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polymer
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What would you call a real chemical?
Just as the title says. In other words, what chemicals have interesting properties or are fun to use?
E/m*c^2
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YT2095
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"What would you call a real chemical?"
look at or touch something.
\"In a world full of wonders mankind has managed to invent boredom\" - Death
Twinkies don\'t have a shelf life. They have a half-life! -Caine (a friend of mine)
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sparkgap
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The question is not much different from asking "What would you consider to be a beautiful woman?" 
sparky (~_~)
"What's UTFSE? I keep hearing about it, but I can't be arsed to search for the answer..."
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Sauron
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Ac-Nle-Asp-His-D-Phe-Arg-Trp-Lys-OH.HCl
Bremelanotide, PT-141
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kazaa81
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Is that a thread about philosophical definition of "chemical" ?
Like, what's the "chemical essence" for definition?
If it's like that, then I think you may find your answer
in ancient greek texts...
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Ozone
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Try, instead, to ask youself, "what is NOT a chemical".
What is not a *compound* is much easier to do. This opens up the philosophical monologue quite nicely. For example, some, but not all chemicals are
compounds...
elements, compounds and mixtures, oh my!
 ,
O3
[Edited on 25-8-2007 by Ozone]
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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Sauron
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The question was:
chemicals that are fun to use and have interesting properties.
Very simle, no philosophical issues, no Zen koans.
Fun to use
with interesting properties.
The one I proposed is a human aphrodisiac and synthetic analog of alpha-,e;anocte stimulating hormone's business end.
I think that meets both criteria.
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YT2095
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for you Maybe, I can hardly believe that You, supposedly so "Worldly" cannot appreciate the concept that "Fun" and "Interesting" are entirely
Subjective.
Fascinating!
\"In a world full of wonders mankind has managed to invent boredom\" - Death
Twinkies don\'t have a shelf life. They have a half-life! -Caine (a friend of mine)
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DerAlte
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YT2095 is right. Purely subjective. I'd say something in a bottle that is not a mixture, but a reagent that at least 95% pure. They are all fun to me.
Take for instant, something as mundane as Na2SO4.!0H2O. Boring? Useless? No!
It has a very intersting solubility curve. To dissolve it you had best not heat but let it dissolve at room temp. where its solubililty peaks. Many
hydrated sulphates do the same thing. You can use it as a cheap source of SO4- ions. You can dehydrate it and use it as a dessicant. It forms a slew
of double sulphates, etc. You might even make H2SO4 from it by electrolysis... or the acid salt, NaHSO4.
But it won't interst you if you don't go in for the quieter aspects of the art. If you are into hairy organic nitrations, di-azo compounds etc. it is
inert and boring...
Regards,
Der Alte
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Ozone
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Seriously.
At the moment, I am quite fond of:
Thionyl Chloride (make acyl chlorides, totally inorganic, yields HCl and SO2 with water)
1,10-phenanthroline (bright pink/red complexes with ferrous ion)
2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl, free radical (purple radical quenches to yellow)
caffeic acid (natural product, makes neat indicators when mixed with Fe3+)
bovine serum albumin (very nice standardized (fraction V) protein at moderate cost.
Iron (thermites, wide variety of oxidation states, etc.) See also, Mn.
Hydrogen peroxide (the list is too long, but wow! all of that from only O and H...)
Ethanol (useful, cheap anhydrous solvent and can be, definitely, fun)
EDTA (nice chelant, can create interesting oxidants with iron, etc.)
glycerol (the feed stock of the future)
KMNO4 ('nuff said)
TCA (very interesting, cheap and, where I'm from, available oxidant)
NaOCl (universally available oxidant and chlorinating agent)
DCM (great solvent with low BP and is not flammable)
acrolein (nasty, but a nice monomer readily made from glycerol)
dihydroxyacetone (see glycerol, etc. citric acid cycle, etc., artifical tanning products)
cinnamic acid (natural product with interesting property (photochemical 2+2)
citric acid (natural product, monomer, readily dehydrated, etc.)
Iodine/KI (numerous applications, sublimation, TLC developer, REDOX titrant........oscillating reactions--Briggs Rauscher, etc.)
The list goes on.
Erm...so, which chemicals do NOT have interesting properties and are NOT fun to use (OK, acrolein is not so fun to use)?
Cheers,
O3
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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Xenoid
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What a ridiculous thread...
But I'll make a suggestion anyway. No one seems to have mentioned it!
How about that common reagent, dihydrogen oxide!
It has many interesting chemical properties.
Without it no life would be possible.
Famous for it's use as a solvent.
It's available OTC, in highly pure form, just about everywhere and it's extremely cheap.
It's even available in bulk form, piped to people's homes.
Regards, Xenoid
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polymer
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I'll explain myself:
Earlier, I read posts regarding school, and members discussed how students only get "watered down" chemicals to experiment with instead of "real
chemicals". So, that is how I derived my original wording.
To be more concrete, I'll rephrase my question to:
What chemicals are cool and why?
For me, that list includes:
Thermite - produces a cool explosion when ignited.
Hydrochloric Acid - Is a strong acid, and when it reacts with a base it produces water.
DNA - Gives us our identity and controls our lives
Water - "The universal solvent", tastes good
Lipids - Are not dissolved by water
Sodium - Blows up when added to water
Luminol - That cool blue glow when it reacts with hydrogen peroxide and a hydroxide salt.
