Tuesday 19 March 2013

Foldit

Solve puzzles, for science!

http://fold.it/portal/

Seriously cool chemistry game/research.

Monday 18 March 2013

Making Nylon

Today, as one of our Polymers "experiences", we made nlyon 6,10:


Sebacoyl Chloride has a -COCl group at each end; 1,6 Diaminohexane has an -NH2 group at each end.



Thank you to Matt for being such an awesome scientist, demonstrating the experiment.

http://depts.washington.edu/mti/1999/labs/polymers/Image36.gif


Monday 11 March 2013

Carboxylic Acids and Acyl Chlorides

Sadly the videos from today do not have wonderful sound quality, so this will primarily be a text summary of today's work:

CARBOXYLIC ACIDS

Carboxylic acids have many properties and reactions in common with mineral acids, such as hydrochloric and sulfuric acid. What is different is that they are weak acids, so react more slowly and have higher pHs (but still less than 7).

The smaller carboxylic acids are water-soluble, and ethanoic acid has a surprisingly high melting and boiling point. These features are due to their abilities to form hydrogen bonds. Ethanoic acid forms hydrogen bonds in a special way, forming dimers (di = two; mer = unit). As a dimer, ethanoic acid has a larger electron cloud, so can have a higher extent of intermolecular bonding.


ACYL CHLORIDES

The experiment on p135 was done and filmed. Sadly, it didn't go very well, so Mr Nicoll re-filmed it: