chemistry.md

"It is only the dose which makes a thing poison." - Paracelsus

• "I've been out of that job for almost 20 years, but I think parabens and pthalates acted more as thickeners and stabilizers to help soap have a certain thick 'feel' and stay in solution when sitting a long time" -/u/WiseFerret
• Chelated mineral supplements (e.g. calcium citrate) don't need to be taken with food because "a mineral has been bound to an acid, so it doesn't rely on your stomach acid to break it down". I am not sure why calcium citrate is considered chelated... maybe it really is an alkali earth metal, I guess.
• Galvanised (zinc-coated) pipes and fittings can leak zinc into drinking water if the water is, at any point, acidic.
• PEX piping is resistant to mineral deposits? PVC is not. PEX piping is colour-coded: red for hot, blue for cold, and anarchy for any other colour.
• Duralumin is 80% aluminium, 20% copper, and traces of other stuff.
• 1 m³ of gas is roughly 10.5 kWh of energy.
• Aluminium is the only common metal, used as a metal, that is not considered heavy. Other candidates include: alkali metals, every alkali earth metal except for radium, scandium, and yttrium.
• Aluminium is spelled Aluminum in USA because British chemist Humphry Davy, in all his genius, named sodIUM and potassIUM, and thus named it alumIUM. The Germans complained that alum is not latin, so Davy changed it to aluminIUM... only to publish a book with the spelling aluminUM one year after. A Thomas Young proposed aluminium instead, which ultimately stuck around. Both Davy and Young died 19 years later.
• Potassium Dichromate (K2Cr2O7), your favourite inorganic oxidiser, is the 11th most common allergen included in the patch test (chromium is a common allergen). Hexavalent chromium is also a carcinogen.
• PVC fake leather lasts far longer than PU fake leather (5+ years vs 1~2 years before flaking off).
• Seasalt is, like, 1 ~ 10% various other salts.
• Hot vinegar easily cleans starchy pot stains.
• UV makes biodegradable plastics degrade. So if it ends up in the landfill, it's not going to make a difference.
• Tires used to be all white (adding zinc oxide made them look whiter.) Then in 1910 people started making black tires to avoid damage caused by UV light.
• A chemical called Aristoflex AVC helps you make your homemade lotion slightly easier to apply by gelling it.
• Rayon is a fibre made from cellulose, which is natural, but with synthetic chemical treatment, which makes it synthetic. Rayon can be made to feel like cotton, silk, wool, anything, so don't buy something because it is made of rayon.
• Ice is not harder than steel. It is normally 1.5 on [Mohs scale of hardness.
• Graphene is just a single layer of graphite.
• "Rose gold" is like 22% copper. White gold is commonly 10% nickel. Blue gold has more indium than actual gold, but indium is expensive as well.
• Tidal power plants that leverage the sea typically have a problem with salt water and the maintenance costs that come with it. Actually, salt water plus oxygen are the real problem, so even completely submerging the whole thing in the ocean would have been a better idea than extracting power from the tides.
• Binary chemical weapons are chemicals whose active state (before you use it) is less active than after you use it. For example, methylphosphonyl difluoride is relatively safe, but produces sarin if fired. Novichok are... "relatively safe" when handling as well.
• There are "contaminants from industrial chemicals, bacteria and parasites, fertilizers, and other potentially harmful sources in drinking water", but tap water remains safe to drink because they are limited to "safe" levels.
• Oily rags can spontaneously combust. See also: linseed oil fires. Massage oil fires. Essential oil fires.
• Almost 99% of the human body is made of O (65%), C (18.5%), H (9.5%), N (3.2%), Ca (1.5%), and P (1.0%). (All percentages are by mass).
• CO2 makes beverages taste more refreshing. It is one of the most soluble gases that can be commonly found. CO2 activates taste and pain receptors as well.
• Exxon knew as early as 1982 at fossil fuels will lead to environmental problems by 2020, and that the atmospheric CO2 will reach 400 ~ 420ppm by then. They also predicted major economic consequences by 2038, and globally catastrophic effects by 2067.
