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Have you folks ever noticed that highschool chem teachers love using HF as a theoretical example for acid-base chemistry calculations (find the pH; make an HF buffer; and so on) without so much as mentioning that it's dangerous?
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Jan 31, 2015 18:32
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Carbon dioxide posted:Have you folks ever noticed that highschool chem teachers love using HF as a theoretical example for acid-base chemistry calculations (find the pH; make an HF buffer; and so on) without so much as mentioning that it's dangerous? High school teachers mention lots of potentially deadly chemicals as examples in various problems. Only a handful of their students will ever actually encounter them, and they'll have lots more training before they do. At that point, the toxicity or other properties of the molecule are a side discussion, with the main issue being their shape, or pKa, or whatever.
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Jan 31, 2015 19:08
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Fucknag posted:Anyway. Someone talk to me about tripropellant rocket engines. They settled for elemental mercury because Kodak refused to synthesize a few hundred pounds of dimethylmercury, stating that doing so would fog all of the film in Rochester.
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Jan 31, 2015 19:25
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Wait, are you telling me this is a true story, then? http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/07/a-tall-tail Actually I would be interested in finding out how much of that is based on stuff that actually happened, and how much is fictional.
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Jan 31, 2015 19:29
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ol qwerty bastard posted:Wait, are you telling me this is a true story, then? http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/07/a-tall-tail They also built and tested the nuclear rocket motor for Project Pluto, and the lead designer threw a fit when he found out the project was being cancelled because it was crazy dangerous and unsafe, as he didn't think those were concerns worth worrying about.
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Jan 31, 2015 19:46
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EoRaptor posted:They also built and tested the nuclear rocket motor for Project Pluto, and the lead designer threw a fit when he found out the project was being cancelled because it was crazy dangerous and unsafe, as he didn't think those were concerns worth worrying about. Considering "irradiate the enemy's countryside by flying over it" was a secondary mission for SLAM after it dropped its bombs, I think it was a design goal.
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Jan 31, 2015 20:33
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ol qwerty bastard posted:Wait, are you telling me this is a true story, then? http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/07/a-tall-tail No, but it may be inspired by the story they're actually talking about, which is in Ignition: quote:All sorts of efforts were being made, during the late 50's, to increase propellant densities, and I was responsible (not purposely, but from being taken seriously when I didn't expect to be) for one of the strangest. Phil Pomerantz, of BuWeps, wanted me to try dimethyl mercury, Hg(CH3)2, as a fuel. I suggested that it might be somewhat toxic and a bit dangerous to synthesize and handle, but he assured me that it was (a) very easy to put together, and (b) as harmless as mother's milk. I was dubious, but told him that I'd see what I could do. ToxicFrog has a new favorite as of 21:13 on Jan 31, 2015 |
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Jan 31, 2015 21:09
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Carbon dioxide posted:Have you folks ever noticed that highschool chem teachers love using HF as a theoretical example for acid-base chemistry calculations (find the pH; make an HF buffer; and so on) without so much as mentioning that it's dangerous? actually my high school chem instructor (also a former college instructor?) was pretty explicit about how bad HF can gently caress you up 
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Jan 31, 2015 22:16
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GWBBQ posted:They settled for elemental mercury because Kodak refused to synthesize a few hundred pounds of dimethylmercury, stating that doing so would fog all of the film in Rochester. I thought the issue with that volume of dimethylmercury was how incredibly neurotoxic it was (at like 40-50µg/kg for an ld50) and required lots of special ppe for synthesis and handling. Whats the film fogging thing coming in from exactly?
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Feb 1, 2015 00:16
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Synnr posted:I thought the issue with that volume of dimethylmercury was how incredibly neurotoxic it was (at like 40-50µg/kg for an ld50) and required lots of special ppe for synthesis and handling. Whats the film fogging thing coming in from exactly? Mercury itself fogs film, and it doesn’t take much. Straight from the horse’s mouth (1970): quote:Manufacturers of photographic film learned many years ago that even tiny amounts of mercury in their film can create a “fog” which ruins the picture. Accordingly, they take elaborate precautions. Don Anderson, Director of Kodak’s industrial laboratory in Rochester, N. Y., asserts: “We can identify a single part of mercury among ten billion other parts. That’s the equivalent of finding one crystal of sugar in a truckload of sand.”
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Feb 1, 2015 00:39
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Oh its just synthesis in the same facility would poison future film production? I was confused by the "within a 100 miles of whereever" bit.
