02.04: Lead Nitrate
There’s nothing that quite compares to the mess one makes when working with toxic materials that are insoluble. I changed gloves an awful lot, but there were still times when I’d run the tap or grab some tool or glass with contaminated gloves. The extent of the contamination can never be known. So I kept telling myself that people used to drink from lead goblets, or more recently play with molten lead as children. So one day of this can’t be too bad, right?!
So far, this has been the most time-consuming video to film. Not only were there more reactions than usual, but there was a lot of waiting. I should have done a little more math before I started going with the recrystallization of lead iodide, because there was no way I was going to dissolve all that in the little water I had. Not to mention all the filtering. I opted to gravity filter everything to avoid contamination of the Büchner funnel, or entire vacuum system for that matter.
Then, when all the products were dry, I had to weigh all six samples and calculate theoretical and percent yields. I also spent about two hours looking for the photos or video I took when I got this chemical. Though, I was only doing that for about half an hour before I got lost down Memory Lane with all the old pictures I ended up going through! And finally, the almost paranoid-level cleanup that followed.
I’m not complaining, it was a great challenge and the whole experience led to a great sense of accomplishment.
I still haven’t found the pictures of my original experiment, but I’ll describe it briefly. I was in a chemistry class at a community college, and I’m pretty sure NONE of the labs worked as advertised. I was getting annoyed, and there were two particularly irritating labs. The iodine clock reaction, and the galvanic cell. So I got the materials for both, and proceeded to run my own experiments at home. Unfortunately, I never conquered the iodine clock reaction (I’m talking about the kinetics lab rather than the demonstration version I did in my first-ever video). But the galvanic cell was a smashing success!
In class, no matter what we tried, we couldn’t get the cell to produce the expected current. It’s been a while, so the details are a little sketchy at this point, but I do remember one critical detail: When I set up the experiment at home, the multimeter read the EXACT value I had calculated!
It was a big moment for me in my chemistry life. As I’ve said, my background is mostly demonstration chemistry. You don’t need exact masses or concentrations to light stuff on fire, and an approximate molar concentration is all you need to change an indicator’s color. “Close enough” has always been “good enough”. Yet here I was, with the exact value. It was a great feeling.
…and now I’ve misplaced the pictures!
This video is another milestone for me, too. They’re not ready yet, but this is the first video where there are going to be products added to the libertysci.com store based on the video. In the future, I plan to add the chemicals I use in a video to the catalog and have that coincide with the release of the video. It’s a tall order, but things are starting to integrate better and quicker than I had planned. When the products get added to the catalog, they will be tagged with the video code.
All of the videos so far have had the series number and episode number. For example, this video is 02.04. Pretty soon, typing in HL0204 in the libertysci.com search box will pull up the relevant items! For this video, that will return a 10 gram bottle of lead nitrate, a few lead nitrate solution options, and a hazardous waste collection jug. In the future, as my inventory grows, larger package sizes of the lead nitrate will become available. For now, it’s the “home school lab” scale!
“Lead”ing the way to progress!
-Jason
