syntheses.
K2Cr2O7 is an extremely useful oxidizing agent. Maybe try oxidizing an alcohol --> aldehyde --> carboxylic acid?
You can always do flame tests on them to see their unique flame colors. I know strontium has a strong red color, while antimony has a faint green
flame.
There are many interesting vanadium compounds and complexes you can make from V2O5. Other members have more expertise in this area though.
These are all I can think of off the top of my head. There are probably countless experiments you could perform with these.
EDIT 1: Grammatical fixes.
[Edited on 1-7-2018 by ninhydric1]
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
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j_sum1
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Your oxides are pretty much inaccessible. But you have numerous carbonates.
A reasonable start point would be reacting these with whatever acids you have around and isolating some simple salts. You should get some nice
crystals.
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18thTimeLucky
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Mood: 0 Kelvin and still won't crystallise from solution
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You can carry out a fisher esterification with the salicylic acid using methanol and sulfuric acid to produce methyl salicylate (aka wintergreen)
which has a lovely minty smell.
You could react the oxalic acid with iron(II) sulfate or iron(II) chloride to produce iron(II) oxalate which when heated decomposes to form pyrophoric
iron, meaning if you pour it into the air it will amazingly self ignite due to the teeny tiny particle size.
You could react the barium carbonate with hydrochloric acid to produce barium chloride. This barium chloride along with a little bit of hydrochloric
acid can be added to compounds to test for the sulfate ion. If the compound contains a sulfate ion (e.g. copper(II) sulfate) it should form a white
precipitate of barium sulfate.
Chem Player on YouTube loves vanillin, they have done videos on a variety of reactions you can do with it.
You can heat up chromium(III) oxide until its decently hot, then drop it into a flask containing ammonia and it should produce beautiful 'fire flies'
of sparks as the chromium(III) oxide catalyses the oxidation of ammonia into nitric oxide.
There is a small contribution from me, I hope it is helpful!
Yep, I have a chemistry blog!
18thtimelucky.wordpress.com
"Amateur chemistry does seem like being in a relationship with someone very beautiful and seductive but has expensive taste, farts a lot and doesn't
clean up after themselves, but you love them anyway" - a dear friend |
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Iodobenzene
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The first rule of a Home chemist is "Never buy pottery grade oxides unless you have a bunsen burner".
Titanium Oxide is completely inert, ask if you can change it with another article if you haven't opened it.
It dissolves a bit only in super hot H2SO4.
You can convert Chromium Oxide in a Chromate through alkaline fusion.
You can use V2O5 and nitric acid to produce vanadile salts:
V2O5 + 2HNO3 → 2VO2+ + 2NO3– + H2O
I don't know what's the reactivity of Tin Oxide and Cerium Oxide, but if you have Aluminum Powder you can make Strontium metal and Cerium Metal:
4Al + 3SnO2 ---> 2Al2O3 + 3Sn
4Al + 3CeO2 ---> 2Al2O3 + 3Ce
The metals should melt by the heat produced by the reaction.
But these are dangerous reactions, before trying them get some infos.
You could also dissolve Tin Oxide in Hydrochloric Acid and make a "tinning solution":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsw3lOnHaas
Have fun with chemistry!
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ninhydric1
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Or a gas burner/ propane torch. The one I have can get up to 1200 C, which means I could theoretically make TiCl4. It's pretty difficult though.
The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
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woelen
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V2O5 is very interesting. It is an acidic oxide and does not have the inertness as stuff like TiO2 or SnO2.
Here are some nice experiments with V2O5
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/vanadium/ind...
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/KVO4/index.h... (if you don't have red P, you still can make the peroxo complex, the red P only is
for showing its energetic properties).
It is also interesting to experiment with V2O5 at vary high concentrations of NaOH or KOH and adding H2O2, allowing you to make dark blue/purple
peroxo complexes. Also try adding H2O2 to acidic solutions of the vanadyl or pervanadyl ion.
You can easily make the blue vanadyl ion with V2O5, some acid and some sulfite.
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With K2Cr2O7 you can make the very weird (and evil) CrO2Cl2.
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/cro2cl2/inde...
This is a beautiful experiment, but be careful. Hexavalent chromium is a carcinogen when inhaled.
This one also is a beautiful demo:
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/raw_material...
Making some really exotic and stable salts: K3CrO8 and KCrO3Cl.
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/K3CrO8_synth...
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/KCrO3Cl/inde...
If you are interested in coordination chemistry then the following may be interesting:
http://woelen.homescience.net/science/chem/exps/dichrom/inde...
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Sb2O3 can be dissolved easily ion conc. HCl, giving solutions of SbCl3. On dilution, this forms a turbid liquid, due to hydrolysis of the SbCl3 to
insoluble SbOCl and Sb2O3.
If you have cesium chloride, then you can make a dark blue mixed oxidation state complex. Dissolve some Sb2O3 in conc. HCl, add a single drop of H2O2
(10%) and then add a few drops of solution of CsCl. This leads to formation of a dark blue complex salt Cs3[SbCl6].Cs[SbCl6], which contains antimony
in oxidation states +3 and +5.
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PirateDocBrown
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Don't forget that V2O5 is the preferred catalyst for converting SO2 to SO3. Rig up a sulfur burner/ catalytic converter, and make oleum.
Phlogiston manufacturer/supplier.
For all your phlogiston needs.
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Iodobenzene
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I wouldn't suggest to a neophile to make SO3, he could die.
SO2 is deadly too.
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Cryolite.
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If you want to try and upcycle your stannic oxide, alkali fusion should give sodium stannate. This can then be electrolyzed to give tin metal. Maybe
the resulting sodium hydroxide solution could be replenished with more stannic oxide, making this catalytic in NaOH?
Ceric oxide is actually fairly soluble in sulfuric acid. An idea would be to attempt to prepare ammonium ceric nitrate or ammonium ceric sulfate from
this-- these reagents are useful oxidation catalysts in organic chemistry.
If you can get zinc oxide, you can have some fun with it and eugenol by making zinc oxide-eugenol cement. This paste is used in dentistry as a
temporary filling material for teeth.
Vanadium pentoxide is quite an interesting material. You can make a very nice blue vanadyl sulfate solution from this by dissolving in sulfuric acid
and reducing with ethanol.
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DionSukhram6
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Okay so I reacted some of the ceric oxide with a large excess of hot sulfuric acid (loosely following the procedure here: https://www.jim.or.jp/journal/e/pdf3/53/11/1986.pdf). After about 24 hrs it seemed like it had all been converted to Ce(SO4)2. However, since I
can only do gravity filtration as of right now, I'm not sure how to separate and purify the product. Any ideas?
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CaCl2
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You have oxalic acid, if you had a source for Fe(III) you could make various ferrioxalates and grow crystals from them.
At least lithium ferrioxalate, since you have lithium carbonate.
Baking soda would allow you to make sodium ferrioxalate
If you can get potassium carbonate, potassium ferrioxalate. (It's the easiest one to isolate)
Lithium ferrioxalate chloride would require either HCl or lithium chloride, but it can be grown into triangular prism shaped crystals
All these ferrioxalates have pretty much the same color, but different crystal habits.
[Edited on 10-1-2018 by CaCl2]
[Edited on 10-1-2018 by CaCl2]
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