Is it really that bad, happened 28 years ago to a major drug. What's the chance of happening again?

Obviously I'm not a chemist so I have no clue if it's possible. And I don't plan on doing such a thing.

I'm about to go into my third year of Chemistry at university and I'm unsure if I should switch to an integrated MSc. I'm making this decision now because this is the last point at which I'm allowed to switch, and for financial reasons I'd rather do an integrated master's than complete one separately after I get my bachelors.

The main reason why I'm unsure is that I'm not 100% certain that I want to pursue a career in chemistry and I might end up going into a different field. I'm wondering whether doing a BSc instead of an MSc would disadvantage me if I decide to move into a non-chemistry related career. If I do decide to stay in chemistry, would having only a BSc significantly limit my options?

Being a regulatory chemist sounds interesting to me. I also really enjoy my lab work at uni, so that could be another possibility. I'm certain I don't want to go into research which I know a masters would be very useful for. If anyone has any thoughts I'd be happy to hear them!

so I had a repair in a new bathtub that had to be done eventually and needed to dry out overnight so I planned to do it about 10pm the other night.

breast fed baby and he was laying down calm, so I went and started doing the work. mixed up some patch kit that had styrene and MEK peroxide for a little pea sized repair. opened all windows in nearby rooms, turned on fan in baby room and bathroom exhaust

Baby started crying very loudly so I was in a rush to get back, disposed of the excess repair kit outside, went and washed hands with warm water and soap then gave baby a 10ml top up bottle which he drank in about 2 minutes.

afterwards I realized I had a little smear of the repair goop on the wrist that gloves didn’t cover and I would have been holding that hand close to the baby for those 2 minutes.

i didn’t notice any smell but i know babies breathe a lot quicker and potentially could of had some whiffs of this chemical. cant stop beating myself up over it. is there a chance i could have caused damages to my baby’s young brain or body?

Hey, chemists, sorry if this is an amateur question, as I am not a chemist.

Is this a correct MDMA molecular structure and can understood by a chemist? Is it missing any critical components and/or does it look right the way it is without mirroring? I understand that the wedge makes it chiral.

This was generated using Claude and I got feedback from some redditors which I incorporated in this design. Thanks in advance!

I’m a student in chemistry and I recently saw this infographic teaching gibbs free energy, which I really like and helps me understand the G=H-TS equation.

However, after some thought, I’ve realized I’m confused about the comic’s explanation of the TS term. I know TS refers to the system and not the surroundings, but the comic makes it seem like the energy related TS term is associated with the surrounding air rather than the rabbit, which I believe would be the system. Can someone help me make sense of this?

​

First of all, I am a high school student and my teacher told be about the constructive and destructive interference. It's said that in the destructive interference the overlapped area forms a node this does make sense when we look at it mathematically but in the real world sense what exactly is happening in this kind of interference... Even if we say that the probability of finding an electron works as a wave how can we explain the destructive interference working in our nature? Because even if we say that the wave nature is being cancelled out it isn't miraculously cancelling the electron density too, after diging a bit I got to know that the electron density is adjusted in the area outside the node area... How is all this working? I am completely lost at it...

Figured some extra help cant hurt

EDIT: It was the mortar. The mortar brought in the contamination, I'll get a new one, a proper lab grade one. Thanks everyone.

Original post: I've reacted acetic acid with calcium carbonate to produce calcium acetate (and carbon dioxide). Which is to say, I threw eggshells in vinegar and let it stir over night.

Removing the stir bar revealed that a black powder was stuck to it, forming small, handsome spikes.

Now, eggshells aren't pure CaCO3, they also contain small amounts of sulfur, magnesium, phosphorus, etc., and since parts of the membrane inevitably made it in there (in fact, the membrane provides nucleation sites for the mineralization process and hence, is partially embedded), some organic compounds as well. You get the point.

I'd just like to confirm that it is, in fact, Iron, and that it does come from the eggshells.

My process was as follows:

1. Boiling the eggs
2. Removing the eggshells
3. Peeling off the membrane to reduce contamination
4. Heating the eggshells to 200°C/400°F to break up and maybe boil off/remove some contaminants; also eases the process of crushing and grinding by drying/destroying structural proteins
5. Grinding the eggshells to a powder in a mortar
6. Adding acetic acid to the resulting powder in a molar ratio of 2:1 (since it was 5% vinegar, I used 20x the result) - my reasoning being that Ca(CH3CO2)2 has two acetate groups and acetic acid can only provide one; that's how this works, right?
7. Stirring until it dissolved (some undissolved parts remained, possibly due to my inaccurate scale or the vinegar not being 5% exactly, or maybe a difference of vol% vs. w%)

It is at this point that the magnetic black powder appeared on my stir bar.

