Sciencemadness Discussion Board

my chemistry site

Jor - 13-3-2008 at 14:25

http://scheikunde.landgoedgemini.nl

What do you guys think of the lay-out , pictures, movies, etc of my site? Please feedback.

These experiments are upcoming projects:

-Flame colors
-Chemistry of copper, and maybe cobalt
-Permanagnate + glycerine
-Bromine synthesis: hypochloriet, hydrogen peroxide and bromate method
-Interacting of some elements with the halogens
-Preparing high oxidation states: NiO2 , Mn(VII), Cr(VI) and FeO42-
-Aspirine synthesis

[Edited on 13-3-2008 by Jor]

[Edited on 13-3-2008 by Jor]

[Edited on 13-3-2008 by Jor]

chemkid - 13-3-2008 at 15:31

Personally, from my own website making experiences, i have found it more effective to try to get as much material on the site as possible and then worrying about having safety, materials lists, etc etc. Unless the experiment is extraordinarily cool, like the anohydrous dichromates and and permanganate, don't bother with an in depth description. Just give the reaction, the basic apparatus, and how to do it and some discussion of results. If you right out safety etc etc for each experiment you will soon find yourself on the computer much longer than in the lab. I prefer more lab work than computer work. Click on the www thing at the bottom of my post to see my site. Thats just my opinon though.

Chemkid

chemrox - 13-3-2008 at 21:31

I'm not familiar with this terminology- "anhydrides" of chromate, etc. I don't see how it applies. There is no hydrogen in any of these compounds. I would put some thumbnails of the experiments up on the intro page, maybe as buttons to go to those pages. I like the idea and the details are good. I agree with chemkid. If you worry about liability make a general disclaimer in the beginning as you did but mention the reagents in the experiments and leave the warnings out of the experiment pages. I would anticipate more demonstrations?

[Edited on 13-3-2008 by chemrox]

Jor - 14-3-2008 at 00:11

I always thought Mn2O7 and CrO3 are the anhydrides of the corresponding acids...
I prefer warnings on the experiment pages, because you should not only tell the warnings of the used compounds, but also the additional dangers involved.
Nad I think I wont make the 'Needed materials' list then next time. Thanks for your feedback chemrox and chemikid!

woelen - 14-3-2008 at 00:20

I do not agree with chemkid and chemrox. I also made many experiment pages on my webpage, and each experiment has a detailed description on safety, disposal and cleanup, procedures for setting up the experiment and procedures for actually carrying out the experiment. And yes, it takes time, so at that point chemkid is right. But to my opinion the time is well-spent.

Why such detailed pages?
1) Every experiment has its own unique safety issues, no general disclaimer can cover that.
2) Detailed descriptions make an experiment repeatable. I don't care for beautiful pics and videos if noone else is capable of reproducing them reliably.
3) Information becomes less terse. A good description makes a page more attractive.
4) My discussion of results tries to give a decent background for the experiment. So, its not only the cool effect, but also the theory behind the experiment. Such theory may help others, who have slightly different chemicals, to perform a similar experiment.

To my opinion I prefer Jor's site to be a site with a few, well-documented experiments, than a large list of hard-to-reproduce and incomplete descriptions. It all is a matter of patience. My website has not become like it is now in a few weeks. It now is online for 3 years and it took me that amount of time to add new pages and make it grow slowly.

JohnWW - 14-3-2008 at 00:25

Quote:
Originally posted by Jor
http://scheikunde.landgoedgemini.nl(cut)
-Preparing high oxidation states: NiO2 , Mn(VII), Cr(VI) and FeO42-

FeO4--, ferrate(VI), as the Na or K salt, would be a cheaper substitute for permanganate(VII) used for water treatment and other uses, if the salts could be satisfactorily crystallized from solution, having a similar redox potential. However, the "holy grail" of iron chemistry would be the theoretically possible perferrate(VII), FeO4-, and iron (VIII) tetroxide, FeO4. I think it should be possible to obtain them by electrolysis at a high voltage, at least comparable to that used for perchlorate, of a supercooled strongly alkaline solution of ferrate (VI).

not_important - 14-3-2008 at 00:48

Anhydrides of oxy-acids is an older term, but still common outside the UK and US. If it gives an acid when dissolved in water, it is anhydride.


You might use less client side scripting on the site, or at least have a fallback that doesn't use it. This is especially true for off-site scripting, which has been used for attacks on browsers and their host computers. I always run script blocking on new sites, yours came up almost entirely blank.

The videos don't show even with no script blocking enabled. Looks as if the
writeMovie(); calls aren't working for me, at least when my 1st access blocked scripts.

Jor - 14-3-2008 at 00:59

Woelen had the same problem. He could not play my videos. I will try if I can make then MPG or AVI. The best ofcourse would be the program YouTube uses, but I do not know how to acquire that.
What exactly do you mean with 'less client side scripting' or of 'side scripting' ? To be honest, my brotehr helped me with getting everything online, and I really don't have experience with making an internetsite.

microcosmicus - 14-3-2008 at 01:04

I think "Needed materials" is a good idea. After reading an experiment, should I want
to repeat it, it is convenient to look at a list and see if I have the necessary supplies or
if I am going to have to wait until I acquire some other ingredient. Overall, I side with
woelen over chemkid --- there is already quite a volume of information available
online, in particular a number of sites on home chemistry (frogfot, bromic acid,
backyard chemistry, . . .) so I am much more interested in seeing quality over
quantity. Finding, detailed, accurate, in-depth technical information on the web is
quite difficult I would be much more interested to see a handful of experiments
covered in depth than a lot of them skimmed over briefly.

