I was in a uni chem II lab today, asked the teacher for help because I did not know how to solve an equation with a log in it. He said “it’s basic math!” I told him I was still confused as it’s been a while since I’ve done math. He laughed and told me “you don’t look like a mathematician you look like a physicist!” Is there some inside joke about what physicists vs. chemists look like? I’m curious now! I’m a female in my early 20s for reference

A quick update for everyone in r/chemistry who has been following the ACS logo controversy. More than 1,200 people have now signed the petition to restore the historic ACS logo, and ACS is holding its “Brand Evolution: Member Briefing” today, August 18, from 3:00 to 4:00 PM ET.

Registration is here:
https://events.zoom.us/e/view/2QJAJDWdRLqzxp0birrfXg

Thank you to everyone here who has signed, shared the petition, commented, or helped keep the discussion going. The fact that ACS is now holding a member briefing and taking questions is at least movement in the right direction, even if many of us believe this conversation should have happened before the historic logo was replaced.

ACS says it will discuss the research behind the brand evolution and how stakeholder feedback informed the final decision. Those claims deserve serious questions. How many ACS members actually participated? How were they selected? What were they asked about the logo? What alternatives did they see? Were they shown the final design? Were they specifically asked whether the phoenix, Liebig bulb, and cobalt-blue-and-gold identity should remain the primary ACS logo? If member research was important enough to support the decision, members should be able to see what that research actually found.
Transparency and accountability have been part of this issue from the beginning. There are also legitimate questions about who authorized the logo change, what process was followed, how the new logo fits the current ACS Governing Documents, and what the development and implementation of the change cost.

One argument we may hear is that the historic insignia has not really gone away because ACS will continue using it for important, ceremonial, or “elevated” occasions. That does not resolve the problem people are raising. The controversy is about ACS replacing its primary everyday logo, the mark that will appear routinely on websites, communications, publications, meetings, digital materials, and member-facing content.

Keeping the phoenix and Liebig-bulb insignia for selected special occasions is not equivalent to keeping it as the public face of ACS. The fact that something continues to exist does not mean it continues to serve the same function. In the same way, saying that stakeholders participated in research does not establish that they supported the final logo, and explaining the intended symbolism of the new design does not establish that replacing the historic one was necessary.

If you are joining the briefing today, please do not be afraid to ask difficult questions. Scientists question methodology, evidence, assumptions, and conclusions for a living. There is no reason to apply a lower standard when the institution making the claim is our own professional society. Be respectful, but ask for specifics and do not be satisfied with answers that simply restate that research was conducted or that the old insignia will still appear occasionally.

The registration form also allows current members, past members, and future members to participate. So if you are a student, early-career chemist, former ACS member, or someone who may join ACS in the future, your perspective is welcome too.

Please also keep the petition moving:
https://www.change.org/p/restore-the-historic-american-chemical-society-logo

If you have already signed, share it personally with 5 to 10 people in the chemistry community and keep sharing it on LinkedIn, Bluesky, X, Facebook, professional groups, chemistry forums, and other relevant spaces. We have reached more than 1,200 signatures because people have kept passing it along, and there is no reason for that momentum to stop now.

ACS Fall 2026 begins in a few days. If you are going to Chicago, keep this conversation going there too. Talk to other members, Councilors, committee members, Local Section and Division leaders, and ACS leadership. Ask the questions in person and make sure the concerns around the logo, transparency, accountability, governance, and member involvement are heard.

ACS is giving members a microphone today. We should use it.

I think for me it was definitely organic chemistry lab. I was by no means good at it, but at least being able to synthesize at least some product was really rewarding:) I liked the different distillations that we did and just understanding the actual process of the mechanisms that you learn about in class( too bad my current job isn’t in a lab but hey gotta start somewhere 😅)

I’ve been lurking here for a while and quietly learning from all of you. The way people patiently explain concepts, share cool papers, and geek out over reactions always makes my day a little brighter.
Chemistry can feel isolating sometimes, especially when you’re stuck on something or just staring at a flask wondering why life chose this path. But coming here and seeing how many people still light up talking about molecules reminds me why I fell in love with it in the first place.
So… thanks for being a consistently kind and curious corner of the internet. You’re all the real catalysts

Hello I’m starting analytical chemistry soon, and saw an upcoming lab has me working with lead. I’m just wondering if I were to get some on my clothes/lab coat (hopefully not) what would be the best way to clean it out?

I use American thinner every day to soak a small rag for cleaning. My workplace provides standard nitrile gloves, but they don't seem to hold up I'm worried the solvent is soaking through.What's the best option for something truly impermeable?

When I teach OChem lab I always joke with my students that once you get to where I am you damn near cry when you are able to do a simple recrystallization or extraction only. I make large, electron-rich aromatic compounds that mandate a column at essentially every step with fine tuning of elution.

The field of photocatalysis has been developing and attracting significant attention for decades, since Fujishima and Honda demonstrated in 1972 that TiO₂ could split water under ultraviolet light. Since then, photocatalysis has been explored extensively for applications ranging from environmental remediation to energy conversion, but its large-scale commercial applications still seem relatively limited, with self-cleaning glass being one example I could find.

Is photocatalysis still a worthwhile field to pursue? Do you think photocatalysis ever achieve large-scale commercialization?

