The Element Display: Backboard Construction

This post will go into detail on how I constructed the backboard for my element display, including cutting it into sections to make it transportable, drilling the required 360 holes, and attaching the sections together in the final configuration. To read about the project as a whole, see the introduction post.

The Element Display: Introduction

For a very long time I have been interested in the hobby of element collecting. That is, collecting actual samples of elements from the Periodic Table. It's amazing to me that it is possible to possess all the building blocks for every piece of matter in the universe! This desire to start an element collection was actually what got me started as a home chemistry hobbyist in the first place. In fact, many of my experiments have the ultimate goal of isolating a pure element to add to my collection. While there are currently 118 elements discovered, it’s generally agreed that only the ones up to Uranium (92) are collectable (but it’s actually possible to get a few more than that, thanks to smoke detectors!). All elements heavier than Uranium, and a few lighter ones too, have no stable isotopes – they are radioactive and will eventually decay into lighter elements. That leaves a total of 95 samples to collect (including Am).

I've steadily grown my collection over the years, and now it's become large enough where I wanted to build a nice display case for it. This project has taken me many months to design and construct, and has evolved through a lot of different concepts and iterations. The idea quickly grew from a simple shelving unit to one that included programmable LED lighting, shelves arranged in the shape of the Periodic Table, and the ability to be broken down easily for transport. This was a massive undertaking, and even the simplest alteration required tons of work to propagate through the entire display. It has been an incredibly rewarding and very fun experience, and has taught me a lot of handy skills like painting, soldering, and carpentry in the process. I spent three months designing it, built three prototype small-scale versions, and spent another 13 or 14 months constructing it off and on during my free time. Below is a video of the finished product and a summary of how I put it all together. Much more detail can be found in the following posts here on my blog.

Titanium Thermite & Calcium Sulfate

Titanium metal from a thermite reaction has been one of my goals for a long time. I needed it for my element collection, and this thermite is particularly interesting because of the surprising chemicals it uses. The formulation I am using was developed by a fellow blogger and colleague on the Science Madness forum, Gert Meyers. His blog post on the subject can be found here. The following will talk about my efforts to obtain good quality titanium metal from the thermite reaction he lays out. This is a re-post of the info I shared on Science Madness, including many pictures and 3 unlisted Youtube videos never before seen by the general public!

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.

Neodymium Metal from Hard Drive Magnets, Part I

Note: There's been a lot of work done on this subject on Science Madness, and the actual procedure I used is a bit different (specifically Step 4 & 6). Once I actually complete this experiment, I will update or replace this thread with the final method.

This is the first in a many-part series of posts detailing my efforts to isolate pure neodymium metal from hard drive magnets. This has been an extremely exciting project that I've really enjoyed undertaking, and the journey is just as fun as the final result. I'll be making a video on this eventually, but it's been such a long process that I thought people might be interested in reading some occasional updates on it in the meantime.

This first post will be about the theory, and will detail my reaction scheme.

Copper Compound Conundrum, Part 3

Copper Compound Conundrum Part 3: Testing the Precipitate - the exciting conclusion!

Now that I had determined the identity of the solution, it was time to figure out what the blue precipitate was. Remember from Part 2, this is what my mystery concoction looked like (in the beaker on the right).

Copper Compound Conundrum, Part 2

Copper Compound Conundrum Part 2: Testing the Solution

If you remember from my last post, my reaction scheme for this was the following:

1) CuSO4 + 2NaHCO3 == CuCO3 + Na2SO4 + CO2 + H2O
2) CuCO3 + 2HCl == CuCl2 + CO2 + H2O
3) CuCl2 + 2NaOH == Cu(OH)2 + 2NaCl
4) Cu(OH)2 + H2SO4 == CuSO4 + 2H2O

After performing step 3 and filtering and drying the precipitate, I ended up with a dark green powder which was likely a mix of copper(II) hydroxide, oxide, and carbonate. All three of these compounds should react with sulfuric acid to form copper sulfate, so I figured I'd go ahead with the last step in my video's reaction scheme anyway. I should have ended up dissolving all the solids into a nice blue solution of copper sulfate like I started with. Here's what actually happened.