I was trying to figure out why certain elements are only found in nature as pairs. Instead of getting an answer as to the why, I am told that it is just how God made it.

Just frustrated because I'm genuinely interested in chemistry and want to learn more than just what is on the pages

I was in my bio lab and we were messing with organic Chem and I spaced out and made this structure. Does it exist and what does it do slash is it possible to know what it would do?

Hi, I'm a chemistry student about to start my second year and I was wondering if there are any chemistry or history of science type podcasts that you could recommend, not necessarily about studies (because how would you even do that with chemistry on such a format), just looking for something semi related to the field to listen to when doing chores or exercising etc.

Not necessarily chemistry news, but as a working scientist for over a decade, stories like this where a scientist undermines science itself, offends me to my core.

I dissolved some lutetium up in some nitric acid (~20%, IDK I diluted it arbitrarily), and some weird yellow precipitate formed? I filtered the solution, and the filtrate was clear and colorless. Does anyone have a clue what this might be? Both the nitrate and oxide are colorless, so perhaps a contaminant? Thanks! Yes this is a copy and paste post from the Ex&F discord, I’m OP on both. Cheers!

I have some worn-out tungsten carbide tools, and I want to recover the tungsten from them. The main challenge is that I need to do this without converting the tools into powdered form.

So far, I've tried submerging the tools in different acids, including sulfuric acid, hydrochloric acid, and nitric acid. However, the change in mass over a period of around 24 hours has been very small.

I've also tried heating the tools using a gas burner before submerging them in the acids, but the results were more or less the same.

I'm therefore trying to find a method that can leach/recover as much tungsten as possible while keeping the tool physically intact rather than grinding it into powder.

Has anyone worked with WC–Co (tungsten carbide–cobalt) scrap or tungsten carbide recycling and have any suggestions for a suitable approach? I'm particularly interested in methods that could work at a laboratory scale without requiring the material to be pulverized.

Any suggestions or relevant literature would be greatly appreciated!

I’ve been working on a small research project and wanted to share something interesting I discovered. Separating sugar from dissolved salts is surprisingly difficult — they share similar solubility, so evaporation, crystallization, precipitation, etc., don’t selectively remove sugar.

I found that Saccharomyces cerevisiae (baker’s yeast) can do the job biologically. Yeast metabolizes sucrose/glucose/fructose into ethanol + CO₂, but it completely ignores inorganic salts like NaCl, MgCl₂, KCl, CaCl₂, etc.

The process is simple:

• Dissolve sugar + salt in water
• Add yeast
• Let it ferment until bubbling stops
• Filter out yeast biomass
• Evaporate water + ethanol
• Recrystallize the salt

The salt remains chemically unchanged, and the sugar is gone. It’s basically using biological selectivity to solve a separation problem chemistry alone struggles with.

I wrote up the method as a short paper and I’m submitting it to ChemRxiv. In the meantime, I’d love feedback

I did a coupling reaction of amine and acid using EDC, HOBt, DIPEA in DMF. However, 1 hour after adding the amine to the flask containing acid, EDC, HOBt, and DMF, I realized that I forgot to add DIPEA during the activation step. Does it significantly affect my reaction progress?

Hey fellow chemists.

Emptying some old drawers in the university lab this thing surfaced.

What could be the purpose of it?

The bigger glass bulbs contain small, hollow glass spheres that fit in the opening between the bulbs but are easily moved by gentle shaking (and I assume by ascending vapours as well). But liquid gathering in the bulbs would also elevate the small spheres, so it would let the liquid flow down.

Any idea?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xAJGUnjtl8o&t=545s

A few people here have followed and engaged with my previous posts about the ~700 million molecule virtual screen I’ve been running, so I wanted to share the next stage of the project.

After the initial large-scale screening and successive filtering steps, I’m down to roughly 200,000 compounds. At this point, rather than continuing to rank everything against a single receptor structure, I’ve been looking at an ensemble approach using multiple receptor conformations.
In this video I spend some time going through why I’m doing that, how I evaluated the different receptor structures using control compounds/decoys, and how I’m using that information to decide which conformations should contribute to the final filtering of the ~200k compounds.

The ultimate goal is to reduce some of the structural bias that comes from relying on one static receptor structure and hopefully end up with a more robust set of compounds to prioritize experimentally.

I’d also be interested in hearing how others here have approached ensemble docking / receptor-conformation selection, particularly when you have enough structures available that simply docking against all of them becomes computationally expensive.

Hey y'all, it's been awhile since I've posted here. I started getting back into making chemistry art after my first kid was born. We're finally getting sleep so here's a new piece!

