Sometimes home chemistry leads to nice things

Almost three years ago (well before I was active on sciencemadness or any other moderated forum), I also already was doing quite some home chemistry. In those days I was active on Usenet:sci.chem. I abandoned this because of excessive trolling and spamming, taking out the fun of this.

I started this thread:

http://groups.google.nl/group/sci.chem/browse_thread/thread/...

and following that, on Usenet:rec.photo.darkroom, the following thread was started:

http://groups.google.nl/group/rec.photo.darkroom/browse_thre...


This was quite a nice experiment, developing pictures with paracetamol (tylenol or acetaminophen for US-citizens). For me, this was just some experimenting, which I discussed with another guy from India, but I left the idea as it was after the initial trials. The effect was neat, but for me it was not more than some curiousity.

Last week, however, I received an email from that guy from India, telling me that this "developer" is popularized and used by hundreds of photographers worldwide, some using it even in a professional setting . Nowadays, the idea is worked out in more detail, and a working recipe is made from this. I found it very funny to read on forums like APUG about the obscure origin of this recipe. Some "Dutch chemist" worked out the original idea and the same "Dutch chemist" did computations on how much NaOH is needed relative to paracetamol .

The entire idea is popularized by a certain Donald Qualls:

http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/29937-parodinal-also-good...

The worked out recipe: http://www.digitaltruth.com/techdata/parodinal.php

He even has given a name to it, paRodinal, meaning Rodinal, made from paracetamol. Rodinal is a photo-developer (an expensive one, with very special, much liked properties), based on p-aminophenol, which is a fairly hard to obtain chemical in many countries.

I just liked reading how a simple experiment from me has led to the development of paRodinal and how this experiment has started its own "life". So, sometimes, home chemistry can lead to nice things, even if the original experimenter already long ago turned away from it and almost forgot about it.







[Edited on 22-6-07 by woelen]

Very cool indeed Woelen! I had a somewhat similar "wow, that's kind of neat" experience. (A couple actually). A couple years ago when I was VERY active over at www.chemicalforums.com, the editor of a general chemistry textbook noticed my element pictures at the site. He sent me an e-mail asking if I had any high-resolution images of Phosphorus that he could use. I said "Sure, which allotropes do you want?" He late replied by telling me that the authors of the book would love it if I had the white, red, and black allotropes to show. I told him I did and took a very high resolution picture. The authors loved it and used it to start a chapter on allotropy in their book. So I have my name as a credit for the introductory picture to a chapter in a General Chemistry Textbook. That's kind of nice.

The other one happened just the other day. A few months ago I was looking through the periodic table over at wikipedia and noticed that a lot of their element photos were putrid. Very poor quality and not representitive of the element. As a result, I went and updated the particularly bad ones with photos that I already had of some elements. (Sodium, Cesium, Thorium). A chemist who was putting together a chemistry display on about.com went and used some of my photos but gave me the proper credit. (Since if you upload a photo to wikipedia you kind of have to make it public domain). I was happy that she gave me the credit, however.

I sent her an e-mail and asked if she needed any more photos of any element since I had a complete collection. She said she'd like that and also wanted to mention something to me. About a month ago the director of Pfizer's Art Department at Sandwich in the United Kingdom had e-mailed her for permission to use some of the photos she had in an art display they were putting together for the main building in Sandwich. Some of those pictures they wanted to use were ones I provided. That's only ironic because I work for Pfizer at their New London headquarters and work with a lot of people over in Sandwich. I just think it's kind of cool that my employer likes my photos so much that they wanted to use them for an art display about chemistry.

Very nice. I can only hope to do the same


Interesting story Jdurg.