Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Chemistry Projects

Sidertenebris - 14-9-2016 at 06:21

Hello,
For my extra science class me and my friends need to choose a project. Our school has most of the basic materials, but nothing too fancy. We are in 11th grade and we have never worked in a lab before. The project has to take a school year. The subject should be chemistry, or maybe biochemistry, as long as it's not too dangerous. We need to make a list of fifty possible projects so any ideas would be welcome. Does anyone know a project/experiment?
Thank you very much!!!!

Texium - 14-9-2016 at 07:07

Fifty possible projects each potentially lasting a school year, or fifty projects which together would fill a school year?

Last year when I was a senior in high school I had an independent study chemistry period in which I was basically allowed free reign in one of the school's labs. I had a similar idea of coming up with a project that I could work on throughout the year, or at least for a few months before choosing something else. I quickly realized though that the ideas for projects that I had usually ended up not working out or would be more practical to do in my lab at home due to limited time at school despite the superior supplies. Because of this I shifted between small projects a lot.

Basically what I'm saying is don't sign onto one project idea and hand it in with the expectation that you will work on it all year. It's simply not realistic.

To suggest ideas, we'll need to know more about you and what your knowledge, skill, and interest levels are. You say you've never worked in a lab before, but have you at least taken high school chemistry? When you say the subject "should" be chemistry, does that mean that you want it to be chemistry or your teacher told you it has to be chemistry?

Sidertenebris - 14-9-2016 at 07:18

I would think so too: I really can't find any experiments that take a year. Take in mind I only have two hours a week, so maybe in that way it would take a year? Things that students did were brewing beer, or making ferrofluids. I have had two years of chemistry (first one hour, then two) but only theoretical, so we don't have any experience of actually doing experiments. We want to do chemistry, partly because we want to acquire more experience, partly because we think it would be more fun:D.

MrHomeScientist - 14-9-2016 at 07:46

You could join the ranks of people here processing hard drive magnets for interesting chemicals. See the stickied thread: http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=14145

It's certainly taken me over a year (years?), mostly because I get quickly distracted by other interesting things. Heck it might even take you a year to read the thread!

The supplies are reasonably easy to source: magnets, H<sub>2</sub>SO<sub>4</sub>, K<sub>2</sub>SO<sub>4</sub>, and KOH to isolate the Nd. Depending on how far you want to take it, it gets harder and more dangerous after that.

[Edited on 9-14-2016 by MrHomeScientist]

Sidertenebris - 14-9-2016 at 07:58

I think I'm going to put it on the list. Looks quite interesting, I'll need to ask my chemistry teacher about it though, since English isn't my native language...

MrHomeScientist - 14-9-2016 at 08:05

The final steps I definitely would not recommend for you - they involve highly dangerous fluorides and high temperature reactions in special apparatus. But you can certainly separate the various compounds in a magnet into interesting and colorful chemicals! Seeing Nd salts change color in different types of lighting is very cool.

Sulaiman - 14-9-2016 at 08:24

since you have a long time but short weekly sessions
I imagine that best use of time could be;

. crystal growing

. fermentation (possibly some distillation also)

. germination

. biological growth

. biological life cycles

and what conditions influence the above.

First choice based on
. which actually interests you
. which is most likely to give good grades
. learning a useful skill; brewing, distilling, planting, growing are all useful in different ways.

crystal grower - 14-9-2016 at 09:39

Crystal growing is a great stuff! Just remeber not to stick only to blue vitriol (even from copper sulfate one can crystallize 4 hydrates and anhydrate too).

DraconicAcid - 14-9-2016 at 10:45

Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower  
Crystal growing is a great stuff! Just remeber not to stick only to blue vitriol (even from copper sulfate one can crystallize 4 hydrates and anhydrate too).


How do you crystallize anhydrous CuSO4?

Sulaiman - 14-9-2016 at 10:58

from methanol, or anhydrous HOH ?

EDIT: http://chemister.ru/Database/properties-en.php?dbid=1&id...

[Edited on 14-9-2016 by Sulaiman]

Also, it now occurs to me that there is relatively little anhydrous inorganic chemistry material ... AHA ! I thought, an area for me to investigate, then I realised how tedious anhydrous chemistry must be ... no thanks !

But if practical, the growing of anhydrous crystals of compounds that are normally only seen as a hydrate may be an interesting project ?

[Edited on 14-9-2016 by Sulaiman]

crystal grower - 14-9-2016 at 11:16

Quote: Originally posted by DraconicAcid  
Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower  
Crystal growing is a great stuff! Just remeber not to stick only to blue vitriol (even from copper sulfate one can crystallize 4 hydrates and anhydrate too).


How do you crystallize anhydrous CuSO4?

Frankly, I haven't tried it yet, but I will certainly try it in near future.
It is possible to make (small) crystals of anhydrous cuso4 via crystallization from hot fuming sulfuric acid (it should be possible with concentrated H2SO4 too). I can give you a link to the article where the experiment is described if you want.
It isn't as simple as crystallization of blue vitriol of course :) but it is very interesting experiment IMO.

MrHomeScientist - 14-9-2016 at 11:17

I'd definitely like to read about that!

crystal grower - 14-9-2016 at 11:23

Ok, I'll post the link tomorrow when I get to my computer.

Sulaiman - 14-9-2016 at 11:45

Although according to the reference that I posted the solubility of anhydrous CuSO4 in methanol at 45 C is only 2.99 g/100g,
it would be safer than boiling H2SO4
and
with a little research, better anhydrous solvents probably can be found.


There must be a plethora of anhydrous compound/solvent mixtures to try.