• Rubbing alcohol in the US can contain 10% methanol, acetone, and methyl isobutyl ketone, because fuck chemists, fuck alcoholics, can't just make it taste bitter, gotta make it poisonous.
• Nitrogen dioxide is an intermediate for producing nitric acid, but that fact does not help the environment because the factories don't extract NO2 from the air.
• A soap is a salt of a fatty acid, and a fatty acid is an acid---usually carboxylic or sulphuric---attached to a long hydrophobic chain of hydrocarbons.
• "Sweet" crude oil is oil containing less than 0.7% of sulphur.
• All wines under 15% alcohol will freeze in a freezer (-18 C).
• Glucose is considered an aldehyde (and therefore an aldose). Fructose is a ketone (and therefore a ketose).
• Glass cooktops heat slowly, cool slowly, crack on heat shock, crack on contact with heavy things... like a pot, cannot be cleaned with glass cleaner... they are a joke. Glass is glass, and glass breaks. A truly backwards product trend.
• Diamonds burn, but only when subjected to high concentrations of oxygen.
• Ozone (for air puritification) is harmful, but not if you turn it on for only a few minutes a day. Hotels use "ozone cannons" to remove odours before a room is rented out.
• Maltodextrin is a type of dextrin, chains of 10 to 20 sugars. Longer chains of that can be called "starch" or "glycogen" depending on how they are chained. Heating starch up makes dextrin.
• Cooling down starchy foods (rice, pasta, potatoes) prdouces resistant starch, the kind that is not digested in the small intestine, and is good for the gut and supposedly reduces the risk of bowel cancer.
• An atom in rows 1 to 3 can have at most 8 valence electrons. Once you get to row 4 (where d electrons start to appear), the number is raised to 12.
• Lewis structures (middle school) are molecular diagrams with valence electrons only. If one side of the bond is more electronegative, then the bond becomes polar covalent. If one side completely rips an electron from the other, then the bond is ionic. Ionic bond strength is lower than that of covalent bonds.
• The difference between "polar covalent" and "ionic" is how the bond is established, which is related to electronegativity. Ionic bonds are attraction between two ions and hence pack closely... whereas covalent bonds are bonded by VSEPR rules.
• While electrons can be found anywhere, the s/p/d/f model is still useful for specifying where the elctrons will be, most of the time (electron density).
• While creatine is a useful molecule, creatinine is metabolic waste, and is sometimes found in creatine supplements. Do not take creatine with NSAIDs. Do not heat creatine beyond 148 degrees C.
• Gasoline has a CO2 multiplier of 3, i.e. 1L or 0.75kg of gasoline produces 2.3kg of CO2. This is roughly (12+16+16)/(12+2 ish).
• Diamonds are slippery when wet. You can also make carbonated water from diamonds if you burn them hot enough.
• When somebody dies in your house and leaves a stain on your carpet, they take the body away and sprinkle some powder on the human-shaped stain and go away. This powder is made with "100% all natural metal oxide mineral consisting essentially of elements comprised of sodium, potassium, calcium, aluminum, iron, and silicon." You vacuum it up and the stain goes away.
• Use the tollens reagent (silver nitrate and stuff, high school chem) to detect the presence of an aldehyde group, or any group that tautomerises into an aldehyde. The agent works because silver nitrate loves precipitating out when it sees an aldehyde, including the functional group found in glucose. If you are a "garage chemist", you can use this property to make your own mirrors.
• There is nothing bi about sodium bicarbonate. That compound (baking soda, NaHCO3) is just sodium hydrogen carbonate (IUPAC), and the other one (washing soda, Na2CO3) is called sodium carbonate.
• Baking soda removes smell through simple acid-base reactions with the "odour molecules".
• Heating oil is basically diesel, except the amount of sulphur content is different.
• Solid odour absorbers often have baking soda inside.
