• Pulptastic@midwest.social
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    4 months ago

    Steel etching with Winsteard’s reagent. It is a bit dangerous because if done wrong it forms explosive dust. It was also long and tedious because the liquid must be near boiling and stirring so it evaporated quickly and has to be topped off and brought back to temperature often. The etch itself requires a long temper of a quenched sample and has an iterative process of etching and back-polishing to gradually remove surface roughness but leave the slightly deeper grain boundaries.

    It took several hours of preparation and several hours of active work per sample and even then had a 50/50 success rate. I was professionally trained by a third party who learned this process from the person who perfected it, George Vander Voort.

  • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org
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    5 months ago

    My HS chem teacher was a troll; he assigns my group Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions. Which meant dealing with 1999 internet trying to find resources on it. OTOH, it did make for a very pretty lab demo.

  • j4k3@lemmy.worldOP
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    5 months ago

    For me it has been etching circuit boards and specifically making my own liquid tinning solution at one point. I mostly do hydrochloric acid/hydrogen peroxide on larger stuff and ferric chloride on smaller prototypes.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      I don’t do that much of that but I hear my guts can do some amazing chemistry on the food all on their own, not to mention the cells themselves.

  • Today@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Weed science. No complicated at all, but there’s so much bro science out there…

    • Alex@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      Liquid gas column extraction of organic compounds? I’m told that’s something you should definitely do outside!

        • Alex@lemmy.ml
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          5 months ago

          Alcohol isn’t that great as an organic solvent. Are you using the air fryer to evaporate? That must be a fair fire risk!

          Butane on the other hand is a good organic solvent and will evaporate at room temperature (just don’t evaporate it in a room or near any heat source).

          • Today@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I’m happy with it - i feel like the extraction i get is pretty good for the ease and safety of my little setup. I’m not trying to make enough to sell, just mostly making cheezits and candies for friends. When i do have a lot to process i usually do a dry ice shake.

  • walden@sub.wetshaving.social
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    5 months ago

    Made soap out of lye and a mix of fats and oils.

    Stripped a cast iron pan using electrolysis, although that might be more physics than chemistry. I had to add Sodium Carbonate so that’s pretty sciencey!

  • Donjuanme@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Extraction and purification of surface residue for triple quadrupole analysis looking for pesticides, or inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry looking for arsenic, but that’s practically physics by that level.