For me, it is amazing that everything is pretty much made of the same thing (protons, neutrons, and electrons).
Sometimes, I like to think that not everything is made of atoms.
[Edited on 26-8-2007 by polymer]
E/m*c^2
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Xenoid
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| Quote: | Originally posted by polymer
Earlier, I read posts regarding school, and members discussed how students only get "watered down" chemicals to experiment with instead of "real
chemicals".
[Edited on 26-8-2007 by polymer] |
Yeah! I guess by "watered down" they mean;
Relatively non-poisonous
Non- flammable
Non-carcinogenic
Non-explosive
Non-corrosive
Non-mutanogenic
Etc....etc...
Regards, Xenoid
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MadHatter
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Fun Chemicals
Oxidizers used in pyrotechnics: chlorates, nitrates, and my personal favorite perchlorates.
The question is subjective and depends on what you like. Now you have my answer.
From opening of NCIS New Orleans - It goes a BOOM ! BOOM ! BOOM ! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !
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tumadre
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Students only get "watered down" chemicals to experiment with instead of "real chemicals"
How true!
Therefore a real chemical is:
One that contains a good bit of energy, or is used in an industrial process to synthesize a useful product.
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Sauron
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@YT, of course fun and interesting are subjective.
My remarks were directed at posters who wanted to redefine the question and derail the thread.
@tumadre, that's a very narrow definition.
A chemical does not have to be energetic, nor be related to industrial chemistry, to be "real" in the sense of this thread.
[Edited on 26-8-2007 by Sauron]
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pantone159
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Ozone
caffeic acid (natural product, makes neat indicators when mixed with Fe3+)
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Sounds interesting indeed. Do you happen to have any more info?
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sparkgap
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Salvinorin, moclobemide and piracetam would be on my list.
And if giant molecules are counted, PTFE, polycarbonate, and telomerase.
sparky (~_~)
"What's UTFSE? I keep hearing about it, but I can't be arsed to search for the answer..."
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Ozone
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Pantone159:
I put up a pic I made of the caffeic acid/Fe3+ complex titrated with NaOH here:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=8648&a...
I like this one too,
O3
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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woelen
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Purely technical speaking, any compound can be called a chemical. Even water is a real chemical, and in fact, it is the chemical I use most in my
experiments .
If it comes to favorite chemicals, then for me those are the salts of transition metals. The transition metals allow experimenting in so many
different ways. Beautiful complexes can be made, very rich in color. Also quite some energetic material can be made with transition metals, often even
without the need of the 'standard' pyro-related energetic oxidizers like KClO3, KNO3.
[Edited on 27-8-07 by woelen]
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12AX7
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Let's hear it for transition metals!  I might have to say copper sulfate
pentahydrate and potassium dichromate are my two favorite salts. Especially when juxtaposed beside each other. Ooh, eye-burning contrast. 
Tim
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YT2095
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Cobalt, Nickel and Copper Nitrate are my faves, to ME it`s the perfect Red, Green and Blue respectively.
I can`t decide upon on Purple though is it KMnO4 or Ti metal left in HCl for a few days?
\"In a world full of wonders mankind has managed to invent boredom\" - Death
Twinkies don\'t have a shelf life. They have a half-life! -Caine (a friend of mine)
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12AX7
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I'll have to isolate (i.e. recrystallize) Ti(III) sulfate some time, and it's too bad the peroxy-Ti(IV) complex isn't stable enough to crystallize.
I'll have to photograph a rainbow display some time. MnO4- purple, Cu(2+) blue, [CuCl4] green, CrO4(2-) yellow and peroxy-Ti red. Alternately,
Ti(III) could be in the purple vial.
Even neater would be doing it all with chromium, but I don't have the ligands.
Tim
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Sauron
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Well. as long as all and sundry are going to blithely ignore the stated meaning of the question orignally posed by the thread author, and later
expanded upon by him:
Let's turn the question inside out.
What is an unreal chemical?
I'd say that is would be a compound that
1. consists or or contains a wholly fictitious element such as Superman's kryptonites, or
2. Has not only never been made or characterized, but would be totally inconsistent with the principles of chemistry as we understand them today.
Two recent examples in this forum
Hg2Sb2O7 "red mercury"of supposed mass 20 g/cc
CsSeSc (Cs2Se with one Cs replaced with Sc.)
Two more examples
Osmium-187m
Platinum-186m
No such nuclides exist.
The first example is known to be an article of nuclear hoaxes and scams as are the last two.
The cesium scandium selenide MIGHT exist with some very different stoichiometry as a cluster compound. But so far there is no literature evidence to
support that. Merely analogy.
So the forum in the last few weeks has abounded with UNreal chemicals. I will not even count the phlogiston discussion which was just an aside in the
ballotechnics/red mercury thread.
Of course, it is hard to say never, in chemistry. Not so long ago a new form of elemental carbon would have been absurd, but in fact it had been
sitting there in the arc lamps for a century or so unnoticed.
QSPR gives us the ability to predict, with increasing confidence, the physical and chemical properties of substances that have never been synthesized
and do not exist in nature. But those compounds still must conform to the dictates of their structure.
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Phosphor-ing
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Adamantium comes to mind as an unreal chemical.
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