• Ballpoint pen ink is suspended in some benzyl alcohol or phenoxyethanol. Blue inks are typically basic, while black inks are mostly carbon.
• The IUPAC name for NaBH4 (Sodium borohydride) is Sodium tetrahydridoborate.
• Depending on who you ask, water can also be called hydroxylic acid.
• Clean stained plastic tupperware with denture tablets, which are basically bleach, baking soda, and citric acid.
• "Carbonated water contains macronutrients that are essential to plant growth, according to researchers at the University of Colorado. The nutrients found in carbonated water are potassium, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and sodium."
• It is often commercially profitable to recover silver from sewage sludge (20mg/kg or more).
• Assuming the specific heat capacity of water is 4.18 kJ/kgK ish, a 500mL cup of hot water (say at 60 degrees) releases about 50 Calories when reduced to 37°C. This is not a way to gain weight though, as hot water raises metabolic rate... which actually means you burn more fat.
• The Hill system/notation conventionally controls how molecules are named: first carbons, if any; then hydrogens, if any; then every other element alphabetically. This is a convention, not a law: ammonia (NH3) is an exception, as is HCN, NaCl, and anything ionic.
• Paraquat, not related to kumquat, is extremely toxic. As "N,N′-dimethyl-4,4′-bipyridinium dichloride", this oxidising agent interferes with electron transfer, which is common to all life.
• Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) does not remove stains from clothes. Use bleach. Don't waste your money.
• Some gold comes straight from the sun, so it is older than the Earth. The Earth's mantle may also contain gold.
• Contrary to [popular belief], shade balls in reservoirs do not reduce evaporation. These black balls (first hint that it isn't for reducing evaporation) block light from turning aqueous "bromide" (Br-) and "chlorine" (Cl2) into "bromate" (BrO3-), which is carcinogenic. (No... the equations don't balance.) The black balls do absorb more energy than just water, but the balls contain air, which is a heat insulator. Even though these balls are black, they reduce reservoir evaporation by 80%.
• Brass knobs that are shiny are lacquered, making them useless at disinfection.
• Too much CO₂ in the air makes it "stuffy".
• Did you know that black plastic is rarely recycled (think electronics casings) as "normal near infrared (NIR) sensors at recycling plants are unable to detect the black pigment, so black plastics usually go unrecycled worldwide and contribute to climate change."
• If contaminants are present, (rotten) ice can form in the shape of honeycombs.
• "If you are titrating a weak acid with a strong base, for example, the color indicator may change color at a pH that does not necessarily equate to the stoichiometric point." (presumably because you have a buffer solution)
• You can knock bismuth (in the form of BiCl3 aq) out with aluminium foil.
• When it comes to orbitals, the periodic table could be considered incorrect when placing helium over neon. When placed over beryllium, which also has a full s shell, the periodic table is made of neat blocks that map exactly to s, p, d, and f orbitals.
• Adding sodium chloride to hard water should soften it. Adding limewater (mixture of CaCO3, CaO, and Ca(OH)₂) through Clark's process, somehow also softens water by changing pH, making the existing calcium carbonate in the water precipitate out.
• Mass spectrometry can be used to extract molecules from fingerprints, not just the shape, to determine what the person ate and drank and sweated and touched.
• Glycerin, glycerol, and propane-1,2,3-triol are all the same thing. Glycerides are however esters formed from glycerol and fatty acids, i.e. H3C-(O-R)3, assuming all functional groups are the same R.
• Drywall isn't just anything white; drywall is gypsum (calcium sulphate).
• Hot water can carry much less CO₂, so global warming caused by CO₂ levels is a scary positive feedback loop.
• Activated carbon is charcoal with lots of holes.
• Lead (element 82) is the heaviest element considered "stable", but Bismuth-209 (element 83) is not that radioactive either.
• Helium is called Helium because it was discovered while looking at the sun (absorption spectra).
• Because of the wintergreen oil inside, lifesavers glow (triboluminescence) when crushed.
• One gram of poppy seeds contains up to 33 micrograms of morphine and 14 micrograms of codeine.
