Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Citizen Chemist => Topic started by: zilalti on October 20, 2005, 01:12:07 PM
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Any one know of some intersting reactions i culd carry out in my house with household products?? The other day i tried making an ester from ethanol and vinegar but it was uncessful. Any ideas im really bored.
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There is probably too much water (H2O) in vinegar and alcohol to do an esterification. Did you have an acid catalyst?
You could try making red cabbage indicator and test the pH of some household products to see what acidity or basicity they are.
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If you enjoy the smell of boiled red cabbage in the morning. ;)
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If you enjoy the smell of boiled red cabbage in the morning.
I can't stand the smell of boiled cabbage anymore, I made 4 litres of indicator the other day, I even used the hood but it still reeked :D
Hey zilalti, there are loads of experiments you can do at home, it depends on what kinds of experiments you are interested in.
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If you enjoy the smell of boiled red cabbage in the morning. ;)
Some prefer napalm.
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I heard of an expirement recently. You mix Chlorine with Methanol. It was something like that. I think they may have used bleach though. I can't find the article where I read, but does anyone know anything about this. This would be a fun expirement.
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If theres too much water in the alcohol and vinegar is there anyway i could distill to strengthen it, bearing in mind i don't have any access to lab equipment??
As for other expreiments im into i couldn't say, like most people i like explosions but i know its against the rules to talk about it and theres enough information on the web anyway. But generally i enjoy carrying out visually exiting experiments and making random white powders from liquids.
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Oh yea the chlorine and methanol is probably the free radical substitution reaction with the chlorine substituting the hydrogens which can be quite explosive. You need U.V light to start the reaction though.
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Here's a fairly easily done home experiment to produce methyl salicylate, a fairly nice smelling ester (wintergreen-like smell).
Step 1: Saponification of acetylsalicylic acid
Extract acetylsalicylic acid from a ground up aspirin tablet using acetone. Prepare a strong solution of NaOH and disolve the acetylsalicylic acid in it. Heat to a boil for about 2 minutes, then cool to room temperature. This will saponify the acetylsalicylic acid (an ester itself) to produce salicylate and acetate.
Add an ice-cold solution of dilute HCl to protonate the salicylate and precipitate it from solution. Collect the solid (salicylic acid) and dry well (let it sit in an open beaker and let the water evaporate off).
Step 2: Fischer esterification of salicylic acid and methanol
Disolve the salicylic acid from part 1 in methanol, then add a catalytic amount of conc. sulfuric acid. Heat to produce methyl salicylate. If you want to isolate the methyl salicylate, remove the excess salicylic acid and catalyst by extracting with cold aqueous base (so the base does not promote hydrolysis of the ester), dry with a drying agent (important if you want to distill off the excess methanol), then distill off the methanol (bp =64.6C) from the methyl salicylate (bp = 220 - 224C). What remains should be colorless, yellowish or reddish oily liquid.
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http://81.207.88.128/science/chem/exps/index3.html
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http://scitoys.com/
Somebody gave me that website from this forum.
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If you enjoy the smell of boiled red cabbage in the morning. ;)
I don't have trouble with cabbage-stink with my recipe, which does not involve boiling.
To make 50-60 ml of indicator, I put 50 g of red cabbage from a whole head, and
50 g of 95% EtOH in a blender. I use "Everclear" which, in USA, is sold for drinking,
and is thus expensive (tax) but won't contaminate my blender which I do eat out of.
Blend for a while, and filter once or twice through coffee filters. If I tried to squeeze
out the goop, I'm sure I could get more indicator solution, but I usually don't bother.
This seems to work well, and doesn't stink up the place. (I'm not making large
amounts, though, nothing near 4 liters.)
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Great suggestion mark, I will try it :)
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I tried to get EverClear at my local booze stores recently and was unsuccessful. Obviously I will have to go farther afield. In any case one of the store clerks suggested I use unadulterated grain alcohol vodka. He suggested I might distill it further. I have even thought the lower proof is just due to water and might be ok for some reactions. Do you think that high proof vodka would work for this process?
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I would say that any vodka would work, seeing as though it works in boiling water or with pure ethanol at room temp. it must also work in between these two.
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I would think that vodka would work fine. The higher the proof, the better.
I think that vodka is hardly anything besides EtOH and water, though I don't know for sure.
I think you get a better indicator with EtOH than with water, as there is stuff
in the cabbage (that you don't want) that doesn't dissolve well in the alcohol.
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You could try making chloral hydrate by chlorinating dry ethanol with Cl2, or perhaps chlorobutanol from chloroform and acetone, they are both fairly antiquated sedatives, but chlorobutanol is an interesting compound, very hygroscopic and it sublimes if not kept in a sealed vial, it acts as a local anaesthetic.
There is a fun thing you can do with alcohol, you take a test tube full of ethanol, and create a layer of concentrated sulfuric acid on the bottom, then carefully, so as not to disturb the two layers, introduce a small amount of KMnO4 into the H2So4 layer, which will result in the formation of the unstable manganese heptoxide, Mn2O7, which is created in very small, safe quantities, and reacts with the EtOH, causing flashes of light caused by little microexplosions of alcohol on contact with teh Mn2O7.
Electrolysis of fused NaOH or KOH under a dry nitrogen or argon blanket using a car battery is one I have done before, to produce elemental sodium/potassium, there are all sorts of interesting things can be done with the alkali metals, or even electrolysis when exposed to air, if done on a small scale, with eye protection, bits of Na metal can be isolated and quickly picked out of the melt with a wire loop and dumped into hexane for storage.
You could try scraping the phosphorus from safety matchbook strikers wetted with acetone, then heating in a sealed glass tube or closed test tube, very small quantites of white phosphorus can be distilled from the strikers, which oxidise to ash, allowing the WP to ooze from the charcoal residue and collect in beads in the test tube.
WP is of course, pyrophoric and toxic, but on that scale, it allows you to see enough of the white allotrope to isolate small beads of WP.