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Feb 1, 2015 00:48
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ToxicFrog posted:No, but it may be inspired by the story they're actually talking about, which is in Ignition: No "may be" about it, Charlie's a big fan of Ignition, and of the kind of chemistry that amuses this thread in general.
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Feb 1, 2015 01:01
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DigitalRaven posted:No "may be" about it, Charlie's a big fan of Ignition, and of the kind of chemistry that amuses this thread in general. Speaking of Ignition!, if anyone is looking to read it there's a link to a free copy in the OP of the Spaceflight thread in SAL. Spaceflight thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3580990 Ignition! link: http://www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
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Feb 1, 2015 01:04
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DigitalRaven posted:No "may be" about it, Charlie's a big fan of Ignition, and of the kind of chemistry that amuses this thread in general. Speaking of, apart from Ignition, Things I Won't Work With, and Max Gergel's autobiography, what are good books/blogs/papers/etc on this subject? ToxicFrog has a new favorite as of 01:26 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 01:06
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ToxicFrog posted:Speaking of, apart from Ignition and Things I Won't Work With, what are good books/blogs/papers/etc on this subject? Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like To Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide? (PDF) by Max Gergel.
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Feb 1, 2015 01:20
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Gobbeldygook posted:Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like To Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide? (PDF) by Max Gergel. I actually read that as well and forgot to list it! I didn't like it nearly as much as Ignition, though.
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Feb 1, 2015 01:26
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ToxicFrog posted:I actually read that as well and forgot to list it! I didn't like it nearly as much as Ignition, though. quote:There was one trip from which I thought I would never come back. I thought I had destroyed my physical brain. My friend Eric, with whom I often did psychedelic drugs, was a strategic air command pilot. In the air, he was responsible for one of the keys required to arm the nuclear bombs. If war started, he had partial responsibility for dropping them. One day he realized he couldn't, and wouldn't, do it. They gave him an honorable discharge. Psychiatric problems - he wouldn't help blow up the world.
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Feb 1, 2015 01:54
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dang
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Feb 1, 2015 02:15
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sign me up
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Feb 1, 2015 12:42
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has there ever been much in the way of research into how a chemical can cause temporary ego death and crazy poo poo like that (other than presumably mkultra-type poo poo)
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Feb 1, 2015 13:42
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Vitamins posted:Thanks for that, that was a really interesting read! I'm hoping to be getting a job in the modern dyeing industry soon which is where my interest in the older methods came from. It's mostly by recollection, so you might want to find something more definite - I'm sure there's been a fair bit written in English as well. 
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Feb 1, 2015 16:23
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Gobbeldygook posted:Kary Mullis autobiography, Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, has a few good chemistry stories interspersed with the ones about alien encounters and OJ Simpson. You too can read the tale of how a future Nobel prize winner almost died from doing nitrous and from taking the drug diethyltryptamine (DET). Here's the DET story: Don't forget about how HIV doesn't cause AIDS! 
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Feb 1, 2015 19:05
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a kitten posted:Don't forget about how HIV doesn't cause AIDS! God how I wish this specific train of thought would just die screaming in a fire already. How can people possibly maintain a denialist stance after all these years of research? 
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Feb 1, 2015 19:51
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Punting posted:God how I wish this specific train of thought would just die screaming in a fire already. How can people possibly maintain a denialist stance after all these years of research? The same way anti-vaxers still believe that vaccinations are harmful despite mountains of evidence and the resurgence of previously eliminated diseases.
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Feb 1, 2015 20:33
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Tollymain posted:has there ever been much in the way of research into how a chemical can cause temporary ego death and crazy poo poo like that (other than presumably mkultra-type poo poo) All thought is just electrical impulses. Ingest a chemical that makes those impulses behave differently in particular (or all) areas of the brain, and you can get some really screwy poo poo happening until those chemicals are broken down and eliminated from the body.