Nicodem - 14-3-2008 at 01:25

Nice site, though my first impression was "Oh, a copycat of Woelen!" :P Just joking, Woelen's format is just fine and should be a standard.

I also found the QuickTime applets and scripts annoying since I was not able to see the movies (I do not have QuickTime installed) and IE constantly gives those annoying script blocking warnings.

The anhydride thing is unusual only in that you wrote anhydrides of chromates and permanganates which are salts so they can not have their anhydrides – only the corresponding acids can be dehydrated. The safety warnings on methyl nitrite page is a bit funny since you make all the chemicals involved as hazardous while you do not even mention the hazard of inhaling methyl nitrite which makes you dizzy and stoned at minuscule concentrations. I guess there are other such minor things, but in general it looks fine.

not_important - 14-3-2008 at 02:08

Quote:
Originally posted by Jor
Woelen had the same problem. He could not play my videos. I will try if I can make then MPG or AVI. The best ofcourse would be the program YouTube uses, but I do not know how to acquire that.


YouTube uses Flash video, yet another scripting language and video compression method. If you use YuoTube to store your videos, there is no software you need to get - you just upload. If you want to host the files yourself, then avoid Flash; it's rumored that Google will be moving YouTube away from it as it's yet another scripting language to worry about.

There's nothing wrong with Quicktime, except that it is a plug-in for most browsers that must be downloaded and installed before any Quicktime files can be played. I have it installed, I suspect there's something about the script used to start the video that doesn't work with all browsers.
Quote:

What exactly do you mean with 'less client side scripting' or of 'side scripting' ? To be honest, my brotehr helped me with getting everything online, and I really don't have experience with making an internetsite.


Client side scripting uses bits of text - programs in a scripting language such as Javascript and Java or ActiveX in IE - to cause some of a Web page's behaviour and interactiveness happen at the client - the browser - rather than all coming from the server - the software running on the hosting computer(s) like those at landgoedgemini.nl.

Client scripting makes Web pages more responsive to user input in many cases. Input validation is commonly down with client side scripts, input forms that hide or show sections depending on a user input in another field are examples.

These scripts can be directly embedded in the Web page, or 'included' by having the basic Web page have instructions to the browser to load a specified file at various points in the page. Images are handled in a similar fashion, the Web page in effect tells the browser to request a specified file from the server; for scripts not only is a file specification given but the script language is specified as well.

This use of file specifications instead of storing scipts with in the Web page code has advantages for large sites, because there is only one copy of the script to be modified for updating. It's also useful for an ISO as a method to provide libraries of predefined scripts for its customers to use in their Web sites.

Off-site scripting is when a Web page tells the client to load a script from another Web site, rather than itself. This can increase the danger from using scripts, because you are now depending on the security of two service providers rather than just one. The indirect source of the script can do things such as change the script the first, or ninth, time a given computer/browser requests that script, sending a malicious script in the place of the normal one. The malicious script can send back information, and modify the actions of the browser.

Off site scripting is commonly used for things such as hit counters and advertisements where the click-through is counted by the advertiser rather than the site the advertiser is paying for carrying the ad. Off-site script blocking can be used to eliminate many such ads from displaying on the browser, so people - viewers - are increasingly resorting to them.

Jor - 14-3-2008 at 02:16

Quote:
Originally posted by Nicodem
Nice site, though my first impression was "Oh, a copycat of Woelen!" :P Just joking, Woelen's format is just fine and should be a standard.

I also found the QuickTime applets and scripts annoying since I was not able to see the movies (I do not have QuickTime installed) and IE constantly gives those annoying script blocking warnings.

The anhydride thing is unusual only in that you wrote anhydrides of chromates and permanganates which are salts so they can not have their anhydrides – only the corresponding acids can be dehydrated. The safety warnings on methyl nitrite page is a bit funny since you make all the chemicals involved as hazardous while you do not even mention the hazard of inhaling methyl nitrite which makes you dizzy and stoned at minuscule concentrations. I guess there are other such minor things, but in general it looks fine.

I indeed based my layout on woelen's. I like woelen's layout very much. To be really honest, I find woelen's internet site the best chemistry site I've ever een so far.
I didnt know methyl nitrite is dangerous. Have to put that in the experiment.

not_important, I will try to use your information for a better website. I will ask my brtother if he understands this all.

Joris

not_important - 14-3-2008 at 02:30

See what he says. The videos are the most important thing, as they play an important part in the site.

Very nice, minimalist and elegant.

franklyn - 14-3-2008 at 07:21

microcosmicus - 14-3-2008 at 10:25

For an example of a nice site having videos of experiments, have a look at Peter Keuch's
collection of organic demos:

http://www.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/Organische_Chemie/Didakt...

Note that they also have the format with the list of ingredients, list of apparatus, and
safety warnings at top. Also, the way that the videos are integrated there might
give you some ideas how to set up your site,

With all these different websites out there which have descriptions of chemical
experiments, I am thinking that it would be good to make a master website which
contains no experiments itself but simply links to all the experiments out there
from a single place. This way, if one wants to find a certain experiment or
experiments involving a certain chemical, one would not have to browse through
a bunch of websites or putz around with a search engine, but could simply do
one-stop shopping from the central website.