• Salt doesn't cure meat. Curing salt contains maybe 7% sodium nitrite and an optional amount of sodium nitrate.
• Tungsten is from Swedish tung sten, "heavy stone".
• Billard balls are made with some sort of phenolic resin, basically any "plastic materials that are strongly resistant to cracking and chipping".
• A hydrometer (hydromètre) measures a liquid's density relative to water. A hydrometer does not measure water.
• A hermetic seal is an airtight seal.
• Cubic zirconia is 1.7 times heavier than diamond.
• Selenium disulfide as a dandruff treatment works only if you keep using it. Dandruff comes back if you stop.
• Do not hit someone in the head with a glass bottle. Glass bottles in movies are made of sugar or plastic and will break much more easily than actual glass bottles. People can die if you fracture their skull.
• A 85:15 ethene/oxygen mixture was sometimes used as a general anesthetic.
• DEET is N,N-Diethyl-meta-toluamide or diethyltoluamide, none of which have letters that spell DEET sequentially.
• Vaseline stood for "wasser" (water) + "-line" (oil), and it is not a trademark name in Europe.
• Not only does hydrogen leak out of metal containers, it weakens the containers by making them brittle.
• Diphenylhydramine is a local anesthetic, and numbs the mouth when taken orally.
• Rohypnol does not have a single hydroxyl group on it.
• Titanium is biocompatible, and is used extensively in implants. With that said, a titanium knee joint only lasts 10-15 years.
• Newly-sheared wool contains a lot of lanolin, a grease which is apparently valuable in making beauty products. Other colours are mostly caused by dead skin.
• Creatine, to quote the Internet: "Holy shit, they're not wrong. Basically the majority of days are fine, no effects, then all of a sudden I will have a day where I am basically pissing out of my ass."
• Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, but jet fuel can certainly weaken steel beams.
• Nair burns.
• Heating iron weakens it. Quenching iron while hot hardens it.
• Oyster sauce and coca cola share the same food colouring, E150.
• To get copper out of ores primarily iron oxide, they just spray dilute sulphuric acid over it, leeching the copper out on a massive scale, in the form of copper sulphate. They then extract the copper from that solution.
• Splenda is made at least partly from sucralose. It has 3 Calories per packet.
• TNT production brings about toxic pink water, which, although colourless, will become dark brown if under the sun for long enough.
• Mineral oil (clear colourless mixtures of alkanes) are carcinogenic (group 1 if untreated, group 3 if treated). Baby oil happens to be made with mineral oil, so either baby oil is treated to the point to being medical grade, or maybe babies don't care about cancer risk that much.
• Hydrazine, H₂N-NH₂, is explosive. You can make it by mixing ammonia and hydrogen peroxide (conditions unknown, so don't do it). Butanone is somehow part of the reaction.
• SN1 reactions are racemic because the carbon first forms a planar molecule, allowing the nucleophile to attack from either side.
• Histamine has a vasodilating effect, allowing white blood cells to slip through capillaries. A side effect of body-wide vasodilation (if injected intravenously or enough is taken) is a drop in blood pressure.
• A "therapeutic dose" of something called "m" is 125mg initial dose with a 60mg booster dose (optional) ~3 hours later. It is unknown what the effects are.
• P are problems. Or, P are problems that can be solved polynomial time, so they are relatively easy problems. NP stands for "nondeterministic polynomial time", and can only be verified in polynomial time if you already have the answer. BQP, a special term for "problems that quantum computers can solve", can lie outside P or NP. These problems can only be solved by a quantum computer.
• Sticky pine sap is a fire starter.
• Alkyl nitrites aka Poppers are gaseous recreational drugs. It is frequently inhaled to relax the throat and anal sphincter (may be useful in some situations). A common side effect is dacryoliths (tear duct stones).
• Solutions are usually water/alcohol based. Lotions are more water/alcohol than oil. Creams are 50/50 oil/water. Ointments are more oil than water.