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Feb 1, 2015 21:34
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yes, true, but figuring out the details is where you could pick up some really cool and potentially useful knowledge and i suppose bring on the dystopian future but we're already headed there so who gives a gently caress anymore
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Feb 1, 2015 22:27
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On the subject of mercury fogging film, alternative processes in photography have a ton of fun chemicals. You can use mercury in a positive way, with mercury intensification! If you've got an unprintably thin (i.e. not dense) negative that you really need to salvage, you can use mercury to increase the contrast (and graininess, incidentally) enough that it'll be printable. It's not a process used much nowadays for obvious reasons. There are less toxic intensifiers, such as chromium-based ones! (which still cause cancer) There's also metal replacement toning for prints, where you use a process to replace the silver in a silver-gelatin print with something else, like gold or (less commonly) uranium. Theoretically, you could make plutonotype prints, but nobody's done it.  Pyrogallol is a developer that fell out of favor in the 20s because it tended to oxidize and become useless not too long after making it, but it experienced a resurgence in the 80s, despite that unholy trinity of being a potent carinogen, teratogen, and mutagen. If you live that long, that is; it has an LDLo of 28mg/kg in humans. Fortunately, we now have sodium and ammonium thiosulfates to use as fixer, so we don't have to use potassium cyanide anymore. The former process for slide film, process E-4, not only used a horribly toxic reversing agent ("Target organs: central nervous system"!), but when the prehardener chemical was neutralized, " a noxious gas, which has been likened to tear gas, is generated." Good job Kodak. Most other photo chemicals are mildly to highly toxic, but not in such exciting ways. "Amidol is highly toxic and can cause severe allergic reactions similar to metol, bronchial asthma, gastritis, convulsions, and coma." There's some interesting info about various developers on this page. Just about the only thing that's not dangerous is ascorbic acid, which is actually a pretty good developer (in Xtol, it's combined with phenidone, which is only mildly toxic; one of the big reasons for Xtol's development was occupational safety). Whee!
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Feb 1, 2015 22:31
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That makes me feel like I shouldn't have been allowed in the processing room when I took photography in high school.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:36
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atomicthumbs posted:There's also metal replacement toning for prints, where you use a process to replace the silver in a silver-gelatin print with something else, like gold or (less commonly) uranium. Theoretically, you could make plutonotype prints, but nobody's done it. So, as a guy who's too young to have really worked with film (my dad was an early adopter of digital photography, I think I've shot like 4 or 5 rolls of film total), what's the benefit of making gold or uranotype prints? Just something you do because you can? And why did pyrogallol experience a resurgence in the 80s? Did the Reagan years just make everyone go "gently caress safety, it's morning in America!" or something? Venusian Weasel has a new favorite as of 22:50 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 22:42
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Venusian Weasel posted:So, as a guy who's too young to have really worked with film (my dad was an early adopter of digital photography, I think I've shot like 4 or 5 rolls of film total), what's the benefit of making gold or uranotype prints? Just something you do because you can? We had uranium long before we knew what the gently caress radiation was; it was just another metal salt that happened to be photosensitive. And pyro paper had a resurgence because it was naturally high contrast. Art is subjective, so getting a specific effect from the process is just as critical for some artists as framing a shot or finding a specific subject matter. Source: film student and wikipedia.
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Feb 1, 2015 23:13
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Wasabi the J posted:Art is subjective, so getting a specific effect from the process is just as critical for some artists as framing a shot or finding a specific subject matter. I get that, my question was more along the lines of what the effect of replacing the silver with gold or uranimum was. On pyro paper, why did the resurgence happen in the 80s? Why not earlier? Was there something else that was in use that fell out of practice?
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Feb 1, 2015 23:28
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Venusian Weasel posted:I get that, my question was more along the lines of what the effect of replacing the silver with gold or uranimum was. Uranotypes just look different. Red tint, different exposure rules mean the artists can do different things with them; I have never worked with the stuff, just passing academic knowledge. The wiki answer for the pyro paper resurgence is actually surprisingly succinct. Apparently, there were consistency issues, so one print wouldn't turn out the same even if all other variables (exposures, filters, wash times, etc.) were the same. This probably exasperated some artists, who liked the effect it created. quote:It experienced a revival starting in the 1980s due largely to the efforts of experimenters Gordon Hutchings and John Wimberley. Hutchings spent over a decade working on pyrogallol formulas, eventually producing one he named PMK (for its main ingredients, pyrogallol, Metol, and Kodalk [trade name of Kodak for sodium metaborate]). This formulation resolved the consistency issues, and Hutchings found that an interaction between the greenish stain given to film by pyro developers and the color sensitivity of modern variable-contrast photographic papers gave the effect of an extreme compensating developer. Wiki about John Wimberley posted:"When I first made black and white prints I could not attain the tonal characteristics I could see in my mind. WD2D gave me the tonal characteristics I needed to best communicate what I needed to communicate." WD2D is similar to other pyrogallol-based film developers because it promotes high sharpness and granularity while smoothing grain using a dye mask. However, WD2D differs from older pyrogallol-based film developers like the ABC Pyro formula used by Edward Weston because WD2D is designed to work well with modern, single-emulsion black-and-white films. John Wimberley is a weird guy from all accounts; super into the hippy dippy aspects of nature photography, including thinking rocks are sentient and speaking. Wasabi the J has a new favorite as of 23:47 on Feb 1, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 23:36
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Speaking of ascorbic acid, did you know it's possible to do completely harmless (and in a sense, organic) photography developing? There's a developer mix, succesfully used by a lot of hobbyists, named 'caffenol'. It's a mix of coffee, vitamin C and soda ash. Vitamin C is ascorbic acid, coffee gives you 'caffeic acid' (unrelated to caffeine, except that they both occur in coffee), which both work as the reducing agent. The soda is added in order to get the pH right. As a stopper you can simply use vinegar. Fixer is slightly trickier. People have attempted to make nontoxic alternatives, but I think most caffenol users just use thiosulfate for that. So, I'd say at this point the 'worst' chemical you're using is the silver from the film that dissolves in the developer/fixer.
