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1500 questions
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Are there colorful metals besides gold and copper?
Are there yellow metals besides gold? Are there metals with color different than yellow and grey/silver or reddish?
Anixx
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Can ozone have a triangular structure?
The structure of ozone is traditionally depicted using two resonance forms:
However, what I am wondering is instead of using such an idea to explain the structure why can't we show the structure of ozone like this?
Some people have told me that…
Yashbhatt
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What is the difference between "reaction in both directions" and "equilibrium"?
According to the Wikipedia page on Chemical Equations:
Symbols are used to differentiate between different types of reactions. To denote the type of reaction:
"$=$" symbol is used to denote a stoichiometric relation.
"$\rightarrow$" symbol is…
krismath
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Non-zero dipole moment of hydroquinone
Why does hydroquinone possess a non-zero dipole moment? The $\ce{OH}$ groups present at para positions on the benzene ring should cancel the effect of each other... if there is a plane change then exactly when do atoms in a molecule change planes?
Napster
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Why do different substances have different boiling points?
For example, why does for example oxygen turn into gas at a much lower temperature than water?
Does it have anything to do with the molecular structure? A water molecule does have a more complex structure than oxygen, though the R-410A (a mixture of…
Friend of Kim
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Why is distillation not a viable way to separate ammonia from water?
Since the steam pressure of ammonia is higher than that of water, I would expect distillation to be a reasonable way of separating a mixture of both.
However, in industrial applications known to me there's always a step of stripping the ammonia…
mart
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Why does salt dissolved in water taste like salt? If it's just Na+ and Cl- ions
When $\ce{NaCl}$ is dissolved into water it breaks down into $\ce{Na+}$ and $\ce{Cl-}$. It stays in this form until the water evaporates and then the ions go back to normal $\ce{NaCl}$. So why does water with salt in it still taste like salt? I am…
Pi_Co
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HI/P reduction mechanism
I recently answered a question about Breaking Bad's initial methamphetamine production method (i.e. the reduction of (pseudo)ephedrine). The reaction is as follows:
(Source)
It is infamously known as the $\ce{HI/P}$ reduction and was (and still is…
Jori
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Is "Sulfuric acid... makes a poor electrolyte... very little of it will dissociate into ions" really true? What does that actually mean?
While researching chromate conversion coating for edits to this answer in Space Exploration SE, I came upon the following passage in Corrosion Resistance of Stainless Steel to Sulfuric Acid
Sulfuric acid is quite corrosive in water although it…
uhoh
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How much is 1 mμg?
So I stumbled on a research paper by Okuda and Takedatsu [1] that uses mμg as a symbol for the mass unit.
I couldn't find anything about this measure unit anywhere except a recommendation not to use it.
So how much is 1 mμg?
I suppose it means…
Andyba
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What has been the accepted value for the Avogadro constant in the "CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" over the years?
Some questions about the constant made me curious as to exactly how much the accepted value has changed over the years. I am pretty sure that I learned a rounded value of $6.023\times10^{23}$ about 1970 which would have been around the 50th edition.…
MaxW
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Placed in equivalent freezers, would a liter of water or a liter of lava turn from liquid to solid first? (question from a 6 year old)
Placed in equivalent freezers, would a liter of water or a liter of lava turn from liquid to solid first? (question from a 6 year old)
Based on this page in a “Blaze” book, my six year old asked “which would win?” between water and lava. On…
T.D. Smith
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Structure that breaks InChI
I am currently testing a piece of software that generates the InChI for a given structure. I also want to test error situations as end users will also deliver the mol files that will be used as input for the software.
I have found this description…
cheffe
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What is the isomer distribution in monosubstituted fluorobullvalene?
Bullvalene (tricyclo[3.3.2.02,8]deca-3,6,9-triene) is a fluxional molecule able to interconvert any two carbon atoms through a series of degenerate Cope rearrangements (for more information, see the Wikipedia article on bullvalene). At slightly…
ron
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How toxic chemically is plutonium (Pu), neglecting the radioactive damage?
In Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb, he says that, while Pu is not that radioactive (which is surprising -- maybe he means compared with radium and some other elements), it is very toxic.
I would guess it could not be much more toxic than…
releseabe
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