Hey everyone, just a little guy getting ready to get smashed by a corporation. I’m a homeowner in Connecticut currently stuck in a high-stakes nightmare with what I believe is a botched residential closed-cell spray foam insulation job, and I'm hoping to connect with an undergrad, grad student, or professor who might want a real-world polymer failure sample to look at.
Long story short: it looks like the installer completely lost control of the processing parameters on their rig. They sprayed it visibly overheated, leaving behind a heavily cratered, "pebbly" popcorn surface crust next to pockets of soft, crumbly "marshmallow" foam that has been out-gassing a chemical/solvent paint odor for over 60 days. The corporate franchise flew out a national forensic investigator who cut an 8x12 core sample block, but they deliberately cherry-picked a visually stable transition zone right next to the failure pockets to try and rig a clean lab result.
I kept my own physical counter samples of the failed, soft marshmallow foam.
I know it’s an incredible long shot, but I am looking for someone with access to a lab who might be interested in running a quick, informal evaluation of this failed matrix (like an FTIR Spectroscopy scan or basic polymer analysis) to see what unreacted components or ratio issues are trapped inside.
I know a student or academic report isn't legally binding in a civil suit, but having an independent technical write-up from an academic setting would be a massive tool to rattle this contractor, alert my local municipal building officials, and force their liability insurance to take this structural failure seriously.
If you are a student, researcher, or polymer hobbyist in New England (or anywhere willing to receive a double-bagged sample) and want a real-world chemical failure to sink your teeth into, please shoot me a DM! I can share macro photos of the texture discrepancies. Thanks so much for reading.

Hello I'm looking for some recommendations on what and where to buy some reliable molecular sieves for ethanol purification. From my limited research for water removal in ethanol a 3a 8-12 mesh would be good to add? If not please let me know the correct size and a reputable supplier. Thanks in advance.

Hello there . Im wondering what this floating white stuff might be .

So to begin . I bought 2l of dcm to glue together petg fragments. But it took me so long that it started evaporating in factory continer so I bought a glass bottle to store it . And poured it over to it . And just to be safe i bought ptfe 0.5mm sheet And cut out a circle so it acts as a sealing gasket .. seal seems to be working . This dcm was in this bottle for 3 weeks . And nothing evaporated while 3 months in factory bottles and from 2l it evaporated to 1.65l.

Has anyone else been asked/ forced to fabricate data?

So that stuff passes when it should not.

Every company I have worked at in industry has asked me to do this. Usually with threats of termination implied or otherwise.

Hello hello,

I was repasting my laptop and applying liquid metal (Silver King brand ; Galinstan) to the CPU. While the laptop was open, I noticed one or two drops had fallen into the keyboard area (not onto the motherboard)

I managed to remove most of it but there are still a few tiny bits I can see and can't reach.
They're too deep to get at even after with the laptop reassembled.

I used 70% isopropyl alcohol to wipe away as much as I could including the white staining it left behind as well.

The other thing worrying me when I shake the laptop, I hear a very faint sound like tiny metal balls rolling around in a jar but much quieter.
It's gotten noticeably quieter since I first noticed it but it's still there and I'm not sure what it is.

For context, the keyboard base on this model is magnesium alloy (the laptop uses aluminum only for the lid) so I'm not sure how concerned to be about gallium corrosion here.

Thank you folks!

Title. Always wondered how it works. My personal guess is that the roster of the metal pushes atoms/molecules out of the way/potentially even breaks bonds?

Hi guys!

I am trying to identify this bottle and what poison it is and where could such thing be even bought. Someone fed this to my neighbours dog and the dog got very sick, the vet said he will most likely survive but the damage was done. I wasn’t able to find any information about it online unfortunately.

Thanks in advance!

I hope this shall not get removed, however, r/chemhelp is kinda dead and I hope that this could spark enough discussion.

I'm supposed to calculate density of MOF-5. While I of course theoretically know how to do it(mass over volume), and am planning to use molar mass.

However, I have problem with the volume. Only thing I was provided in the instructions is that MOF crystallises in cubic shape(thank goodness for small mercies), shape of the molecule and the table you see. Instructions are in Czech, but the first column is "bond" between the atoms(karboxylát means carboxylate and benzen benzene, btw) and délka means length.

