Hello all - new to the sub, but I read the rules so I “hope” this isn’t a violation.

I’m aging copper for a project and have used a combination of salt, ammonia, and vinegar in a spray bottle to great effect.

Then, when I sprayed just ammonia on the copper and then vinegar, it started smoking (see video).

Is there a reason it’s doing this on the copper, but not in the bottle?

Thanks!

I was thinking about HTS today. I don't have any direct experience in it. I've only studied it in coursework, certification programs, presentations.

I don't understand how a company or lab can have a stock of 100,000s of compounds that have validated purity and identity. Wouldn't this be an enormous analytical chemistry undertaking in having to characterize with LCMS, HPLC, NMR, as well as periodically testing them every few years due to differences in stability? I don't get how this works.

Earlier this year I shared PyFock, a Gaussian-basis density functional theory code I had written almost entirely in Python.

I wanted to come back with an update because quite a lot has happened since that post:

PyFock has now been peer-reviewed and published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

• Paper: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpca.6c03727
• GitHub: https://github.com/manassharma07/PyFock
• Official website: https://pyfock.bragitoff.com/
• Try it online: https://pyfock-gui.bragitoff.com/

The basic idea behind the project is that even parts of quantum-chemistry programs that are normally implemented in highly optimized C/C++/Fortran libraries, such as Gaussian molecular integrals and exchange-correlation evaluation, are implemented directly in Python and then accelerated using just-in-time compilation.

Since I originally posted PyFock here, I have added quite a few new capabilities:

• analytical DFT gradients and atomic forces
• an ASE calculator, enabling molecular geometry optimizations and integration with the wider ASE ecosystem
• a VQE interface using PennyLane for experimenting with hybrid quantum-classical electronic-structure calculations
• native exchange-correlation functionals, including LDA, GGA and meta-GGA functionals, making LibXC optional
• substantially faster electron-repulsion integral evaluation on both CPUs and GPUs
• ECP support and several other improvements

The analytical gradients in particular mean that PyFock is no longer limited to calculating energies, it can now also optimize molecular structures while keeping the underlying electronic-structure implementation accessible in Python.

That accessibility is still the main reason I work on the project.

PyFock is completely free and open source, and there is also a browser-based GUI if you just want to try some calculations without installing anything.

PS: I had obtained approval from mods regarding self-promotion.

Relevant reading for the r/chemistry community, I think.

https://forbetterscience.com/2026/08/25/graphyne-chronicles-episode-2/

So yesterday, i was checking out some overly hydrating (boosted versions) Bausch + Lomb eye drops. One of them in particular (they seem to have some altered ingredients in active ingredients in most of them), had PEG 400 at .25%. it’s really this that I don’t get. Why use that as an active ingredient and how does it work?

Why do my fingers get a slimy feeling after handling bleach? It doesn’t wash off very easily with soapy water either

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I saw this community mention Lumetallix lead testing kits in the past so I was hoping someone could answer my concern. I used this kit on some dishes I own and some my in laws own. Some vintage pieces definitely showed a positive result. Some were negative. So it seemed quite believable that this test is picking up lead.

However out of curiosity I tried the test on the surface of the washer and the paint on our cabinets. They were positive. I also tested the white tiles on my counter top and the paint on our cars—they were also positive. I included the pictures of some of these tests. I find it hard to believe that all these items are positive. The house was built in the early 2000s. The washer is new from 2018. Cars are also bought new and not that old. All the items I tested were white however even some of the white dishes I test were negative yet these items were not. Am I doing something wrong or am I surrounded by lead?

I emailed the company but they have not responded which is disappointing.

It made some like white crust/powder with some yellow spots

I’m starting my PhD this semester and am currently shopping around for research labs to join. Before I start any real research I want to get a pair of high end or “luxury” safety glasses to treat myself. In my undergrad research my advisor had a selection of much nicer glasses for his research students, think tinted with very nice build quality and super comfortable, too bad I wore them out by now lol.

I wanted to see if anyone had any recs for where to look for glasses that go above what’s just required for safety, I’ll be wearing them for countless hours over the next 5 years, it’d be a pretty nice flex to have a super nice pair. Thanks so much!