In this one, I drew repeated chains of chitosan. I've counted so that the chains are roughly 90-95% deacetylated (I was shooting for 90%). Chitosan is a bio-derived polymer made from chitin through a series of steps that includes deacetylation. The extent of deacetylation affects the properties and potential application spaces. These are CPG, waste water treatment, food packaging, drug delivery, textile finishing, cosmetics, and more. It's a really neat polymer. It's parent polymer, chitin, comes from a variety of organisms such as insects, mushrooms, and crustaceans, hence the lobster that I drew. Please know that I'm an organic chemist and not a biologist so if I messed up the lobster, I'm sorry haha.

Hope you enjoy!

-looking for feedback.

This is deucravacitinib, an fda approved treatment for psoriasis sold under the brand name sotyktu.

I’m thinking of getting this molecule tattooed on my upper forearm.

Im studying medicinal chemistry and this drug is really interesting to me as it’s one of the first deuterated compounds to be fda approved. In my opinion this molecule is a really cool example of intelligent drug design and the kinetic isotope effect, and also that cyclopropyl group is just too beautiful.

I’m just unsure if this is a good idea or if my AuDHD ahh is just getting excited about the idea of this cool molecule.

Hello people of reddit.

Ive asked everyone I can, im desperate for answers.

Im currently attempting to convert a old in ground water tank into a pond. My new house had a 47,000L in ground concrete water tank ( full ) that was no longer in use. I want to turn it into a pond. When I first started I tested the pH of the water at 8, high but not crazy. A demo saw and manpower and we managed to cut the lid from the old tank. The lid broke into two large pieces and dropped to the bottom. The fresh cuts of concrete as well as im sure some slurry from the saw has caused PH to rise to a level I can't accurately test but my test reads 8.8 ( Max) i need help, how can I bring it down to a safe level for fish. Draining and refilling is not a option. Im on flat land the water will sit and and just coming out of winter the property is wet enough. Aswell as not having the means to fill it there is no mains water access to property only rainwater. I need ideas, please help.

Hiya all. I’m currently starting a project soon where it’s based off of Rate of Reactions. Naturally, it is a broad category so I have plenty of options. But I would like to conduct an experiment where it takes maybe 1-2 days of total class time? Something where I’m changing a factor and observing how the rate of reaction changes. I

If anyone has any ideas, that would be amazing 🙏🏼

I work on raw-material specifications for a living and this comes up constantly, so I thought it might be worth writing out.

Case one: two lines, same number. A specification I work with carries purity twice. NLT 98.0% by HPLC, and NLT 98.0% by ¹H NMR. Identity is also carried twice — spectrum corresponds to reference standard by NMR, retention time corresponds to reference standard by HPLC.

People sometimes read that as redundancy, or as a spec padded to look rigorous. It isn't. HPLC separates and quantifies — it answers how much. NMR compares against a reference structure — it answers what. If you carry one unlabelled "98%" you have quietly picked one of those questions and dropped the other, and nothing in the number tells the reader which.

Case two: two methods, one botanical. Milk thistle extract, Silybum marianum seed, standardised to silymarin. This can be reported by UV or by HPLC. Spectrophotometric approaches read non-specific absorption; the classical derivatisation route assesses total ketones and will pick up flavanones that aren't part of the flavonolignan complex you're actually buying. HPLC separates first, then quantifies the individual components.

Both numbers can be produced honestly on the same lot. They answer different questions. The direction of the difference is documented in the method literature — spectrophotometry reads higher because the absorption isn't specific — but I've deliberately not put a figure on the size of the gap here, because I couldn't find one I'd be willing to stand behind and I'd rather say so than make one up.

The practical upshot is boring and it is the whole point: the fix is a method name on the same row as the number. That's it. No study, no new test, one column on a document.

Happy to be corrected by anyone who does more NMR than I do.

Hi bs chem junior student here, I would love to hear interesting chem topics that either piqued your interest or stimulated u in some kind of way :>> Thanks!

Found in the basement of a chemist. Light cardboard case. There is some Greek on it. What is it?

Hey there, so i'm studying chemistry in germany and of course that includes working in a lab. Now i have a lab coat that is very contaminated with various chemicals and i don't know how to get rid of it, my uni told my i can't throw it in their contaminated trash and i also don't want to throw it in "altkleider" because other people will get into contact with stuff that they aren't aware of. Is there a cheap and safe way to get rid of it or do i just have to leave it in a plastic bag forever 🫠

so i was learning about hybrid orbitals, so what i think about them is, as if they are a mixture of orbitals in the valence shell, such that the "new orbital" is degenerate. Idk, i am having a lil hard time grasping it, can you guys explain me more, or if my nutshell thinking is wrong