diy - DIY & Electronics

There's not much you can do with chemistry alone (Most of the time there is not much room for innovation without expensive equipment). But it complements nicely with physics.
Perhaps you could try starting to replicate the process used to obtain certain chemicals, in order to get some familiarity with it?
AND PLEASE GET SOME SAFETY GEAR, LOTS OF VENTILATION, EXTINGUISHERS NEAR AND A SAFETY DUMP!

Breaking Bad

>>273
Torrent "Golden Chem.pdf"

Unfortunatly it just a few Mb too bit for me to upload!

>>273
this is fun chemistry :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ritaljhhk7s&spfreload=10

>>273

I give you: The Chemistry GOD
Watch ALL the Periodic Videos!

Glance through Vogel's Textbook of Practical Organic Chemistry. It's basically the reference work for safety in lab, lab techniques and simple organic chemistry stuff.

http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/ALKHULAIWI/DocLib/vogel%20-%20practical%20organic%20chemistry%205th%20edition.pdf

It's true that chemistry is a harder field as a DIY hobbyist than say, electronics, since so many chemicals are controlled, they are expensive as fuarrrk and even owning glassware is illegal in many places. You also really need to know what you're doing before trying anything, preferably consulting people who know their soykaf.

The chapter on obtaining chemicals is hopelessly outdated but the rest is supposed to be pretty good.

Make Francium for world domination!

A safer bet would be a chef if you like cooking or baking. Study how ingredients work together to taste and feel sexy as fuarrrk in your mouth and invent the most amazing piece of food with science (and not a lot of salt).

>>273

You could try learning alchemy

>>273
>Some Chemistry News

Chemists in the Czech Republic and Germany captured images of the alkali metals sodium and potassium exploding on contact with water.

They saw a flash of bluish purple and "spikes" of metal shooting outwards.

This suggests that the reaction is kick-started by positive charges repelling each other.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30983141

>>325
Thanks for the link! That's pretty interesting!

Question. Are there any solvents other than dichloromethane that are suitable for extracting caffeine from coffee? Id rather not have a carcinogen in my stimulants. Evaporating it without a fume hood in a residential area seems like a bad idea also.

>>336
Use CO2.

>>339
Those supercritical fluid extraction machines are so expensive. Damn. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

>>273
Chemtoolbox free program, has pictures of all chemical elements.
http://chemtoolbox.free.fr/uk/index.php

PubChem free download of SDF files about 70 million molecules.
ftp://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubchem/Compound/CURRENT-Full/SDF/

>>336
>>352
I have this feeling that anything you could buy to extract caffeine from coffee would cost more than buying 99% pure caffeine, without even factoring in the cost of coffee.

I know you want to diy, but sometimes there's really no purpose. DIY pure caffeine is no different that purchased pure caffeine.

>>273
A while ago I found a cookbook or website that described the various chemical reactions that occur during cooking, or recipe formation.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

>>304
>Rephrasing the obvious answer to make it not seem obvious

Thanks for not contributing!

Any good resources for my waifu to learn more about nuclear chemistry?

>>470
I might. I know there is a set of cooking encyclopedias that go over the science behind cooking. About eight hundred dollars for the set. I think there are < 10 books

Maybe you can try to isolate certain things from common plants and soykaf. I don't know but I have the feeling that it might go pretty well with botany

If you're talking professionally, then yes there is a lot you can do with a degree in chemistry. Lots of lab jobs. Realize too, that there are many branches too.
Though, I personally think that a degree in chemical engineering is much more useful.

If your talking more of a hobby, I should warn you that it will require quite a bit of work and a lot of self motivation.
There are quite a few hobby chemists out there. Do you like explosives? There are quite a few explosives that are reality easy to make. If you're really dedicated and make it though organic chemistry you can perform so basic extractions and some easy synthesis like making aspirin or extracting caffeine.
Though, as a warning, many of the more complex amateur chemical experiments will require more expensive lab gear.
Lots of hobby chemistry synthesis will be something like synthesis of silver nitrate or something that's not useful or exciting to non-chemist.
There are many, many more things you can do. You can google for forms about the subject of you care.

Also, for those that really think that drug synthesis is easy or a good idea, you're wrong. Meth or other amphetamines isn't that hard (especially when you don't give a soykaf about purity). Finding a way to acquire all the necessary precursors chemicals without going on a watch list will be the hard part. Synthesizing something more complex such as MDMA will probably require an actual glassware set which will also require some amount of initial investment as well a finding a way to obtain some glass pieces without the notice of authorities. Most drugs fall into this intermediate category. Then, there are some drugs that you wouldn't be able to synthesize such as LSD without a masters or phd in chemistry. All in all, it's really not worth it. Though, I suppose any asshole can follow an online guide for meth and do alright.


Back to my other post, if you do decide to become a serious hobby chemist, then be prepare for some of your neighbors to automatically think that you're a terrorist or cooking meth. Most police officers will probably think the same thing at first.