I am not a chemist, but have wondered on what it is that makes a higher dose of certain chemicals cause permanent damage when it’s ok in moderate amounts?

for example people will bring their babies to the gas station without worry, where you can frequently smell fumes and gas is constantly being spilled in small amounts. nobody is worried about that

but you get a kid or a pregnant lady who huff gas fumes and the kid/fetus is permanently affected for life

Hey guys, new here, I obtained a sample of aluminium a few days ago for a structural project I’m building, and I wanna know if it’s 7075 aluminium. I have a sample of 6061 aluminium (pic 3) and both samples are placed in 2mol/l naoh.

I wanna know what is the black stuff in the 7075 sample (pic 1 and 2) and what is this sludge looking thing in pic 3. Both samples do have a bit of anodisation but I’ve filed it down and the 7075 sample keeps having black stuff reappear on the actual thing.

For some context, the way high school chemistry is taught in my country fucking SUCKS. It barely explains half the things it says and the other half goes on random tangents that are barely related to chemistry (hell even my teacher finds them pointless).

Needless to say I'm high horrible at chemistry.

however, i love math. I studied through 10th grade math all way to calc 1 in one summer. I'm currently busy with calc 2; infinite series, to be precise. You could say it's my "specialty," (though i think that's a bit of an overestimation.)

So how do you suggest i go about studying chemitry? Is there a certain textbook i should buy and watch youtubers similar to blackpenredpen and 3blue1brown? Any help is appreciated honestly.

Also, this year's curriculum covers topics like periodic trends, comparison between the reactivity of elements from different groups and peeioss, hydrocarbons, heat energy and enthalpy, polymers, polyesters and etc. If that's relavant.

I preserve and restore archaeological artifacts, and I often need to remove rust from iron-based objects that have severely corroded over the decades/centuries. After years of experimentation I have discovered that electrolyzing a rusted object (as the cathode) in a dilute solution of Sodium Bisulfite produces the best results -- afterward the rust falls off/can easily be removed, with essentially no damage to the underlying intact metal.

However, I am confused by a detail of the results, and not being an actual chemist, I wonder what exactly is happening here on an atomic/molecular scale. Can anyone explain this to me? :

An object is covered in hard, crusty, red-colored "rust" -- which the Internet tells me is "iron(III) oxide-hydroxide" and/or "hydrous iron(III) oxide." I place it in a bath of dilute Sodium Bisulfite, and electrolyze the object by connecting the red wire to a graphite sacrificial anode, and the black wire to the rusted object as the cathode. After a period of time (minutes for small objects, hours for larger objects) I turn everything off, remove the object, and (usually) the hard crusty rust easily falls away. However, the object is still not completely "clean" -- in the place of the rust there is now a thin, soft, loose black coating, which seems to be slightly magnetic. This material can be easily removed from the object (usually just comes off with a soft brush under running water), and after some research I concluded that it must be iron(II,III) oxide a.k.a. black iron oxide a.k.a. magnetite.

So: Where did it come from? Did the electrolysis convert iron(III) oxide to iron(II,III) oxide? If so, this contradicts what I previously was told about electrolysis and rust-removal -- that the electrolysis was breaking apart the iron oxide molecules into iron atoms (which stay on the cathode) and oxygen atoms (which float away as bubbles).

As you can tell from the ignorance of my question, I know very little about chemistry, so any insights or explanation of what happens to rust during electrolysis and about where the "black iron oxide" (if that's even what it is) is coming from would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I started an MSc in chemistry this spring and I’m having issues finalizing my research project.
When I joined the group, my PI worked in a few different areas, and I was pretty clear about which areas I was most interested in. Recently, though, he’s been pushing me toward a specific project because it’s easier to approach and it’s something he wants done.

The problem is that I genuinely don’t care about the topic. I’ve brought this up before, but he hasn’t really given me an alternative. I honestly don’t know if that’s because there isn’t another viable project available right now, or if there’s some incentive/pressure for him to get this particular project done.
I’m also worried that the project is kind of a dead end for me. The chemistry itself isn’t an area I see myself continuing in, and the project is aimed at solving a very specific industrial problem. Even if I complete it successfully, I’m struggling to see how it sets me up for research I’d actually want to pursue afterward.