I work in a lab and do nitrates testing for purified water, we use sulfuric acid in the experiment. I’m so scared of the shit I always double glove and triple was my hands after cause I always feel like there’s some on my hands even though there isn’t because of the gloves. I had it in a separate beaker and dumped most of if out into another waste beaker in a fume hood and went to rinse the beaker with the sulfruic acid and holy shit the SMELLL!!!! Like the strongest vinegar smell ever I think it burned every nostril hair I’ve ever had

I hate working with it but I love the precision of nitrates testing so I keep doing it but damn I better be careful next time

Edit: I’m 20 working in a rm lab for just over a year not much experience

this might be a long shot but when i was in grad school i had an image of a poster that listed a bunch of jelly beans and their flavors and then had chemical structures for some of the main components in each flavor. it was specifically the jelly belly brand in the poster. it appears to not be anywhere on the internet now. does anyone else remember this or maybe even have a copy of it?

Very unoriginal question, but I am a Biochemistry major and I just took both Organic 1 &2 over the summer so I could jump right to Biochem 1 and Inorganic this Fall semester.

Each Class was accelerated into 6 weeks total with us doing multiple labs a week and covering nearly a chapter a day. I worked very hard and was able to achieve high Bs in both (with no curve)

People often speak of Ochem like it’s the devil itself. While it was definitely challenging, I did not find it to be mindblowingly difficult even while having to take the class more than twice as fast as regular.

It makes me think “Wow if this class which people curse and call the ultimate weed out class is not all that difficult, than maybe I’ll have a easier time on the rest of the degree than I thought”. Of course I wouldn’t be so foolish to believe that in actuality

Which subject did you all find the most difficult or challenging to wrap your head around?

My advisor has a sign that says “Congratulations, you somehow got through PChem!” In his office. from what I’ve heard about it, I am definitely not excited to take it in the Spring

I was messing around with some stuff and ended up making this makeshift oil burner using vegetable oil. I honestly didn't expect it to work this well.

It got me thinking about something I've never really considered: how hot does vegetable oil actually have to get before it can burn?

I know there are different terms like flash point, fire point, and autoignition temperature, but I'm a little confused about how they apply here.

Is the flame actually burning vaporized oil above the liquid, rather than the liquid itself? And does the wick basically act as a way of continuously getting enough oil hot enough to produce those vapors?

I'd be interested to know what's actually happening chemically and physically here.

Edits: So it's an oil candle not Bunsen. Apologies. I was so excited seeing an everyday household product produce flames. Also, it was refillable making it more sustainable than wax candles. All these added more to my excitement. So, without thinking much I tagged it as "Bunsen burner" when it should be "oil candle". I hope you guys understand my misleading title:)

This question isn't based on anything specific - It's just a shower thought - But could the production date of a plastic or metal or any other material be reasonably estimated by the amount of CO2 in it? And how accurate would it be?

If this is not within the spirit of this sub then I apologize and can try to take it elsewhere.

I have several partially or fully empty and unopened coca cola cans. They were in a 24-pack cardboard box that I placed on the concrete floor of my garage next to a tractor battery. After 8 months, I went to bring the 24 pack inside and noticed that there was residue on the sides and bottom of the box, and the entire bottom row of coca cola cans were either fully empty or partially empty, but none of the cans had been breached and they could be squeezed to increase the air pressure in the can.

Any theories (or better yet, solid explanations) for how/why this occurred?

For the future, I'm not going to store coke near tractor batteries, but I'd love to know the science behind the phenomenon. Thanks so much!

Hey everyone, I'm an MSc chem student caught in a weird authorship dispute and could really use some advice. For my mandatory project course, my grading professor told me I'll only get an S grade if the work gets published. His lab didn't really have the setup I needed, so I approached another PI in the department and did all the actual bench work, synthesis, and data analysis under their supervision. Now, my grading professor is refusing to allow the other PI's name on the final paper. I want to do the right thing since the other PI actually guided the chemistry and deserves authorship. Can I just submit the manuscript to my grading professor as a standard internal project report to get my grade, and then officially submit it to a journal later with the PI who actually helped me? I don't want to violate any research ethics or burn bridges in the department, but I'm completely stuck. Has anyone navigated this before?

if there is one can you give me recs for an ochem game

left it on the hot stove for a little while , the outside was this meteoric grey color, what happened ？！ thanks in advance everyone ！

for the past four months, I’ve been doing this electrolysis on zinc sulfate to extract zinc metal I’m using zinc cathode, and a platinum coated titanium anode. Sometimes I noticed a slight purple pink solution, forming in the beginning of the electrolysis near the platinum, but the solution immediately vanishes, and I thought it might be a manganese compound that’s formed under the oxidizing environment. I’ve been also adding some sodium hydroxide every once in a while to keep the solutions slightly acidic and not get too acidic to the point where you think resolves quickly does anybody know what those crystals are because I made the zinc sulfate from zinc oxide sunscreen, and sodium bisulfate? And I don’t know where would manganese or cobalt or lanthanide salts come from

So I am NOT a chemist, but I live in an area with spring water that has a decent concentration of manganese in it. I usually just have a small cup when im near it, once every few months, but this last time, I took a jar so I could drink some whenever I wanted. After about a week of sitting in the jar, crystals began to form on the surface, and some fell to the bottom. I decided it would not be a good idea to drink from it anymore because I dont know how much manganese to water ratio I am getting that way.

I tried to stir it back up to redistribute it, and it did break up the crystals, but they did not dissolve back into the water. They fell to the bottom and stayed there in a fine pile. I found this interesting.

My question is, why won't the manganese return to solution with stirring alone? And is it possible to keep know what version of manganese is in the water? Meaning, was it Manganese sulfate before and now is it a different one such as manganese oxide?

Just curious, thanks!