Major Lab Renovation Part 3: Furniture!

The renovation progresses! I received my official lab furniture and am in the process of installing it in the room. There are a few minor/major problems to resolve before I'm finished, though.

Major Lab Renovation Part 2: Safety!

The first pieces of my new lab have arrived: real, heavy-duty lab safety cabinets for flammables and corrosives!

Also, I'll be sealing the grout lines in the lab with this suggestively-named product:

This will help keep spills from staining (or possibly dissolving!) the grout. The tile is ceramic so it should be reasonably resistant to most things on its own.

Now to await the furniture!

Major Lab Renovation Part 1: First Steps!

My home lab has served me well for the past seven years on YouTube (can't believe it's been that long!), but now it's time for a major overhaul and renovation of the space. You may have already seen the announcement video on my YouTube channel. Rather than post several small videos, I thought I'd document my progress here as things happen. I'll make a video to showcase the new setup once it's all in place, but that could take several months. So first, let's start with a tour of the lab space I've been using so far.

Getting Started With Home Chemistry

As a part of my participation in the Gulf Coast MakerCon, I wanted to write a short article to cover the basics of home chemistry, for those that want to know more. We'll go over where to start, how to find supplies, and a few excellent resources I use in my own experimental pursuits.

Gulf Coast Makercon 2014

I'm very excited to announce that I will be participating in the Gulf Coast MakerCon on April 5-6, in Tampa FL! This event is similar (but not affilliated with) the Maker Faire in California, and is made up of people that make or do interesting things. There's a huge variety of participants - 3D printing, robotics, custom jewelry, cosplay, tabletop gaming, and much more - so you're bound to find something that interests you! The MakerCon folks featured me in one of their Meet the Maker segments as well.

I will be hosting a booth featuring my Element Display, which is now nearly fully stocked with samples! I only have about 13 left to collect. I will also have an outdoor area where I will be performing live chemistry demonstrations every few hours, including exciting experiments like thermite reactions. I haven't finalized my list of demos, but I'm leaning towards 3 per show, with the theme of wresting elements from their compounds.

If you are in the area, I definitely recommend you try coming to this event. It promises to be very educational, exciting, and lots of fun! Come visit my booth and say hi!

Chemophobia: An Era of Discouraging Scientific Curiosity

In doing research for my experiments, I often run across articles in the news about police raiding suspected "home meth labs" or "amateur bomb making facilities." These are very often people's homes, which the authorities, for one reason or another, suspect are conducting illicit activity. Now I'm not against the police taking down such operations, on the contrary it's a good thing that these people get taken off the streets. However, in many cases they go overboard and barge in on amateur scientists like myself, who have no intention or capability of producing drugs or explosives at all, let alone in any sizable or dangerous quantity. If such search and seizures are to be conducted, those responsible need to have a damn good reason for doing so! It's quite clear if someone is engaging in drug production or explosives manufacturing vs someone who simply has an interest in science.

New Glassware

I just got in a sizable order of some fancy new glassware! I got a number of specialized pieces that will allow me to do many new and more advanced experiments, and I'm very excited to try them out!

Potassium Iodide and Radiation

This old post serves as the Video Companion to my Potassium Iodide video, linked at the bottom to make sure you read the post first!

This is another rather long post, but I feel it is warranted because of the importance of the content.

Because of the recent earthquake and tsunami tragedy in Japan, there's been a lot of interest recently in an otherwise ordinary chemical compound called potassium iodide. I'll get to that in a minute, but first a brief summary of the situation.

Update

It's been a while since I last posted here, so I thought I should give everybody an update. My YouTube page has really taken off since I started it back in March, and I already have over 130 subscribers! That being the case, I'm going to focus more on making videos than writing blog posts. I'll still put up things here, but it's hard to shoot video, take photos, and do an experiment all at the same time!

In other news, I bought my first home! Because of this, I won't be doing much science for a bit while I get settled in to my new place. The good news is that I've set aside the third bedroom for my lab space, so I'll have an entire room dedicated to my hobby. I'm very excited to get that all set up! In the meantime, stay tuned to both this blog and my YouTube page and remember to follow and subscribe to both using the links on the main pages.