• Dysprosium is an element. That is its only purpose.
• Perfectly clean metal surfaces will automatically weld together in a vacuum. Metallic atoms don't know about "surfaces" and bond together.
• s,p,d, and f stand for sharp, principal, diffuse, and fundamental.
• That white powder on elastic/rubber bands is talc.
• "Polypropylene breast implants" keep on expanding after implanting. It has been banned.
• Sterling silver is 92.5% silver, not because people are cheap, but because pure silver is too soft to be anything. There is no regulation what the 7.5% needs to be, but it is usually copper.
• Brassica (broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts) is said (not cited) to taste bad because a) sulphur if overcooked, or b) phenylthiocarbamide.
• Enteric can be made of any kind of polymer they find fit. See wiki for a list. They protect the stomach from drugs that activate in acidic environments, or (if you look at it the other way) protect the drug from being wasted in the stomach before it reaches the intestines.
• Alka-Seltzer is aspirin, baking soda, and citric acid (for making the baking soda bubble). "In the early 1960s a commercial showing two tablets dropping into a glass of water instead of the usual one caused sales to double."
• Mixing ammonia and bleach doesn't give you chlorine; mixing the two gives you chloramine, NH₂Cl (makes sense right). "Chloramine is used as a disinfectant for water because it is less aggressive than chlorine and more stable against light than hypochlorites."
• You can buy silver nitrate from Amazon.
• Picric acid is actually a phenol. Drying it out makes it explode.
• Summer gas and winter gas have different vapour pressures. There is a marginal difference in mileage. It is however claimed that the air is cleaner with special blends than if either one were used.
• Some molds can turn paints with Scheele's Green into arsine gas (AsH3), which is then cancerous.
• Dead alkaline batteries bounce higher. Specifically, alkaline batteries that have zinc(s) suspended in a gel will slowly convert this zinc(s) into ZnO(s), which is a harder material that causes the battery to bounce higher.
• Cobalt was discovered before oxygen. It took them something like 70 years to discover sodium after cobalt.
• Ouzo effect takes place when water is added to an alcohol that dissolved a lot of essential oils, which causes hydrophobic oils to precipitate out form droplets.
• NADP is a phosphorylated version of NAD. NADH is NAD (no charge), and NAD+ is NAD (lost a charge on a particular nitrogen). The general equation is H₂ + NAD+ → NADH + H⁺.
• MKG does exist! Sodium-free umami!
• Mercury destroys aluminium only if it goes through the Al2O3 layer, and if water is present.
• Gold is not the most corrosion-resistant metal, apparently... iridium is.
• Traffic light experiment: 100 mL 1% indigo carmine indicator, 6g dextrose, water, 500 mL 0.5 M NaOH, in a 1L bottle. Shake.
• NyQuil pre-mixes acetaminophen in ethanol.
• If you do all sorts of things to wood (sodium hydroxide... sodium sulphite... crush... hot press...) to the point where it doesn't even qualify as wood anymore, it is stronger than wood, says the University of Maryland.
• (Probably all) electron microscopes have moledular pumps that create a vacuum.
• Konjac 蒟蒻 geoi2 joek6 must be neutralised with calcium hydroxide and cooked before it can be eaten. Glucomannan is usually what's eaten.
• The amphiphilic detergent in Tide pods will cause any cells in contact to explode. Enough cells undergoing necrosis will kill you.
• Cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) and cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitor drugs are actually trying to limit the production of thromboxanes (COX-1) and prostaglandins (COX-1, COX-2). Prostaglandins protect the stomach lining, so limiting its production has a side effect of gastrointestinal issues.
• Polyester hold onto things much stronger than cotton. This includes colour (pro) and body odour (con). Micrococcus bacteria like polyester more, and are transmitted by washing machines.
• Octane rating is standardised from 0, that of n-heptane, to 100, that of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane.
• The duct tape colour is a powdered aluminium pigment.
• Antioxidants are reducing agents. They just repair oxidation. They do not directly counter free radicals.
