Liquid metal
2009-08-20 10:44 by Ian
Picked up about 11.5kg of mercury yesterday and cleaned it up. This was my procedure and pictures of the results.
Cross-filed under photography because I took lots of photos of the mercury while I was cleaning it. The pictures can’t do it justice. The stuff is beautiful.
Comment [2]
The coolant chiller
2009-06-25 19:52 by Ian
For doing distillations and extractions using solvents with low boiling points (such as diethyl ether or chloroform), the coolant in the condenser must be below the temperature of tap water.
This is my solution to the problem of reliable sub-zero cooling.
Couldn't bring myself to work indoors today
2009-06-24 00:26 by Ian
I couldn’t bring myself to work indoors today. I setup my gear outside to determine the alcohol concentration in a co-worker’fs home made cider.
Introduction to Soxhlet extractor
2009-06-13 20:49 by Ian
My extractor was delivered today, and I chose to test it by extracting essence of eucalyptus using methanol as a solvent.
Q&A About Mercury
2009-04-04 21:56 by Ian
Some assorted questions and my responses to an online contact regarding the chemistry of mercury.
Making Nickel (II) chloride hexahydrate
2009-03-09 22:58 by Ian
Some simple home chemistry.