DraconicAcid - 14-9-2016 at 12:08

Quote: Originally posted by Sulaiman  
Although according to the reference that I posted the solubility of anhydrous CuSO4 in methanol at 45 C is only 2.99 g/100g,
it would be safer than boiling H2SO4
and
with a little research, better anhydrous solvents probably can be found.


There must be a plethora of anhydrous compound/solvent mixtures to try.


The trouble with anhydrous solvents for dissolving such compounds that most of them a) will not dissolve copper(II) sulphate, or b) will coordinate to the copper or otherwise form a crystalline solvate.

For copper(II) sulphate, esters, ketones and most alcohols simply won't dissolve the compound in the first place. Methanol might, but I wouldn't be surprised if it crystallized with methanol where water would be in the hydrate.

Amines and nitriles will be more successful at dissolving the copper(II) sulphate, but they will coordinate the copper, and will remain part of the crystal when it crystallizes. I'm not sure I'd even trust an amide.

A sulphate melt might work, but I think it's quite difficult to get things to precipitate from a melt, and you're also likely to form double salts such as Na2Cu(SO4)2. (I wonder if choline sulphate would form a low temperature melt? Or a mixture of nitrate and sulphate?)

Something like DMSO might work, but then again, it might solvate.

aga - 14-9-2016 at 12:11

Quote: Originally posted by Sulaiman  
then I realised how tedious anhydrous chemistry must be ... no thanks !

It is dat you is kiddin' right ?

Grinning X to a Yard of X requires anhydrous conditions, so the challenge is to keep all water out or it dunt work properly.

Cl2 and Sulphur - Gas meets Solid, makes Liquid, and no water in sight ...

Trust me - reactions with S2Cl2/SCl2 are far from tedious !

Destroying the stuff then cleaning up the glassware is tedious, so maybe you got a good point there.

crystal grower - 14-9-2016 at 13:14

So I have found the article on my phone, I hope the link will work fine:
http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/68A/jresv68An3p313_A1b...
Actually there isn't used only sulfuric acid but also ammonium sulfate is added to increase solubility of copper sulfate.

NEMO-Chemistry - 14-9-2016 at 13:23

You mentioned fermentation, you have short weekly slots..............

How about a couple of different fermentations along the lines of:

# Yeast - Ethanol (distil after)

# ABE Fermentation with bacteria to get Acetone,Butanol and Ethanol (again you can distil)

# Making Citric acid via a fungus (A.Niger)

You should be able to show a range of Biochemical processes that dont need much looking after but should prove interesting. With 2 hour time slots you dont want to be caught out time wise/

The above could be done at the same time and show a theme/thread, it should also prove to be pretty interesting and requires a variety of different lab skills. The bacteria and moulds you should be able to pick up easily (ish).

There is probably other processes that are similar, All are or were industrial processes.

I havnt managed to do the Citric acid or the ABE one yet but they are on my to do soon list.

EDIT

Hang on i will see if i can post some papers to give you an idea what i am on about



[Edited on 14-9-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]

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[Edited on 14-9-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]

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Let me know if you want more info, i collected some papers on these for when i get around to it. For straight Ethanol from yeast, you could compare immobilized yeast and free yeast cultures.

[Edited on 14-9-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]

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You should be able to get alot done over a year doing this, but it should also be doable within 2 hour slots.

[Edited on 14-9-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]

Nearly forgot Acetic Acid as well! And all should be cheap to do and relatively simple.

[Edited on 14-9-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]

Another immobilized yeast paper, i found it pretty interesting but your mileage may vary lol :P.



[Edited on 15-9-2016 by NEMO-Chemistry]

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DraconicAcid - 14-9-2016 at 13:25

Quote: Originally posted by crystal grower  
So I have found the article on my phone, I hope the link will work fine:
http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/jres/68A/jresv68An3p313_A1b...
Actually there isn't used only sulfuric acid but also ammonium sulfate is added to increase solubility of copper sulfate.


Interesting. I wonder if you could diffuse sulphuric acid into the mixture at a stable temperature to get crystals of anhydrous CuSO4.

Scalebar - 15-9-2016 at 07:06

Physarum ( slime mold ) chemotaxis & other responses or its potential as a bio-oil producer if you do a solvent extraction on a bulk culture. I'd even send you the physarum culture for nothing:) How could anyone not want a giant maze solving amoeba?

NEMO-Chemistry - 15-9-2016 at 08:11

Quote: Originally posted by Scalebar  
Physarum ( slime mold ) chemotaxis & other responses or its potential as a bio-oil producer if you do a solvent extraction on a bulk culture. I'd even send you the physarum culture for nothing:) How could anyone not want a giant maze solving amoeba?


I had to look that up! What a cool organism, what kind of things you doing with it?

This is way cool! Almost like some Alien life form

The Tokyo experiment paper


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Scalebar - 18-9-2016 at 23:50

I use it for shooting time lapse movies ( you can find them on Youtube on the Oddscience channel ), messing around with mazes and doing science outreach sessions for schools. In the lab I keep some on the go fed with fluorescence dyes for microscope testing.

I post the stuff out world wide as a dried culture free of charge - you can keep them alive on wet paper with a few oats as food. If you want some, just shout.

NEMO-Chemistry - 19-9-2016 at 07:16

Quote: Originally posted by Scalebar  
I use it for shooting time lapse movies ( you can find them on Youtube on the Oddscience channel ), messing around with mazes and doing science outreach sessions for schools. In the lab I keep some on the go fed with fluorescence dyes for microscope testing.

I post the stuff out world wide as a dried culture free of charge - you can keep them alive on wet paper with a few oats as food. If you want some, just shout.


Now that would be cool! I have spent days reading about them (hence my absence). Utterly amazing, i will shout you once i am happy i have enough info :D.