Just a quick update of what i've been up to... basically just setting up a new lab. Link to the Red Hot Nickel Ball in Liquid Nitrogen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foHbYWpZOA8 ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4gwhNryki0

In this video we make a desiccator bag for thoroughly drying hygroscopic chemicals. Some chemicals are hygroscopic, meaning they absorb water from the air and become moist, mushy, or even liquefy. For highly accurate work and good results in experiments the chemicals should be dried before use. A laboratory device for doing this is called a desiccator. Laboratory desiccators use vacuum and drying agents. A simple home desiccator can be made from an airtight resealable plastic bag and a hygroscopic drying agent like sodium hydroxide. Simply get a plastic container and fill it up with sodium hydroxide, then place it inside the bag along with a container of the chemical you intend to dry. Seal it up and wait. Thorough drying can take weeks. Sometimes you might run into the problem where the top dries before the bottom, you'll have to grind your chemical every so often to continue drying. The bag is also good for storing already dry chemicals to keep them dry. After using a chemical, return the unused portion to the bag to dry out the tiny bit of humidity it absorbed while you were working it. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJFfS_YbbYI

In this video we obtain the useful solvents diethyl ether and heptane from car starter fluid. Sign up for a free trial at audible: http://audible.com/nurdrage First, spray the car starter fluid into a flask. Setup a fractional distillation apparatus around the flask but cool the condenser with ice water. Diethyl ether boils at 34.6 degrees Celsius so a room temperature condenser wouldn't be as efficient as an ice temperature condenser. Now start with very light heating and gradually ramp up until diethyl ether starts to distill at 34 celsius or so. Go slowly at first as diethyl ether boils very easily. You'll need to gradually increase the temperature to keep the flow constant. Eventually there will be a spike in distillate temperature as the ether finishes distilling so stop the heating if it passes 70 celsius. The collected product diethyl ether while the residue should be other aliphatic solvents. Most starter fluids contain heptane in addition to ether. Diethyl ether is useful for grignard reactions and heptane is useful as a general purpose non-reactive non-polar solvent. Donate to NurdRage! Through Patreon (preferred): https://www.patreon.com/NurdRage Through Bitcoin: 1NurdRAge7PNR4ULrbrpcYvc9RC4LDp9pS ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8MwwpSWeq4

In this video we make the alkyl halides bromoethane and bromohexane by nucleophilic substitution of alcohol under acidic conditions. the highest yielding method is to use alcohol with hydrobromic acid and sulfuric acid. To make bromoethane 350g of 48% hydrobromic acid, 120mL of ethanol and 145mL of sulfuric acid were combined in a flask cooled in ice with plenty of time between additions to allow full cooling. The mixture was then gently heated to 40 degrees Celsius and slowly ramped to 70 Celsius to distill off the bromoethane that forms. What's happening is the classic Sn2 nucleophilic substitution reaction taught in basic organic chemistry. The alcohol is protonated by the acid conditions and essentially forms water still attached to the carbon backbone. Bromide ions come in and attack the carbon and the water leaves. This forms bromoethane. The bromohexane is washed with water and 5% sodium bicarbonate solutions before being dried with anhydrous magnesium sulfate. Bromohexane is made in a similar fashion. 1 mole of 1-hexanol is mixed with 1.5 moles of sodium bromide and 2 moles of sulfuric acid. the mixture is refluxed for six hours and the bromohexane is recovered using a separatory funnel. it is then distilled and washed. Then fractionally distilled to remove water. Related videos: Make hydrobromic acid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3n4Xqfb9qk Make Chloroform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvkuqLxQd2c ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydn1D4FSqkc