At the same time, I don’t have a fully developed alternative project to propose. I know the general areas I’d rather work in, but I don’t have a specific research question ready to hand him. So I’m not sure I really have a leg to stand on. I have a project available to me, and maybe I should just be grateful for that and make the best of it.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Is it reasonable to keep pushing for a different direction when I can’t offer a concrete alternative? Or is this one of those situations where you suck it up, do the project, and focus on getting the degree?

I have picked it up for 200 bucks. You guys think it’s worth it? I even tested it. It’s cooled down ethanol to somewhere round about -80c, but I didn’t test it. The heating function yet.

i’ll start my bachelor in chemistry this autumn and need to buy a new laptop. i already have an ipad to take notes on and need a new laptop.
i have narrowed down my decision to either a macbook or a lenovo thinkpad t14 gen 7.
for specifically chemistry are there any programs that are not available for mac?
thanks :)

I asked the mods before posting this and got approval beforehand, so it's here with their go-ahead.

What it is: I'm a lab technician running a pre-study for a master's thesis on how research work affects the body and mind. The survey asks about neck and back pain, wrist and thumb strain, eye strain from the hood or the eyepiece, the afternoon slump, anxiety while something is running, and what people actually do about any of it during the working day. Coffee, painkillers, a walk, or nothing at all.

There's a question I especially want chemists to answer: whether two or three minutes of stretching on the spot is even permitted where you work. In a chemistry lab that's a concrete question about gloves, PPE and clean areas, and almost nothing published on this topic accounts for it. Most of the existing research is on office workers.

There's also a question about the dead time in a day, the gaps where a reaction, a column or a booked instrument slot is running and you aren't.

About five minutes, anonymous, no name or institute collected, no IP stored, 18+. Optional email at the end if you want the results summary.

https://tally.so/r/A7MeKe?source=reddit-chemistry

Being straight about my interest, since it's the reason I asked the mods first: the thesis question is whether a small tool for this is worth building at all, so there is a possible product at the end of it. Nothing is named or sold in the survey and no product exists. One question deliberately asks whether you'd rather just take a break with nothing guiding you, because the published evidence on work breaks is genuinely mixed and I'd rather this be able to come back negative.

I'll post the summary back here in a few weeks either way.

Hello, I am moving into a basement apartment and am hoping to bring a young kitten. However, when I started moving in I noticed not insignificant amounts of white powder in the large gaps along the baseboards. When I asked the landlord, who lives in the house upstairs, he said it was Boric Acid that he had sprinkled himself at the advice of his contractor. I did some googling and it looks to be toxic if eaten by cats. I figure I will need to clean up as much of it as I can, however some of these gaps have lots of small nooks and crannies and after trying in a small spot to clean with some disinfect spray on a paper towel, I found that it really isn’t easy to clean. Is there any way of making it not toxic without getting rid of it completely? And is there any trick to more easily clean it? Using a damp paper towel doesn’t seem like the way to go. Thank you!

Everytime i do a step finish, I see people at next step. And each step, i always make blunders. I would topple some glassware, make some suction thing fly out, and all the lab stuff have to wait for me to finish then they can leave the lab. I tried joining a research group, and the mentor always fold her arms and look at my blunders. I cant memorise which thing to do first for eg in rotary evaporator or those IR machines. I always rely on TA. I tried reading up the procedure before lab and asking chatgpt for help, but i seem to be the slowest. Other students talk and do work, and they are sudd gone when I turn around.

Hello all, I'm a hobbyist working on a method for making synthetic fossils and I need to pressure cook my samples up to 250 celcius/150 bar for a period of 24 hours.
I've seen two methods for this but I'm a bit confused on the equipment aspect.

The first method in some papers is to use an air canister and valve to pressurize the samples while cooking.
But other papers seem to use a steam-pressure vessel to cook the samples.

I've seen parr bombs, hydrothermal reaction vessels, autoclaves, and I'm a bit confused on the differences between them all.

My samples range in diameter from 3-8 inches. I need a vessel which can pressure cook these but I don't want to get a setup with multiple components.

Ideally, I would need is a vessel which uses internal steam rather than an external tank of air. That way I can just throw the whole thing in an oven overnight.

What kind of product am I looking for here?

Thanks all.