• "Himalania" produces non-GMO salt.
• Maniacs out there actually put cleaning bleach in their baths to simulate some kind of "swimming pool water" that treats skin infections.
• You can melt cyanoacrylate superglue with acetone. "Do not use a cotton swab, as this can react very violently with cyanoacrylate"
• Bathyscaphe Trieste, the mariana trench sub, uses gasoline for buoyancy because it is less dense than water, and incompressible even at extreme pressure.
• Dielectric grease is a gel-like insulation used on electrical components so the electricity does not arc across it.
• Calcium in milk comes in the form of calcium phosphate.
• Cement (the Ca(OH)2 kind) is caustic, and can cause chemical burns.
• BU-808b: During charge, a film called solid electrolyte interface (SEI) consisting of (lithium oxide and lithium carbonate) forms on the surface of the (graphite) anode. The film gets thicker and forms a barrier that obstructs interaction with graphite. The cathode develops a similar restrictive layer known as electrolyte oxidation, formed at higher voltages or temperatures.
• On 2017-10-04, three old blokes were awarded Nobel prizes in Chemistry for cryo-electron microscopy, which allows proteins to be imaged as atoms rather than blobs.
• High concentrations of fluoride can yellow teeth.
• The same dude who invented the Haber process for making fertilisers (that would be Mr. Haber), saving millions, ended up inventing chemical warfare, killing millions.
• Both of beer and milk are acidic. Beer curdles milk because the stronger acidity neutralizes the negative charge on the casein grouped into micelles, which cause them to clump together in larger and larger quantities.
• Potassium (and/or hydrogen) carbonate are conjugate bases of carbonic acid. They are basic.
• Ethyl ethanoate is abberviated as EtOAc, because the IUPAC are a group of Commie Frenchists.
• Rubbing your finger hard will start smelling like sulphur, presumably because your are burning off your cysteine disulphide bridges.
• Vinegar reportedly melts through nitrile gloves in less than one hour. How well other kinds of gloves handle other kinds of chemicals are nonspecific to functional group, so there is not really a trend.
• "2-Nonenal. It is what makes old people smell... well like old people." (Unfounded)
• "Spermine. Smells like...well, sperm. Pyrrolidine. Also smells like..well, sperm."
• The damage from ingesting a button cell battery is caused by the electric current it creates, which causes sodium hydroxide to build up and burn through the oesophagus and into major blood vessels, which can cause fatal bleeding.
• Samarium is element 62. Although classified as a rare earth element, there is more samarium in the Earth's crust than tin.
• Ethanol itself might not be carcinogenic, but ethanal is, so... liver cancer is responsible for 750k deaths annually.
• Chemists are often good at cooking. Except you. You suck.
• Methanoic acid is poured into rubber tree sap to make rubber. Drying rubber turns it yellow. That's why rubber bands are yellow.
• c is not the speed of light; c is ~3e8 m/s, and light happens to travel at that speed. So we call that the speed of light. But other things travel at c, too.
• Brushing teeth after breakfast does not work. It just brushes the food and acid (in the case of orange juice) around.
• Calcium ammonium nitrate is hygroscopic. Its dissolution in water is endothermic, leading to its use in some instant cold packs.
• Pure carbonic acid can be made by "...exposing a frozen mixture of water and carbon dioxide to high-energy proton radiation, and then warming to remove the excess water...", or "...a cryogenic reaction of potassium bicarbonate and HCl dissolved in methanol."
• Soaps are usually fatty acids. Instead of an acid, detergents may have sulfate or sulfonate groups instead.
• Cyclohexanhexone aka Brianone, a useless compound, has never been synthesised industrially.
• For a brief moment in history (2008-2009), Calgary limited its trans fat content in cooking oil to under 2%.
• Single-crystal sapphire is considered a ceramic.
• Gamma-Hydroxybutyric_acid (GHB) and Gamma-Butyrolactone (GBL, the prodrug) have date-rape effects. Fun fact, it is not illegal to possess GBL in Canada.
