[QUOTE=Cows Rule;39664807]I got to touch lead today, it's not really that astounding, but I feel really awesome because only I would think that's cool.[/QUOTE]
lead? you've never touched lead before?
what
It was cold in my chem lecture today, so everyone including my prof showed up in our lab coats for extra warmth.
We then screwed with the well dressed business students across the hall by talking about the "hazardous hydroxic acid leak". Set them off in a panic :v:
I have a deep longing to stick my hand in a bucket of mercury.
You could do it with a glove and a ton of ventilation. Only danger of bare arm is that it can enter your pores. That's why you can touch it with your palm and pretty much be fine.
The Extended DeBye-Huckle Limiting Law is a horrible formula and I'm glad it breaks down at around .3 mol/L
I'm studying nuclear chemistry right now. I think next week we'll get into nuclear reactors.
Can someone explain to me why uranium is becoming less common in reactors? I hear people are switching to thorium but my teacher nor myself know why.
[QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;39716264]I'm studying nuclear chemistry right now. I think next week we'll get into nuclear reactors.
Can someone explain to me why uranium is becoming less common in reactors? I hear people are switching to thorium but my teacher nor myself know why.[/QUOTE]
Some fuels can be more efficient and less rare. Uranium is rare to begin with and then it has to be enriched.
[QUOTE=RIPBILLYMAYS;39716264]I'm studying nuclear chemistry right now. I think next week we'll get into nuclear reactors.
Can someone explain to me why uranium is becoming less common in reactors? I hear people are switching to thorium but my teacher nor myself know why.[/QUOTE]
Thorium is about 3* as abundant as uranium, along with some other benefits. Sure uranium supplies are sufficient, but it's better to plan ahead, especially if we build more reactors.
Here's the IAEA on it:
[quote=IAEA]n recent years, there has been renewed and additional interest in thorium because
of:
(i) the intrinsic proliferation resistance of thorium fuel cycle due to the presence of U-232 and its strong gamma emitting daughter products
(ii) better thermo-physical properties and chemical stability of ThO2, as compared to UO2, which ensures better in-pile performance and a more stable waste form,
(iii) lesser long lived minor actinides than the traditional uranium fuel cycle,
(iv) superior plutonium incineration in (Th, Pu)O2 fuel as compared to (U, Pu)O2
(v) attractive features of thorium related to accelerated driven system (ADS) and energy
amplifier (EA). [/quote]
Paraphrased from page 4 of this:
[url]http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/TE_1450_web.pdf[/url]
Wikipedia also gives a few more:
[quote]Some benefits of thorium fuel when compared with uranium were summarized as follows:[28]
-Weapons-grade fissionable material (233U) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor;
-Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste;
-Thorium mining produces a single pure isotope, whereas the mixture of natural uranium isotopes must be enriched to function in most common reactor designs. The same cycle could also use the fissionable U-238 component of the natural uranium, and also contained in the depleted reactor fuel;
-Thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming,[29] so fission stops by default in an accelerator driven reactor.
[/quote]
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Benefits_and_challenges[/url]
[editline]26th February 2013[/editline]
Of course, it's not without it's cons, but it works out as a pretty good fuel.
[T] http://imgur.com/uSrjQml.jpg[/t]
Haven't used permanganate in a while, I forgot how pretty it was.
Not as pretty as Fe(acac)3 mind you...
It's ugly when it leaves a brown stain tho
[img]http://i.imgur.com/wO3LmBf.png[/img]
Vrrrm vrrrm I made a (mostly) carbon car.
I was going to bling it up with some square-planar coordinated platinum (so the wheels are actually parallel to each other), but ChemSketch can't do 3D optimization on Pt.
Going through Drugs and Medicine as our last option, really enjoying it so far.
At least it forces me to repeat and remember functional groups from organics.
I have to extract caffeine from coffee for a prac. I need help with picking a solvent for recrystalisation.
My choices are water at 80C(1g/5.5ml) -> Room temp(1g/46ml), Ethanol at 60C (1g/22ml) -> room temperature (1g/46ml) or boiling benzene.
