Questions tagged [home-experiment]
For questions about a small-scale experiment which can be undertaken with reagents readily available around the house, while observing standard laboratory safety principles and practices. Do not confuse this tag with [everyday-chemistry] or [food-chemistry].
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questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Sugar burning with the assistance of ash
If a plain pile of sugar (or a sugar cube) is heated with a torch, it just melts and gives off smoke. However, if some paper or wood ashes are added, it burns quite easily. What are the ingredients of ...
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Reaction of Rubidium with vacuum system viewport
I have a vacuum system ($<1\times10^{-7}$ mbar) filled with Rubidium ($^{87}$Rb) vapour, at room temperature.
We also have a viewport near the Rubidium source, made of a stainless steel flange ...
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Fractal patterns on water
I stored water in a bucket (of aluminium probably), and some random fractal-like patterns are formed on the water:
See here for some more pictures.
Why this happened?
I'm unable to reproduce it. ...
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membrane for a reverse osmosis desalination experiment
We are second year cram schoolers , we are currently working on a project tackling water desalination by reverse osmosis and are required to do an experience. During the process, we encountered some ...
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Waterproofing and recycling paper
I've recently begun studying about waterproofing paper. Through what I learned is that the reason why paper absorbs water so easily is mainly because of it's material composition. Paper is generally ...
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Salt crystal growing inside a mold inside a jar
I have recently found an experiment where you can grow a salt crystal on a jar. The experiment works like this: we take a jar, fill it with hot/warm water and start dissolving salt in it until it ...
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How to break down soap and detergents?
I am building a greywater harvesting system. It is a 3-stage system:
The 1st stage breaks down soap and detergents.
The 2nd stage filters the water.
The 3rd stage pumps water out of system.
What ...
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Gases produced by bacterial decomposition of human urine
I know that when urine (more specifically, the urea within) is metabolised by bacteria, ammonia is released. However, because of the high solubility of ammonia, I assume it simply dissolves into the ...
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Why is my Briggs-Rauscher reaction not oscillating?
I have been trying to run the Briggs-Rauscher reaction following this guide, which is pretty similar to other guides out there, yet the reaction is failing to not only oscillate, but display any color ...
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Can shop-bought caustic soda be used to measure titratable acidity of wines?
When making wines, it's occasionally necessary to measure the wine's 'titratable acidity' (TA). To do this, a 0.1N solution of NaOH is titrated with a wine sample. 0.1N NaOH solution can be purchased, ...
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Understanding electrolysis w/ oxalic acid electrolyte, iron electrodes
I've been experimenting with electrolysis for rust removal, electroplating, de-plating, etc. Right now I have a rust removal setup with carbon steel electrodes and a solution of oxalic acid in ...
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Molar ratios not leading to complete reaction in Schweizer's reagent production
In my home lab, I've reacted $\ce{Cu(OH)2}$ with aqueous ammonia to produce Schweizer's reagent. However, I'm surprised by the amount of ammonia required to react with this amount of $\ce{Cu(OH)2}$. ...
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Safety regarding multiple metals in same acid solution
My son is testing the corrosion of metals in various solutions. Is it okay to place strips of multiple metals in the same container of a specific solution?
Metals being tested: $\ce{Fe}$, $\ce{Cu}$, $...
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Silicon degassing with negative pressure
I am planning to use polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to create phantom for mimicking tissue for imaging. For this, I plan on using SYLGARD® 184, which is a viscous liquid. When adding other components to ...
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Improving accuracy of water lead test
Home water tests for lead have an accuracy of about 15 ppb. If I first do a gentle/slow boil for one hour (hot plate under a glass beaker of water) to reduce 2000 mL to 20 mL, will I then effectively ...
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Connect glass tubes to a graham condenser
I am currently making a syphon coffee maker such as this one:
However, I find that all the silicon tubing used on this image between the condenser and the boiling flask / between the condenser and ...