• Use disiamylborane to turn terminal alkynes into aldehydes.
• Diethyl ether can be used as a general anesthetic.
• Isovaleric acid is your cheesy feet smell.
• Diethylene glycol is a poisonous diol that can be dissolved in almost everything.
• Sodium thiopental is a lethal injection used in the US.
• Tubes must be inserted in pairs in a centrifuge so they spin balanced.
• There is no such thing as a "frame of reference" for a photon. Photons do not have positions.
• Thioacetone is a molecule so stinky that few have studied it.
• If you charge a lithium ion battery to 60% and stop, the wear is 0.1 cycles worth. 70%? 0.14. 80%? 0.26. 85%? 0.35. 90%? 0.48. 95%? 0.66. 100%? 1, obviously. Battery life still depends on the actual hours since made, so just because 1/0.26 = 3.84, it doesn't mean you get a battery that lasts 3.8x longer (more like 2). The equation appears to follow y = 0.0027 * e^{5.8x}.
• Keto form is the one with a ketone group; Enol form is the one with that ketone group reduced to an alcohol group, but a nearby C-C sigma bond hybridising with a pi (aka double bond). Keto-enol tautomerism occurs in aqueous solutions only (faster if either acidic or basic).
• When cereal makers say they add iron to it, they actually add solid Fe-0. Not even oxide, just iron.
• Replacing BPA with BPF or BPS (i.e. "BPA-free") is not that great either. BPF/BPS can alter testosterone levels as well.
• Cobalt-chrome is an alloy made with cobalt and chrome.
• Pop fizzes more when you shake it as a direct consequence of you adding energy into the bottle by shaking it. More energy upsets the equilibrium, giving trapped gas enough energy to break surface tension, forming bubbles.
• The mint lifesaver glows in the dark when bitten into. "Actually, all hard sugar-based candies emit some degree of light when you bite them, but most of the time, that light is very faint." Crystalline sugar emits energy as UV light when crushed, and the methyl salicylate in that mint absorbs UV light and emits visible light.
• TNT is not trinitroglycerin, which can be made by slowly adding 1:1 HNO3/H2SO4 into cold glycerol. The HNO3/H2SO4 process is done twice for TNT, plus an extra nitration step using HNO3 and oleum (apparently).
• Whatever you used to call "precipitate out", apparently professional chemists just call "crash out". It involves making a soluble compound insoluble by, well, changing the solubility of the solvent.
• Only elements lighter than iron can be used for nuclear fusion and still yield energy.
• Dishwasher detergents do not foam up inside the dishwasher.
• "Cultured celery extract" is marketing's way of saying (sodium) nitrite, a cancerous food preservative.
• Opoids cause constipation.
• Epsom salt in a bath does nothing medically beneficial. It is also impossible to get too much magnesium from epsom salt baths. People go into saturated magnesium sulphate baths in isolation tanks all the time, and none of them were poisoned by it.
• It is possible to "accidentally make an explosive", TATP, by mixing acetone and hydrogen peroxide. Wolffenstein combined acetone and hydrogen peroxide, and then he allowed the mixture to stand for a week at room temperature, during which time a small quantity of crystals precipitated. The resulting powder is fairly useless.
• Mineral wool is a bunch of mineral fibres spun together.
• Biodiesel came from used cooking oil and cow hide processing. Proponents say biodiesel contains less cancer-causing particles.
• Drinking wine for antioxidants because it prevents cancer, ignoring the fact that alcohol is a top-notch carcinogen, is human stupidity.
• Naltrexone, more or less an u-opioid blocker, might cure alcoholism by never allowing a buzz, provided it was ingested immediately before a drink, not daily.
• Nair's active ingredients are calcium hydroxide (lime) and sodium hydroxide (lye).
• According to Wolfram Alpha, one drop of water is 50 µL.
• Enamel, the hardest material produced by humans, is only 5 on the hardness scale, yet still cracks.
