Monthly Archives: October 2012

Saturday night – Breaking Dad

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So.. Gabe has been getting in to chemistry the last couple of weeks.. he has a knack for it.. so we’ve been doing a few more experiments together which has been fun. Today we set out to synthesize nitrocellulose….. it’s pretty easy to do .. you take any source of cellulose.. say cotton or paper.. and you put it in a cooled nitrating bath of half concentrated nitric acid and half concentrated sulfuric acid.. Then you rinse the material in an alkaline solution (we used baking soda) and leave it to dry.. if it works you get flash paper or gun cotton. It burns quickly with little or no ash.

here’s cellulose

and here it is after nitration

Friend Scott was kind enough to lend us the acids.. I used to have all that stuff when I was a kid.. but left it in my folks house in houston.. I never did find out what happened to it.. but it scares me to think where all those chemicals ended up..   anyway, safety is more central to my thinking now.. .. so today we were being extra careful

We began by making an ice and salt bath to chill the acid bath .

then we put on our safety gear.. the aprons were to protect our clothes.. I remember as a high school kid, my clothes always had holes form acid spatter.

we layed out our work surface.. it was a breezy daya which was good because the fumes form this are pretty noxious.

gabe added the nitric acid to a beaker in the ice bath

 

then he added the sulfuric acid

then we added the cotton

and we let it nitrate for more than 10 min

then we fished it out and put it in a backing soda solution  which foamed up like crazy… we stirred and added more backing soda until it stopped reacting

we also nitrated a bunch of paper from coffee filters.. with any luck, it will come out as flash paper..

we did the same process and layed it on a screen to dry.

since we had the sulfuric acid out, i wanted to show gabe the standard oxidation of sugar.. we filled a glass mason jar with white sugar.. then gabe poured in a bit of sulfuric acid..

it quickly started to caramelize

then smolder..

then the thick tube of ash stared to push up out of the jar like a snake.. it’s such a cool demo.. smells yucky , though.

ok.. all done.. we rinsed our equipment and workspace with baking soda and LOTS of water..

then put our stuff up to dry .. we’ll see if it works tomorrow.

it’s cool.. its like plastic now.. its what they used to make movie film out of.. which is why there were so many horrific movie house fires..

Gabe went of to watch football.. Diane and I put up some storm windows.. then just before 6 my firends Henry. milan and their kid Harry showed up. Henry is a friend of mine from MIT.. we were sort of roomates in law.. i guess.. Milan went there too.. enry’s dad is even a professor there..   We had a great dinner then played around with some science stuff with harry.. it was great seeing them..

OK.. that was today.. tomorrow we’ll  test the nitrocellulose..

more then.

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

ps. here are some pictures from camping on the roof of the boat Thursday night.. slept great

Friday night – frankenstorm

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Just back from a long drive down an back to armonk and nyc. I packed a lo in.. Meetings, inner with k, seeing jim, programming with ma, amping on the roof of the boat, breakfast/work meeting with j, more meetings then a long drive home. All though the last two days I’ve been hearing on the radio about the freak predicted convergence of hurricane sandy and with another weather system..( High pressure something or others ). They’re actually calling it ‘frankenstorm’.. The possibility make it look bad for the east coast.. They’re predicting rain, high winds, power outages, .I have even received warning text messages from stitcher and our school system’s emergency management system .. All this for something that may or may not happen sometime next week.. It would be pretty cool if it didn’t sound so scary.. After what happened last year with irene up here and a few weeks after to Diane’s folks house, I’m paying close attention to this…theres a lot of waiting before then and now… Hope it doesn’t manifest as bad as some of these predictions …

We’ll just have to watch

Nite all, nite sam
-me

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thursday nght – light headed

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Long day. drove down to NY for a set of meetings..then in the evening, met freind Kevin at Helen Hayes rehab to visit our freind Jim. He was sleepign when we got there… so Kevin and I wnet out for dinner. When we got back,. jim was awake.. He was looking good, restless and talking softly He still can’t communicate very well.. but he could answer questions…”jim how tall is your son” ‘6 4″.. I put on some music I know he likes (Tears for Fears ‘mad world” ) and he started singing along. he’s in there.. just having trouble still getting out. We sat with him for about an hour.. then Kevin headed north.. and I headed south to the boat.
It’s great seeing Max and Jac.. Max and I worked on his Halloween costum.. like all of our costumes.. it involves blinking lights..
I love working with my kids…


nite all, nite sam
-me

Wednesday night – flu shot

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I had a busy day, but managed to take time out to get a flu shot.. after getting poked I sat there and thought about how cool it was that there are few situations like this that you could opt in to prevent future pain and suffering.. it’s not a sure thing.. nothing is. but its about as close as you could come. Wouldn’t it be great if you could get a vaccine against poverty.. or sadness.. or job loss..or loosing your keys. .
Hey.. you have to think of something while you’re waiting for them to see if you’re going to have an allergic reaction to the shot..

Not much else to report today.. and a great working lunch with friend Chris on VASE (Vt. Academy of Science and Engineering ) at a new Turkish place in Essex Junction. Istanbul Kebab House ., Check it out.. it was really good !


on the way back to work , I stopped by Scot’s house to borrow some nitric and sulfuric acid..

Gabe and I are going to do some nitration experiments…. chemicals are getting harder and harder to get thanks to shows like Breaking Bad.. .   …  now . does this look suspicious to you ?
(seriously.. No.. I would never do that)

ok.. gotta sleep..
nite all, nite sam
-me