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How can I heat up a separatory flask?
I currently am working on a vacuum brewing system for coffee (which is not super useful but pretty cool I have to say) such as this one (image).
However I wondered if there was a way of pouring the ...
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What factors have the greatest effects on the yield from steam distillation of ginger?
I have a modest home lab setup that I use primarily for steam distillation of plant matter to extract essential oils. My yields are typically at or below the low end of estimates given by different ...
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Is there a known value for the molar extinction (absorption) coefficient for amylose and amylopectin iodine complexes?
I am doing a colorimetry experiment with starch, and have a theoretical model based on Beer's law. To solve it, I need a known value for the molar extinction coefficients of amylose and amylopectin ...
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Hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide reactions
What is the explanation for the two possible reactions of $\ce{H2O2}$ with $\ce{KI}$ in acid media (iodide-catalyzed decomposition of hydrogen peroxide or iodide oxidation by hydrogen peroxide) and ...
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Ethanol and water resistant adhesives
I need an adhesive that can bind to ABS plastic but is highly resistant to ethanol, isopropanol, and water. It's for use in an environment where it will spend a significant amount of time soaking in &...
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Preparing Hypochlorous acid from salt water
I am a school student and I want help with a project
My aim:
Preparing Hypochlorous Acid (Suitable for sanitation).
I searched across the internet and found an article at https://www.hypochlorousacid....
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How to make Lithium medication from scratch
I take lithium carbonate as a medication. I was watching an "apocalypse-style" movie recently, which made me wonder how hard it would be to make my medication from scratch if I could no ...
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Does it make sense to have a control group for a school chemistry experiment?
I'm wondering if it makes sense to have a control group for the following experiment:
measure the speed of gas produced when hydrochloric acid and calcium carbonate react, as a function of surface ...
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What is the reaction involved in a childrens paper Christmas tree crystal growth?
For Christmas I bought my children a "Magic Growing Christmas Tree Crystal Paper Tree Christmas Decoration Science Toy". It looks like this:
It came with a bag of liquid which you add to the tray at ...
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What chemicals are in hard wood ash? (Making lye)
I am trying to make lye or potassium hydroxide. So far I have been leaching ashes in a barrel for a few days. I decided to do some tests on the water to see if it was working. My pH paper said it was ...
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Is suckback possible after removing stopper?
I am making hydrogen gas to fill a balloon. I will run the gas to a washing bottle with $\ce{NaOH}$ and then connect the balloon. I was wondering what would happen if I removed the stopper of my main ...
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Unknown white stuff from eggshell reaction with acids and bases
I have just finished some experiment at home using tea eggs.
First I peel off the shell of the tea egg and place it in a bowl of white vinegar (of course, I consumed the rest of the egg). Not ...
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Starch gelatinization, retrogradation and disgestability
Over on the sub-reddit on prebiotics we're a bit stumped on figuring out the process for turning raw potato starch (mainly containing R2 resistant starch) into R3 via retrogradation/gelatinization. ...
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Processing Chitosan from Crab Shell
I am trying to extract chitosan from crab shell (Japanese snow crab). I want to dissolve chitosan in water and mix in gelatin to obtain some type of gel, that I would then test for my Master 2 ...
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Is vegetable shortening a fully hydrogenated product or is it partially hydrogenated?
Have the oils used to make vegetable shortening been fully hydrogenated or have they been only partially hydrogenated?
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Mechanism of action for Citric Acid as a cleaning agent for limescale?
This may be a silly question, but I am not that certain I understand this process because of the low solubility of Calcium Citrate.
How does citric acid actually clean limescale? How much limescale ...
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Composition of carbon rods in alkaline batteries
The carbon rods in batteries look somewhat similar to graphite, but they do not leave a significant mark on paper. What form of carbon are they? Are they simply just graphite with a large amount of ...
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Is it possible to observe ATP energy transport in table experiment?
