Chemistry

New NurdRage video!

Nice to see another amateur-accessible source of thorium, since incandescent gas mantles have mostly switched to yttrium.

I wonder what the easiest way would be to reduce the thorium dioxide to thorium metal?

Making liquid nitrogen is quite an achievement, especially using salvaged air conditioner and refrigerator parts. A nice application of the Joule-Thomson effect and countercurrent exchange too.

Another useful example of producing a strong acid from a weak acid by using precipitation as the driving force.

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.