• Zinc is a powerful lewis acid (electron [pair] acceptor). Swallowing a post-1982 American one cent piece (97.5% zinc) can cause damage to the stomach lining through the high solubility of the zinc ion in the acidic stomach.
• DEET is a solvent. It should not be used on plastics and painted surfaces.
• In zinc batteries, the housing is the anode. This means the housing is consumed when the battery is used, making it more prone to leakage.
• Putrescine, apart from making up the smell of dead flesh, also contributes to smells like bad breath, bacterial vaginosis, and semen.
• "Cocaethylene" is formed by the liver when cocaine and ethanol coexist in the blood. Apparently it ... carries an 18- to 25-fold increase over cocaine alone in risk of immediate death. Or, if you are an optimist, you may find your chance of dying from cocaine alone at most 1/18 as likely as this cocaethylene thing.
• /u/SimplyOriginal posts about maximising alcohol's per-unit potential: Eat [fatty foods and carbs] 45mins before your first drink [to] slow down the absorption rate. Maintain a [steady] increase of [BAC]. Stick to one type of alcohol [to maintain the feel-good effects. Do not] hammer shots.
• Cocaine stops being detectable in fluids after a few days.
• Lasers burn away rust, but not with the iron underneath, because rust absorbs more light than iron.
• (Throwback Wednesday) Buffer solutions can only be made from weak acids (and their conjugate bases). When a strong acid is added, the conjugate base neutralises it. When a strong base is added, the acid protonates, neutralising the base. In both cases, the pH did not change much.
• Aluminium cookware can potentially add 1~2mg of it to your diet per day. The upper limit is 85mg. Better safe than sorry.
• The pH of urine can vary wildly from 4.5 to 8. It correlates to whatever pH your body is, which can be low (dehydration) or high (crazy illnesses, see link).
• Oxalic acid is the cause of spinach making your teeth feel funny. Too much (now calcium oxalate) in your kidneys become kidney stones.
• Henna is light brown. There is no such thing as black henna. Black henna is P-Phenylenediamine, which is a banned skin irritant (for henna).
• Microscopic glass cracks get bigger as you drop the phone more often.
• Hands rely on keratin softening from moisture from sweat to improve grip.
• Aluminium is recycled by passing currents through it, which makes it temporarily magnetic.
• Salt and vinegar chips are "artificially flavored". They are sprinkled with sodium acetate, which conveys the flavors of salt and vinegar while not technically being either.
• In Jurassic World, two children save themselves by fixing a 20-year old Jeep. Trouble is, gas doesn't last that long, and nowhere does the scene show gasoline.
• [Rate law][youtube 18]: "Zeroth order" (kA^0, i.e. rate is constant k), "First order" (kA^1, i.e. doubling concentration doubles the rate), "Second order" (kA^2, i.e. more sensitive to rate than first order)
• It takes the same amount of energy to melt ice (from 0 degrees solid to 0 degrees liquid) and to heat water (from 0 degrees liquid to 70 degrees liquid).
• Too cold and there is no snowball, because you need the moisture.
• "A modern samarium-cobalt magnet takes around 700 years to lose half its strength."
• E162 Betanin aka Beetroot red is the name of the red food dye. Betanin degrades when subjected to light, heat, and oxygen.
• Iridium is also the third least abundant rare earth element, so anything with iridium implies it being expensive.
• Some organic samples must be coated in gold before an electron microscope could image them: "the electron microscope is only capable of producing topographies of conductive materials, such as metals"
• The phytohemagglutinin in as few as 25 unsoaked kidney Beans can kill you. If they are slow cooked, the toxicity increases fivefold.
• Chloroform won't knock someone out in seconds. It takes minutes.
• The Bohr Effect explains why increasing CO₂ concentration makes hemoglobin release their oxygen (affinity curve).
• Caesium: Due to the bright blue lines in its emission spectrum, they chose a name derived from the Latin word caesius, meaning sky-blue. (It is thus pronounced "KAY see um")
• Rubbing alcohol might make some post-it notes sticky again.