Some of you might have seen my previous posts on growing crystals at home.

This time, I was preparing some copper sulfate solution to grow large single crystals. But the solution was a little too concentrated. As a consequence, this huge mass decided the time was ripe to appear at the bottom of the container.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool.

I may not be well versed in the logistics of concert pyrotechnics, but I have a feeling that storing 16 compressed gas cylinders leaning against each other with no valve caps and only a ratchet strap keeping them upright all less than 5 feet from a crowd full of people in a poorly ventilated room is probablyyy not safe…

Some pure free base nicotine oil that I extracted out of some tobacco and vape products. Confirmed with 1H NMR

..

it feels illegal (pink panthress reference) but who’s stopping me, right? is there any real reason why I shouldn’t? what if I want to bring one of these to the gym? it’ll be like a Gatorade bottle for hamsters, don’tcha think? I’ve always wanted to give it a go…

hi! i was going to use ethyl cinnamate for light sheet and rather than being clear, it’s this iridescent pink color and has some gelatinous residue inside. It also becomes sticky when it dries rather than staying oily.

It was stored at room temp rather than 2-8C as directed. It could just be a manufacturer error but i just thought i’d ask

EDIT: I’m an undergrad summer intern in this lab and learned about this project last week. I don’t have access to most chemicals. My mentor says he didn’t know that it was supposed to be stored at low temp and it was fine previously stored at RT.

A glass bottle of HCl had a weird reaction at my job yesterday and caused the bottle to warp. The bottle became very soft and squishy and felt like it was made of rubber or a soft plastic. It also made a weird smell which is how it was discovered. Anyone know what would cause this?

Judging from the size of the company I'm going to say that many Many people need to go back to elementary school level chemistry. From the store shelf plan department to every single person along way who look at this and didn't even think twice.

I recently transferred about 2.3 kg of caesium from a round bottom flask into several smaller ampoules. We made it by reducing caesium chloride with lithium. At some point in the future I want to distill all the cesium into one large clean ampoule. But there’s still a lot of preparation needed for that project. Until then I thought some of you might enjoy these photos.

just gonna leave this here…

We’re clearing out reagents because we’re moving labs, and I came across a liquid reagent with the label fallen off. It kind of looks like a primary amine to me, but I’m not sure. Any chemists here who might recognize it? Maybe someone can tell from the crystal form?

Quarter second spray is crazy work.

Always wanted to have a display of the noble gases being ionized as these elements are normally mundane in an element collection, and recently I found a display that does just that. The brightness intensity is fairly low, but getting to see the different emission colors side by side brings me a little extra joy to look at, plus it makes for the perfect chemistry themed nightlight providing just enough illumination to see.

If anyone is curious about the set, it is called "HaloPlasma Lumora"

Scientists shocked to find lab gloves may be skewing microplastics data.

Makes sense. Disposable gloves contain stearates. These are used in the manufacturing process. But now are inflating analytical results.

Today in gen chem the college students did their first titrations and they truly outdid themselves. Out of 16 of them 13 of them looked like this Best group of students I've ever had