>>789
>>790
Do you have any good recommendations for getting into hobby chemistry? Supplies needed, small projects that don’t need a lot of equipment, etc. Oh, and pls have it be for someone that is colorblind.

Make your own soap.
Make your own fragrance/aroma. (actually, I haven't found any "real chemistry" diy about that one)
"DNA extraction" (http://www.instructables.com/id/5-minute-DNA-Extraction-in-a-Shot-Glass) (actually it is a very simple experiment, real DNA extraction requires expensive soykaf).
Make cheese (or tofu). (reminder that real camemberts are illegal in the USA)
Make alcohol. (making alcohol without a license may be illegal in your country)

>>815
> camemberts are illegal in the USA
WTF? for real??? why? Baked Camembert with honey is to die for!

>>818
It is legal if it is made from pasteurized milk. But real camembert is unpasteurized.

If you read through this entire pile of text and dicks I hope you can find something useful. A cursory look at DIY sites will answer your question about the hobby side. Building a molecular model is considered a project rather than a necessity for nursing students with no spatial relations to scrape through OCHEM 1 with a D.

I highly recommend finding a different DIY hobby. There are few things you can do outside of cooking and basic extractions for cooking that would be useful, cost-effective or enjoyable. Your money is better spent hiring it out or buying a finished product. Just about anything you synthesize will be incredibly impure and without decent testing equipment (IR, NMR, C_13) you will need to rely on melting point, Thin-Layer Chromatography (which is a bitch) and other relative methods to determine purity. Look at any undergraduate chemistry class and you will see some really wonky stuff.

>>841
If you are serious about home chemistry you will run into a major supply problem. That is you need to get permits and licenses which means paying up and demonstrating you are competent to someone who isn't. Thanks to the ACS your chemistry credits expire, The amount of chemists with 20+ years experience sitting through gen chem 1 and 2 right now at a community college is depressing. You then need to set up a disposal/pick-up system for anything biohazardous, toxic and whatever else the EPA decides you cant dump on your neighbors lawn. Even properly certified, you won't be able to get your hands on enough diethyl ether, toluene, or even adequate fuarrrking acetone to do tiny yield reactions. Quality glassware with ground glass joints cost an arm and a leg (Yes you do want Pyrex) as do magnetic stir bars, hot plates, decent balances (not scales) and the plethora of pasteur pipets you will break. You really want a fume hood with water (Properly filtered and deionized or you know, whatever), drain, gas and vacuum lines. Otherwise you are asking for a house fire, toxic fumes filling your workspace and other calamities. Floor fans are naturally not viable as they circulate all the dust in the area. No matter what there should be good ventilation. You would NEED an emergency gas shutoff, and want a shower nearby. If god forbid things do go tits up you don't want to dial 911 with chemical burns on your hands with an open flame burning and flammable gas being released from your still incomplete reaction. Basic safety equipment also includes a fire blanket and chemical/electrical safe fire extinguisher (probably a couple), wrap around safety goggles (Think of poor Carol), solvent safe gloves (if you are a bitch who thinks washing your hands in bromine isn't cool) and a first aid kit for when glassware explodes in your hands.

>>842
Keeping your glassware clean, dry and safe is a problem. For anything sensitive you will want a UV sterilization box or autoclave as well as plenty of thick solvent safe cling film and PROPER detergent, Dawn doesn't cut it. Cleaning glassware is a bitch and has given many grad students premature arthritis as well as a disdain for soap which is why they all smell bad and have messy kitchens.
For Reference:
http://csmedia2.corning.com/LifeSciences/media/pdf/CLS_AN_112_CleaningGlassware.pdf
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/content/dam/sigma-aldrich/docs/Aldrich/Bulletin/al_techbull_al228.pdf
If all you want to do is make alcohol all of this is unnecessary as there is a natural cap to the purity of ethanol obtained via distillation due to the ethanol-water eutectic point. The marginal gain from having lab grade equipment means nothing because you will probably water it down anyway, not to mention there will probably be too much methanol for consumption. I highly recommend sticking to fermentation methods unless you are a cock-sure Walter White wannabe. No matter what go down to your local police station and fire department and buy them coffee or doughnuts, start a relationship with them, buy their fundraiser tickets because like it or not, they will show up at your door sooner or later because your neighbors dog died and through some bout of crazy it was your fault.

>>843
There are some options like making your own cleaning supplies which is a good skill to know and really just takes an understanding of solvents, acidity, fibers, fabric, and stain composition. You can make onaholes for the neighborhood kids, make a model of your dick with heat safe plastics and send the product to your ex-girlfriends. All of that you can do without even the pretense of a lab or any in depth knowledge of chemistry.

The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments is a fun book for kids interested in Chemistry, it does however teach some minor bad habits and is targeted at kids interested in chemistry. I assume anyone interested in chemistry would do one or two of the experiments, get bored, and open a textbook or read articles about specific topics they find interesting. Buy it for your kid and have fun watching the wonder in their eyes as you set them to work removing the tarnish from your grandmother's silverware.

