Thread: That Chemist feeling...

You ever just get that chemistry feeling? Like you want to experiment with stuff and play with all those ugly gass law equations and stuff (with maybe a little physics thrown in).

Anyways, I don't want to make a living being a chemist but are there like groups out there that just experiment with stuff for fun? It's hard to come up with the money and space to build your own chem lab.

Yeah I've felt the same way, and indeed played around a bit many, many years ago, but if you don't read the books you get nowhere. I remember trying to mix sulphur powder with water thinking 4 parts sulphur = s4 + h20, mix it, stir it, boil it = H2S04. But it remained in solution. I even tried putting electricity through it but nothing happened. I was so impressed I took up Electronics instead.

That feeling comes to me many times but I could not cultivate that since there is lack of resources. Even if I try to buy some chemicals they are not even available and our school does not avail them.
Although i have tried many experiments but the one I remember.
I took talking powder and I saw that it contains CaCO3 and I put some diluted HCl so that i could get H2 but i dind't.
The reason was I was too little to know the ration and others.

Your all way ahead of me. All i do is play with fireworks.

I also used to have that chemist feeling, but after I experienced a couple years' worth of actual chemistry labs, I was left with that numbness feeling. Among other things, I hated writing those tedious lab reports. Let's just say I'm happy to put it all behind me.

I certainly get that chemistry feeling and as a result my room is now cluttered with a number of conspicous looking chemicals and glassware.
I'm off to study Chemistry at Uni next September so hopefully my chemical urges will be satisfied. As geeky as it sounds, full access to the lab chemicals and being able to play with NMR and Mass Spectrometers makes me salivate.

Anyway if your interested in home chemistry you don't neccassarily need expensive equipment and hard to get get chemicals. Some of the best experiments i've carried out at home required no more than household items or cheap and readily available reagents.

Well including highschool and college I have more than a couple of years of chem labs and I miss it for some reason. Now that I think about it I had a friend who got ahold of an old highschool chemistry set of glassware and then he moved and it is now in my attic. I'm gonna have some fun. Hmmm what should I make or do? I don't have any access to lab chemicals. Although, I am registered as a member of some nanotech lab, but i hav eonly used it twice for a class I was in a year ago.

See what you can grow in it, no chemicals needed just dirt water and something full of bacteria, add various things, sugar salt, detergent, bleach etc to different, sealed experiments, you never know what might grow.

i hear clorox and brake fluid make a lot of smoke although i have never tried it. you are welcome to try and let us know how it went

As to what experiments you can do at home its hard to say. It depends on what kind of experiments you want to do and how much effort you want to put in . If your willing to buy a few reagents you might want to check out http://81.207.88.128/science/chem/exps/index.html which is a great site. Also http://www.hyperdeath.co.uk/chemicals/ might be helpful for how to obtain your reagents.

Making flash paper is quite a fun and easy experiment to do at home, i'll post if you want.

hmmm..what is flash paper? :?

Simply put it's nitrated paper which burns in a flash leaving no ash.

Check out .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fer1yXuGjQ . I've been looking for a chance to share that video for ages. Pure 80's cheese at its best.

Originally Posted by Lucky

Simply put it's nitrated paper which burns in a flash leaving no ash.

Check out .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fer1yXuGjQ . I've been looking for a chance to share that video for ages. Pure 80's cheese at its best.

Good stuff.. how do you make flash paper? I don't have much time or money do do anything so I'll probably just do random stuff when I get a chance. Although I'm not sure it will satisfy my weird math/stoichiometry craving though.

Check out http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/s...ad.php?t=24346
Nitric acid can be bought under the name of 'PH down' in gardening stores while sulphuric acid is sold as 'drain cleaner'. Both are fairly cheap and are used a great deal in chemistry.

I know what I'm doing over spring break. Haha, is that sad or what. :P

Thanks Lucky