Chemistry HMW help please?

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summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
I loved chemistry at school and remember one teacher for his lesson on lithium (can quite remember exactly), but watching it whizz round on the water and him collecting the gas before the whole thing exploded on the bench at the front of the class. However I have forgotten most of my knowledge from then!
 

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
I loved chemistry at school and remember one teacher for his lesson on lithium (can quite remember exactly), but watching it whizz round on the water and him collecting the gas before the whole thing exploded on the bench at the front of the class. However I have forgotten most of my knowledge from then!

I saw the after effects of a similar disastrous demonstration. A young probationary teacher attempted to do a similar demonstration with sodium. The mini explosion shattered the glass trough, converted the boiling tube that he was holding over a funnel to collect the hydrogen being converted into tiny fragments and his mark book and register being inundated with the liberated five or so litres of water from the glass trough. Amazingly his hand was cut free. He didn't complete his probationary year.

Sodium is quirky stuff to use in the lab. It tends to be used sparingly and as a consequence most school laboratory stock is fairly ancient and can acquire a coating of sodium super oxide NaO2 which adds 'vigour' to the reaction with water.
 

summerdays

Cycling in the sun
Location
Bristol
He was a teacher who somehow had real respect from the pupils. He was my form tutor in year 4 and he often used to carry out pocket inspections for cigarettes, but the boys became very adept at stuffing them other places he didn't look! And I remember water bottle fights with him too!
 

Nihal

Veteran
Smart arse time again...I was taught biochemistry by Maurice Wilkins who won a Nobel Prize (with Crick and Watson) for working out the structure of DNA.
Lucky you:becool:


My General Chemistry teacher puts everybody in class to sleep in less than 5 minutes,he sounds like an extra slow tape recorder:laugh:
 

Archeress

Veteran
Location
Bristol
When I was at school, I managed to still do chemistry as an individual subject, rather than doing the mixed science classes that they were bringing in then and to my knowledge still do. My teacher was called Mr Button and was always feared by reputation as a tough teacher. During our first week, he tried teaching us valencies, which as a class we singularly failed to understand so we were all kept back in detention. Mr Button was also a skilled cricketer and if you misbehaved he'd throw a board rubber at you, you'd watch it fly and think nah, it's not gonna hit me, but he always seem to make it curve so it clipped you in the ear. He would also practice his cricket swing while dictating lessons, swinging his metre rule over the heads of pupils. One day a lad stood up mid swing and caught the metre rule in the side of his head. I remember that we all came to respect him and even love him as a teacher. The one thing I remember is when his aunt died from lung cancer. The poor man shouldn't have been in that day, he was so distressed. He didn't intend to teach anything that lesson, he just sat at the front in misery with all of us stunned sat at our benches. He softly spoke of how much he loved his aunt and of how the cancer had been caused by smoking. I don't think any of us have ever smoked after that day.

Hugs
Archeress x
 

shouldbeinbed

Rollin' along
Location
Manchester way
metal + acid = salt + hydrogen.

@young Ed in my parental experience nowadays, the entire curriculum and all of my teenage children's science homework is lifted directly from or the answers easily found on the BBC Bitesize website.
After this place and our hivemind (naturally) I'd suggest it for your primary source of enquiry.
 

Profpointy

Legendary Member
doing some chemistry homework and just confused a tad bit!
it said copper+sulfuric acid=copper sulfate+hydrogen
and it also said that
hydrochloric acid makes chlorides
sulfuric acid makes sulfates
nitric acid makes nitrates

so does lithium+sulfuric acid=lithium sulfate+hydrogen
and potassium+hydrochloric acid=potassium chloride+hydrogen?

many more questions from that sheet i can give you if you want! :tongue:
any help greatly appreciated :thumbsup:
oh and yes i have tried googling
Cheers Ed

Yes - but lithium, and especially Potassium will go off like a bomb with acid.
Potassium will burst into flame and / or explode merely with water.

As an aside, your spelling of the chemicals is of the American persuasion - fair enough if you hail from those parts, but if UK based you may want to spell the chemicals UK stylee
 

winjim

Straddle the line, discord and rhyme
Yes - but lithium, and especially Potassium will go off like a bomb with acid.
Potassium will burst into flame and / or explode merely with water.

As an aside, your spelling of the chemicals is of the American persuasion - fair enough if you hail from those parts, but if UK based you may want to spell the chemicals UK stylee
Point of order. According to IUPAC the correct spelling is sulfur / sulfate and has been since the nineties I think. Young Ed has it right.
 

Profpointy

Legendary Member
Point of order. According to IUPAC the correct spelling is sulfur / sulfate and has been since the nineties I think. Young Ed has it right.

International committees comin' over here changing the names of our chemicals - who do they think they are?
Actually I didn't know that, but I went to school quite a few years earlier.
 
OP
OP
young Ed

young Ed

Veteran
Yes - but lithium, and especially Potassium will go off like a bomb with acid.
Potassium will burst into flame and / or explode merely with water.

As an aside, your spelling of the chemicals is of the American persuasion - fair enough if you hail from those parts, but if UK based you may want to spell the chemicals UK stylee
your spelling of style isn't to good either! :tongue:
how did they used to spell the chemicals then?
Cheers Ed
 

winjim

Straddle the line, discord and rhyme
Of course in the real world both spellings are still used, along with many other trivial and non-IUPAC standard names. For instance, nobody ever asks me to pass the "ethoxyethane", and most of the people I work with wouldn't know what it was, despite using it every day!
 
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