Is it possible to take AMP or ADP, then phosphorylate it convert to ATP to charge with energy, then transport to other place an then observe energy freeing?
In table / home / school experiment?
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Efficient oxidation of KCl to KClO3
I am trying to convert $\ce{KCl}$ to $\ce{KClO3}$ through an efficient process. I realize that I could electrolyze a solution of $\ce{KCl}$ to obtain some $\ce{KClO3}$ as a precipitate, however this ...
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What would be a safe/good surfactant for ultrasonic cleaning vinyl records + distilled water and isopropyl alcohol
Title pretty much says it all besides the type of records I believe are pvc (60s - current, someone correct me if there may be other materials but I absolutely don't have any shellac records) and I ...
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Dismutation of ethanoic acid
Ethanoic
(acetic) acid can undergo fermentation by methanogens to create
$\ce{CH4}$ and $\ce{CO2}$. Is there any way that I could perform this
reaction without any microorganisms, specifically with ...
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How can I test if a spirit (tequila) has oxidised?
Is there a way to test if tequila has oxidised and if so the level of oxidisation?
It would be best if this could be done without a control sample, but the most important thing is if I can do this ...
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How do I measure the density of a cellulose acetate membrane?
I've been playing around with filtration methods, and got my hands on a casting machine for this purpose.
My first mission was to find out how porosity can affect filtration. To see this for myself, ...
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Analysis of a mixture of carbonate salts
We've got a mixture of carbonate salts. It's a buffer, used in fish tanks. How might we go about identifying the components and their concentrations?
I suspect it'd be hard to separate some of this. ...
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How to clean naphtha of non-saponifiable fats
My dad has been using naphtha to degrease some animal bones, which based on the MSDS is probably some random jumble of hydrocarbons, mostly heptanes. He's trying to be environmentally friendly so he ...
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Is 25% aqueous ammonia solution considerably less safe than concentrated HCl
I plan to sterilize and clean some deer bones for display in my amateur chemical lab. The needed concentration of ammonia is only about 2,5% but it would be significantly cheaper to buy more ...
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Possible experimental errors and how to improve them
I'm doing an experiment at home where I determine the relative atomic mass of magnesium by collecting the hydrogen produced from its reaction with hydrochloric acid. I ended up getting around 26, but ...
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How can I safely recreate the "oxiclean effect" for a video production?
I am producing a parody infomercial, specifically copying the style of the early 90's OxiClean/Billy Mays spots:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTpXh33Mbeg
As it happens in the original commercial, ...
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Relative Humidity inside a thermally insulated chamber for a NACL solution
I ran an experiment, where I had to measure the relative humidity of a thermally insulated chamber containing NaCl solution. I have read from a few papers, that the relative humidity of a NaCl ...
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Converting dissolved chromates to solids for disposal
I have 4 liters of electrolysis waste that was used to process stainless steel cathodes.
About half of it was oxalic acid based and the other half was sodium bicarbonate based (currently stored ...
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What is an effective preservative for guar gum slime?
I am attempting to find an effective preservative for guar gum slime. I am using typical recipes:
A borax solution of 4%, a guar gum solution of 5% using distilled water, and a mix ratio of 20:1 (guar ...
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How to melt and roll silver chloride into sheets
I want to make silver chloride cathodes for a magnesium salt water battery.
Are there any tips on how to proceed?
I hope to melt the silver chloride in a covered ceramic crucible in an electric ...
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Chemically producing sodium metal from magnesium
Anyone with experience making sodium metal ($\ce{Na}$) with the following process? Reactants: $\pu{14 g}$ magnesium powder, $\pu{20 g}$ sodium hydroxide; Catalysts: $1$ to $\pu{2 g}$ menthol crystals; ...
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Can I use silica gel to perform column chromatography at home?
While this question has been asked and answered, it may indicate that a column chromatography qualitatively is possible. At home, is it possible after collecting silica gels from small bags of them ...
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