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Feb 2, 2015 00:32
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We tried it in photography class, and only one person's prints came out looking any good; but we were impatient high schoolers, so I chalk it up to that -- definitely not the results they said we could be getting.
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Feb 2, 2015 00:54
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Wasabi the J posted:We had uranium long before we knew what the gently caress radiation was; it was just another metal salt that happened to be photosensitive. Uranium was used for a bunch of stuff before nuclear bombs were invented. One of the more famous is as a glaze for ceramics, so there are still some mildly radioactive vases around. You can use it to get a very pretty and unique green, or a rather vivid orange.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:32
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Dilb posted:Uranium was used for a bunch of stuff before nuclear bombs were invented. One of the more famous is as a glaze for ceramics, so there are still some mildly radioactive vases around. You can use it to get a very pretty and unique green, or a rather vivid orange. I have some of the "uranium glass" pieces. The green color is pretty telltale, but you can identify them instantly by putting them under a UV/black light- they glow pretty strongly. I'll see if I have some pictures around.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:39
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Venusian Weasel posted:So, as a guy who's too young to have really worked with film (my dad was an early adopter of digital photography, I think I've shot like 4 or 5 rolls of film total), what's the benefit of making gold or uranotype prints? Just something you do because you can? Print toning was/is used for two things: stability and visual effect. Selenium toning gives prints a slight brownish to strong purple-brown cast, and makes them last about twice as long as an untoned print. Sepia toning uses compounds that turn the silver into silver sulfide, making it 50% more stable and turning it brown. Metal replacement toning with ferrocyanide salts or transition metals can either increase or reduce the longevity of a print, but they're mostly used for their colors; from what I understand, it's basically using a metal to chemically plate the silver grains. Gold-toning protects the image and turns it cool bluish-black. Iron and copper reduce the lifespan of a print and turn it blue or red, respectively. Uranium turns it orange-red. Wasabi the J posted:The wiki answer for the pyro paper resurgence is actually surprisingly succinct. Apparently, there were consistency issues, so one print wouldn't turn out the same even if all other variables (exposures, filters, wash times, etc.) were the same. This probably exasperated some artists, who liked the effect it created. I think you might be misreading that - from what I understand, pyrogallol experienced a resurgence after PMK was invented, since it eliminated the consistency issues and allowed people to use it easily to improve the contrast qualities of their negatives. Pyrogallol stains negatives green, which results in desireable contrast qualities when printing (especially on platinum paper) in combination with the pyrogallol's compensating qualities. Compensating, in the case of a film developer, means it recovers more detail in the shadows and highlights of the negative; a low-contrast but printably dense negative is usually desireable, as compared to a higher-contrast print, because it effectively increases the dynamic range of the film. I'm not sure when Diafine was invented, but maybe PMK works better. I don't have much experience in the area of fancy developers since I'm more of an "ALL RODINAL ALL THE TIME" guy. atomicthumbs has a new favorite as of 02:18 on Feb 2, 2015 |
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Feb 2, 2015 02:15
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Dilb posted:Uranium was used for a bunch of stuff before nuclear bombs were invented. One of the more famous is as a glaze for ceramics, so there are still some mildly radioactive vases around. You can use it to get a very pretty and unique green, or a rather vivid orange. I have a lot of orange Fiestaware with the uranium glaze.
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Feb 2, 2015 02:21
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There was one of those flash crazes a few weeks ago on reddit where everyone dogpiled in to show off their uranium glass collections.
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Feb 2, 2015 03:36
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Wasabi the J posted:John Wimberley is a weird guy from all accounts; super into the hippy dippy aspects of nature photography, including thinking rocks are sentient and speaking. Any possibility that this is related to his habit of working with weird toxic chemicals?
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Feb 2, 2015 03:44
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