After writing this I looked at the instructables "Set Up Your Home Chemistry Lab" For grins and found none. It seems he made it more as a conversation piece than anything. Not to mention that anything you can make/do using home cleaning products will be rather disappointing for anyone over the age of 10. Unless you have access to at least one controlled substance anything you do will require little to no actual chemical knowledge. Just remember not to mix (or spill) bleach and acetone in your basement. And use common sense when using a butane burner in said basement, near flammable chemicals in pressurized containers, without an appropriate fire suppression system nearby.

>>844
Some safety measures I mentioned may seem ridiculous but you are not dealing with a university with excellent insurance and football money, you are dealing with you own life and any mistakes will come from your own pocket. It is hard to blame a chemical fire on an old toaster.

If you love chemistry, my advice is to find joy in the book learning part of it too. Organic chemistry isn't as hard as everyone makes it out to be unless you go to a university and your labs are run by TAs still uncomfortable with the procedures in which case just buy some adderall because you are in for some long and infuriating nights. Spend the time waiting for them to sort their soykaf out and everyone else takes weighing the exact amount of whatever to study for the ACS exam, the only part of the class that matters. Finding an internship without any school experience either is not going to happen and so doing anything resembling modern chemistry is a pipe-dream. Figure out what you want to do. Do you want to do research, be a computational chemist, materials scientist, test tube bitch, post-doc still giving hand jobs for letters of recommendation. If you want money, crank out a bachelors in mat sci at a cheap college and apply for jobs in the marijuana industry, they pay very well to do nothing super difficult and you won't have much of a reputation to smear.

>>844
I should add that bleach and ammonia, or bleach and alcohol are also bad, though I hope I just worked myself up and this clarification was unnecessary.

Attatched is a terribly made diagram for organic reaction pathways because such diagrams have a history of being useful study and reference tools and not what you post on facebook to seem smart.

http://www.chemicum.com/
tic-tac supercapacitor and hundreds of other videos of chem experiments

>>889
The supercapacitor project looks neat. Another chemistry related electronics project is http://sparkbangbuzz.com/memristor/memristor.htm , which details making a memristor with copper and sulphur. This stuff interests me, as I'd like to see what electronics can be produced without use of clean rooms. Not only is it resource-intensive to perform vapor deposition ( http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/embodied-energy-of-digital-technology.html ), but I'd like to see how far I can push the limits of what can be made without a multi-billion chip foundry to supply components.

Just started my gen chem class at uni a few weeks ago. I'm excited to learn more about chemistry!

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRedNile/videos

Great channel




For me, Chemistry is more of a sidekick rather than a hobby I'd like to learn everything about. It's also more of a hobby that you have to enjoy on a meta level. There's little outside of drugs and explosives that will satisfy a non-chemist; who cares that you could get some silicon from silicondioxide? No one except for those who know about chemistry.

Some easy to intermediate syntheses, some extractions here and there, some purification of chemicals etc.
Fun stuff...

Electronics guy here, I tried to make nitric acid using the Birkeland process, it doesn't seems to be time efficient at all. The setup is a small pump pumping air inside a spark chamber, some of that air gets converted into nitrogen dioxide which gets bubbled inside a test tube, mixing it with water and creating nitric acid.
After around 15 minutes I've only been able to produce an extremely weak acid, just enough to barely clean copper.
Any tips on how to improve the efficiency? Would cooling the test tube with ice help?

The high voltage is quite powerful, I even tried with a capacitor resulting in juicy sparks, but the result is almost the same.

>>1372
I figured I'd search out the use of nitric acid and found this picture on wikipedia. Stay safe lainon.

>>1373
The acid I produced was so weak I even got to taste it, confirming it's weakness.
I also think there's a limit on the concentration produced by this method.
Cody also tried this and he spent lots of hours to make just some milliliters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep23ds4cZs4

Another great DIY Chemistry channel

https://www.youtube.com/user/DougsLab/videos

>>1375
Yes and no. You do produce nitric acid with that method. BUT, what you do afterwards is some method of distillation (I do not know specifics or remember which type of distillation) to get it to be more concentrated. Then it will be strong. Not that it isn't already... HNO3 IS a strong acid, your nitric acid is just heavily diluted currently.

>>1372
Bubble it through hydrogen peroxide solution instead of water. This will aid in the oxidation of NO2 to nitrate.

>>1382
Also don't taste it. Buy litmus strips for christ sake.

Acetone Peroxide OP

Dooont drooop itttt <3

>>1384
The mode by which acetone peroxide explodes is pretty neat. Supposedly it generates no heat during the explosion. Anyone know of any papers that go into more detail about entropic explosives?

>>280
I second this. This was the primary motivational book for David Hahn. He built
a nuclear reactor at the age of 17.