There is not a great deal about acids on this blog, which is odd because they are very common components of the science syllabus. We add them to bases and alkalis to make salt and water; we put metals in them to liberate hydrogen gas; citric acid is used to produce the sour taste in …
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Category:Chemistry
Chemistry Dubstep…
The brilliant Periodic Table of Videos team again! How many of those reactions do you recognise? We have done several of them in class and you should be able to deduce some of the others. We might be able to do a few of these after the exams.
Bunsen Burner…
The Bunsen burner is the workhorse of the science laboratory. It is a quick and cheap way to produce high temperatures for softening glass, boiling water or encouraging chemicals to react with one another. It probably dates back to about 1850 when Robert Bunsen was working with an engineer, kitting out his new laboratory. At …
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Interactive Reactions…
I have been playing with Construct 2 again (Glassware Key & Seven Processes of Life). My most recent effort has been to try to make a ‘complete the reactions’ type exercise. This is as far as I have got. It takes a little while to make all the graphic sprites, although the code is only …
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Chromatography…
I wrote a little about chromatography when I discussed simple separation techniques previously but I thought it might be interesting to look at it in more detail. Paper chromatography uses a solvent to separate out the coloured components of a mixture. The separation occurs because of physical differences between the coloured molecules themselves. The solvent …
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Ionic Formulae…
I know that several of you like to see chemical compounds written as formulae. This goes a bit beyond the CE syllabus so if you are only popping by for a casual visit you might want to read something a little gentler – like this or this. I posted about corundum recently, which is aluminium …
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Rotten Eggs…
Rotten eggs have a very distinctive smell. The odour is caused by a gas called hydrogen sulphide (H2S). It is easy to make by reacting iron sulphide with hydrochloric acid… One molecule of iron sulphide reacts with two molecules of hydrochloric acid to produce one molecule of iron chloride and one molecule of hydrogen sulphide. …
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Sulphur Dioxide…
When sulphur burns, or when compounds that contain sulphur burn such as coal and oil, sulphur dioxide gas is released. SO2 is a choking, foul smelling and acidic gas which contributes to acid rain. It is released naturally as a decay product of dead plants and animals and, more significantly, when volcanoes erupt. The sulphur …
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Copper Sulphate…
Copper sulphate (CuSO4) is a soluble salt that forms when sulphuric acid (H2SO4) reacts with copper oxide (CuO). It has two forms – hydrated copper sulphate and anhydrous copper sulphate. Hydrated copper sulphate (CuSO4.5H2O) has five water molecules chemically bound to it giving it a crystal texture and a vivid blue colour. Heating the hydrated …
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Iso, Iso, Iso…
A recent Winchester paper had a question about isomers. It has made me very aware of the prefix iso-. The Greek word isos means equal – according to Wiktionary. In common usage it means the same so isotonic means “the same concentration”; isobars are regions of equal pressure; isomers have the same chemical formulae; and …
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