Cody plays with thermite... again.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/21614029

One of the OG YouTube chemists dabbles in some radiochemistry and spectroscopy.

Not very practical, but the chemistry is interesting. Producing a strong acid from a weak acid by using precipitation as the driving force is something I don't see very often.

A bit of analytical chemistry for a change. I had never heard of a pycnometer!

Very useful video. Nitrate salts are a foundational feedstock in amateur (and professional) chemistry.

Edit: NurdRage reuploaded a slightly censored version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlonW4iJYrw

NurdRage has published a couple videos on oleum synthesis:

• Lab Notes - Making Oleum - Successful - (April 21-2024)
• Lab notes - Making Oleum - 20% yield improvement - (May 4th - 2024)

Still optimizations to be done, but cool work so far. I love that one of the OG chemistry YouTubers is still doing interesting work.

A long-time viewer of Periodic Videos grew up to study chemistry, and invented a new synthetic route for thalidomide.

Also, TIL that thalidomide still has several medical uses, as long as the recipients are not pregnant.

Cody Reeder makes thermite and has a nice "campfire".

The manual for my dishwasher says to refill salt just before running a wash cycle, because if any grains of salt spill onto the stainless steel interior it will corrode. If it runs right away, no issue because the salt is quickly dissolved, diluted, and flushed.

So then I realized when I cook pasta I heavily salt the water (following the advice that pasta water should taste as salty as the ocean). But what happens when I leave that highly salty brine in a pot, sometimes for a couple days to reuse it? Does that risk corroding the pots?

If you don't want to watch the entire video, it's a Carborane acid.

I'd love to see what the molecular orbitals look like. It's not every day that you see carbon forming six "bonds".