Mona Clark ⚧ @mona@computerfairi.es

Enjoy this wonderful (and wonderfully '80s) track, "Strong as I Am" by The Prime Movers, featured in one of the best films of the '80s, Michael Mann's _Manhunter_.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foFw7djyELc

#chemistry

What I really would have liked were some alternatives for acidimetric standards. "Tris" base, tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane, is a good one but not easily made at home! Another I found out about was 4-aminopyridine, also inaccessible. I tried and failed to synthesize potassium bicarbonate by passing CO2 gas into a K2CO3 solution.

#chemistry

Acidimetric titrations are a bit more work to prepare for. HCl solutions made from hardware-store muriatic acid are easily prepared, but standardization is more difficult. I had best luck with:

Sodium tetraborate decahydrate (prepared by recrystallization of commercial borax at 55 °C, and stored in a container with a high humidity to suppress efflorescence)

Sodium carbonate (prepared by baking out sodium sesquicarbonate prep'd by crystallizing a hot NaHCO3 solution)

#chemistry

For alkalimetric titrations I used solutions of NaOH made from hardware-store lye, and standardized with the following:

Oxalic acid dihydrate (recrystallized commercial Daly's oxalic acid)

Sulphamic acid (recrystallized TileLab sulfamic acid)

Potassium tetroxalate dihydrate (prepared from oxalic acid and potassium carbonate and recrystallized) (this compound is less satisfactory as a standard)

#chemistry

I've done volumetric analysis at home. For fun. Burets are fairly easy to get online ($20 will get you a serviceable 50 mL model) but availability of pure reagents for use as "primary standards" (for standardization of volumetric reagent solutions) is nonexistent to the private citizen. I taught myself to prepare and recrystallize a number of inorganic compounds in order to do my work.

#chemistry

What I would really like to do is start amassing equipment needed for some routine quantitative analyses. I've done many titrations in my life and volumetric analysis is what I know best, but I'd like if possible to develop methods that are more specific and more apt to automation. Titration with coulometric generation of reagents seems like it might be a feasible amateur project.

I should perhaps start posting more #chemistry stuff here. I've had a number of amateur chemistry projects I want to start working on, although they must take a lesser place on the list of priorities than most of the other things that @kara_dreamer and the rest of us wish to work on.

(Yes's strange 90125 album is pretty bad, but it has this _one_ perfect song on it.)

I'm moving through some changes
I'll never be the same
Something you did touched me
There's no one else to blame

The love we had has fallen
The love we used to share
We've given up pretending
As if you didn't care

Change changing places
Root yourself to the ground
Capitalize on this good fortune
One word can bring you round
Changes

Every time Magnus Carlsen loses a chess game a demon gets her wings. Every time Carlsen wins a tournament Odin kills a kitten.

Bis
(Dodecane-
Sulphonyl)
Methane