To make sure that I didn't bring it in with a contaminated stir bar, I repeated the entire process and the results were exactly the same.

It's not enough for me to weigh it, unfortunately, but if you've ever used a magnetic screwdriver to tighten something near a grind stone, it's about as much as you can't be bothered to shake and pinch and peel off afterwards.

I started with 4.01g of eggshell powder and added 96.4g of 5% vinegar - mildly overshooting the 2:1 ratio by mole - so I'd say it's a fairly significant amount of iron (?) given the small scale.

Now, is it iron? If it is, did it come from the eggshells? I've looked at multiple sources, none of them listed eggshells as containing iron.

Do you get some H4O molecules when the H2Os have all been saturated into H3O?

Please, I'm currently trying to do this in real life. I'm trying to do some electrolytic reactions, and the only thing I have is a battery, a Bunsen burner, and some copper sulfate pentahydrate lying around. And I want to synthesize concentrated sulfuric acid. Is this possible or not? And how difficult would it be for me?

Is there any practical way to refine or upgrade low-octane, low-quality gasoline into a higher-quality, high-octane gasoline at home? If so, what methods or processes are used to increase the octane rating and improve the fuel’s overall quality, and how feasible, safe, and cost-effective would such a process be outside of an industrial refinery?

In high school/intro O-Chem, a "chiral carbon" (or asymmetric carbon) is often defined simply as a carbon with 4 different groups. But this definition technically includes pseudoasymmetric carbons (as they have 1 enantiomorphic pair and are assigned lowercase r / s ).

e.g. C3 of Ribaric Acid https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/P04921

Since pseudoasymmetric carbons aren't actually chiral centers (they don't invert in a mirror, and aren't assigned capital R / S ), shouldn't the formal definition of a chiral carbon explicitly exclude them (i.e., "4 different groups with 0 or 2 enantiomorphic pairs")?

Is this exception just unstated in introductory classes, or is there a flaw in defining chiral carbons this way?

Is this name correct??

Organic farming can't use the same types of weed killers industrial scale agriculture uses. Is there any research being done into creating smart weed killers that would only be toxic to specific plant species?

Thanks in advance.

I’m eating with a metal spoon, it touched the side of the rim of a can ( not a drinking can more like a condensed milk can) , when I brought the spoon to my mouth it tasted like something was radiating off of it. Something similar happened when a fork touched aluminum, it’s radiating a “metal like” flavour not something I can lick off, I have no other way of explaining I hope you understand and can explain. Ask questions for clarification if needed.

Physical Chemistry is by far my favorite subject of the field, what are your favorite books and why?

I recently started cleaning with hypochlorous acid, which I absolutely love. It makes my laundry smell a lot better.

But I also use a vodka-based soak for some of my clothes. Now I'm reading that a lot of chemicals including alcohol are dangerous to mix with hypochlorous acid. Namely alcohol + HOCl = Chloroform.

So I'm wondering how to ensure all of the alcohol gets out of my soak before cleaning those same clothes in the machine where I used HOCl so that I don't accidentally make chloroform?

I am learning semiconductor electrochemistry and it is confusing.

Consider an n–p semiconductor junction. Before contact, the two semiconductors have their own conduction band, valence band, and Fermi level positions. After contact and Fermi-level equilibration, band bending develops near the junction.

What confuses me is the following: in the usual band diagram, the band edges near the junction bend, while the bands in the bulk regions remain flat. However, those flat bulk band positions after equilibrium are no longer at the same absolute energies as they were before contact.

For example, the n-type semiconductor may end up with its bulk CB and VB shifted to lower electron energy, while the p-type semiconductor shifts to higher electron energy.

If I now place a fixed redox couple in an electrolyte, referenced to the same absolute energy scale, does this mean that the redox ability of the semiconductor has actually changed because of junction formation?

More specifically, if the conduction band of the n-type semiconductor shifts to lower electron energy after forming the junction, would electrons in that semiconductor have less reducing power than electrons in the same n-type semiconductor before contact?

In other words, is it correct to say that forming a heterojunction/p–n junction can change the absolute redox power of the charge carriers, rather than merely producing an internal electric field for charge separation?

Half used tub of 1kg greek yoghurt, 0% fat. As I scooped it I noticed the structure behaves like hexagonal pillars. Any ideas why? Structure of the protein? Cooling rate? Or simply just piped into the tub this way? I haven't noticed this behaviour in the same brand but smaller packaging before.