Back to spectrophotometers, IR is extremely useful, but is proving very expensive. I would recommend buying a Perkin Elmer 1310. Parts are still
available for this instrument. I recently puchased one off of Ebay. I turned the instrument on and within 5 minutes the detector died! I am in contact
with an IR guy on LabX and I will be able to get the replacement detector for several hundred dollars and have a running instrument. The 1310 has a
pyroelectric detector which is faily inexpensive to replace; hundreds instead of thousands of dollars. Polyethylene can be used as a window material
for IR cells; many disposable IR cards are made of polyethylene cards, use white plastic grocery bags. It will not hold up to heavy duty organic
solvents.
I would recommend a Perkin Elmer Lamba 3B UV-Vis specrophotometer if you wish to do any inorganic or quantitative work. This instrument has
few problems, except that the deuterium lamp for UV work is extremly expensive. I recently aquired one of these off of Ebay in complete working
condition. They require a chart recorder to print out a spectrum. At least chart recorders are dirt cheap off of Ebay. Plan on paying more for the
paper then the recorder.
Hydrazine sulfate can be made fairly eaisly by Roscoe Bodine's method. Run the synthesis at half scale using the exact conditions and proportions in
the procedure. I was barly able to get away with using a 3 Liter flask due to the amount of foaming. The half scale procedure will give you about 100g
of hydrazine sulfate, enough to make plently of 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine. The hydrazine sulfate can also be converted to sodium azide by methods
that are posted on this forum. Many organic experiments can be conducted with out a fume hood, but shy away from reactions involving chlorine,
bromine, lachrymators and higly toxics until you get a hood. It is nice to have both 14/20 and 24/40 glass ware sets. The 24/40 set is useful for
making compounds in fairly large quantities. After several steps of a multiple synthesis, you will seldom have a large quantity of product, the 14/20
kit then comes in handy especially for distilling products when you have less then 50mL due to the minimum amount of holdup.
[Edited on 17-8-2009 by benzylchloride1]
Amateur NMR spectroscopist
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