Immediately I thought benzene would be a no because of how carcinogenic it is, which is supposed to factor into our decision. I'm not sure whether to pick water or ethanol though. I thought water because of the huge difference in solubility but when I google it I can't find anyone whos used water in similar pracs. A lot use Ethyl Acetate but don't say why, is there something I'm missing?
Hey guys, I have a question- What makes Polyethylene so non reactive?
It's a long, nonpolar molecule made of only hydrogen and carbons. It's nonpolar because it's completely symmetric. This means it has weak intermolecular forces, and doesn't really interact with other things. The covalent bond between hydrogen and carbon is fairly stable as well. There's probably more to the story but those are the basic reasons.
[QUOTE=McGii;39898720]I have to extract caffeine from coffee for a prac. I need help with picking a solvent for recrystalisation.
My choices are water at 80C(1g/5.5ml) -> Room temp(1g/46ml), Ethanol at 60C (1g/22ml) -> room temperature (1g/46ml) or boiling benzene.
Immediately I thought benzene would be a no because of how carcinogenic it is, which is supposed to factor into our decision. I'm not sure whether to pick water or ethanol though. I thought water because of the huge difference in solubility but when I google it I can't find anyone whos used water in similar pracs. A lot use Ethyl Acetate but don't say why, is there something I'm missing?[/QUOTE]
Ethanol because it is much easier to remove from the crystals than water is.
[editline]16th March 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Glorbo;39925537]Hey guys, I have a question- What makes Polyethylene so non reactive?[/QUOTE]
In addition to what account said; hydrocarbon polymers are big bulky molecules with no real reactive sites. Big things tend to react more slowly than smaller things (assuming similar functionality).
Best lab: testing the metal adsorption capacity of peanut shells. We sat around for half an hour eating peanuts and drinking deionized distilled water :v:
88.9% adsorption of copper.
[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;39975046]Best lab: testing the metal adsorption capacity of peanut shells. We sat around for half an hour eating peanuts and drinking deionized distilled water :v:
88.9% adsorption of copper.[/QUOTE]
I've heard deionized water tastes terrible, does it?
title is wrong, my god is neptunium, because its more fissable
[editline]21st March 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Fergeh;39992811]I've heard deionized water tastes terrible, does it?[/QUOTE]
not sure about taste, but it burns like hell when you get it in cuts
[editline]21st March 2013[/editline]
for 'mericium!
[QUOTE=Fergeh;39992811]I've heard deionized water tastes terrible, does it?[/QUOTE]
Imagine a room temperature tasteless liquid of pH 7.
i really think thorium isnt a viable alternative to uranium
i mean the reactors would need uranium to keep the reaction going, plus uranium supplies are more than enough to supply the world's power, some of the leading thorium designs employ molten salts instead of water, molten salt reactors are just dangerous, 1 leak and you got radioactive salts everywhere, much harder to clean up than radioactive water
[QUOTE=Fergeh;39992811]I've heard deionized water tastes terrible, does it?[/QUOTE]
You can't taste it.
[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;39995957]Imagine a room temperature tasteless liquid of pH 7.[/QUOTE]
this lol
Every time I work with dichloromethane I lose sensation in a random finger for a few days, even when wearing gloves the whole time.
OK, tungsten light bulb, prism, a couple stepper motors, photoresistor, arduino microcontroller and a few opaque Tupperware boxes.
Time to cobble a crude vis light spectrophotometer together!
Think pricking a piece of foil with a pin would give me a small enough slit to isolate some wavelengths?
Yesterday we did titrations to find an unknown acid
Our stopcock fell out twice
Last year we were working with Potassium Permanganate and our stopcock fell out twice. SO MUCH PURPLE
Don't you guys have stopcocks with the little screw collar?
I think ours just had little rubber "seals" that were supposed to keep it in. If I remember correctly, the only threaded one was used by the teacher and was so tight that it only let out in drops... took like 10 minutes to dispense 10ml of acid. We have notoriously shitty lab equipment.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/IzmNyWQ.gif[/img]
:v:
[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;40063528]Don't you guys have stopcocks with the little screw collar?[/QUOTE]
Nope.
Luckily, the stopcock fell out close to 12.00 pH, so the data was somewhat ok
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