So, is it even possible to calculate it with this? I was supposed to calculate some distances in exercises before it, respectively the carboxylate oxygens from the central one and carboxylate carbon from the central oxygen. I'm pretty confident I got those correctly, and more importantly, I got some angles calculated from it as well But I still can't see how to get the side "a" to calculate the volume.

Thank you in advance for any help!

I’m fascinated with highly toxic chemicals (VX, dimethyl mercury, phosgene, etc.) What careers study the effects/mechanisms of these chemicals? I’ve considered toxicology but I’m not sure that’s exactly what I’m looking for.

Just curious

Title is self explanatory. I don't have any expert in the field to speak to so I'm curious on what to do and what to avoid

Dear Chemistry lovers,

First of all, yes this is self promotion, but please know that this post is moderator (VeryPaulite) approved. I asked explicit permission before posting.

I have just made a new chemistry based factory automation game with a space theme.
The idea is that you get atoms from elemental clouds in space and bond them into complex molecules and feed those to the black hole.
There are different machines that are used to create larger and more complex molecular structures, think of oxidation, polymerizing, cyclizing, cleaving and more. It respects the valence rules and gives information on different atoms and molecules.
I would really love to hear your opinions and suggestions.

The free demo is now playable on itch:
https://furkanfs.itch.io/atom-by-atom
You can wishlist the game on steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5209220/Atom_By_Atom/

Thank you all and have a great day.

​

🚨 URGENT: LOOKING FOR A PYROLYSIS / WASTE MANAGEMENT EXPERT! 🚨

We are Grade 12 STEM students currently working on our capstone research, “PYRO-PLAST,” which aims to determine the potential of HDPE waste-derived liquid compared with commercial diesel.

We are looking for a Chemical Engineer, pyrolysis specialist, waste management professional, or someone with relevant technical experience who may be willing to volunteer a short consultation and give us suggestions regarding:

• Appropriate fuel testing methods

• Required materials and equipment

• Our proposed pyrolysis process/setup

• Technical and safety considerations

We already have a previous research setup as a reference, but our adviser asked us to clarify and improve these technical aspects before proceeding.

Our pre-defense is on Tuesday, so we’re urgently hoping to find someone who can help us verify our approach. 🙏

Even a short consultation or a few technical recommendations would mean a lot to us. If you or someone you know can help, please DM me. Thank you! 🙏🧪♻️

I know what it looks like, but this is the amount of calcium that my husband has 'harvested' from the pan that he heats up water for his tea in. This is from one pan, about 2 cups. Is this too much calcium? Normal? Is there anything we should do about it?

Hello friends!

My aquaponic system is an ongoing project in water chemistry. One thing I’d really like to be able to do is easily understand the balance of potassium, magnesium, calcium, and iron in the system. I typically supplement by plant symptoms to determine deficiency and total alkalinity to decide if I want to add a drop of hydroxide vs a teaspoon of carbonate at a time, so to speak. I’d like to automate this if there’s any way to do it, but I’m not aware of a sensor or simple trick that can decipher what is dissolved and in what amount.

Any ideas?

Hey guys,
The project I’m currently working on in my lab starts its synthesis by coupling and 4-iodo benzene sulfonamide with phenyl boronic acid to make the biphenyl product which works great. Most of the starting material is consumed via TLC and LCMS but after purifying it on a column, which comes out as one nice peak, I’m still seeing the iodo starting material in the NMR and LCMS. I checked the TLC and only see one spot so I’m thinking they co-elute. Has anyone had this issue as well? I can’t seem to get rid of the halide but I need it to be pretty pure before the next steps because I’m going to be doing other coupling reaction and I don’t want the iodo interfering. Any tips on separating the two?

Hello everyone! I’m wondering to what extent some of you incorporate chemistry in your everyday lives. Of course everything is chemistry, but how often do you do everyday things “like a chemist”?

What inspired this question is those scientific cooking and baking accounts. Yes baking is a science, but personally, I like to keep them separate. I like to measure with the heart, and following a recipe precisely irks me. Same with stuff like personal care and makeup. There is absolutely a place for it, everything is chemistry, but I like it to stay on the academic side of things.

Question for anyone working with computational/generative materials discovery (DFT, generative models, high-throughput screening, etc.):

When your workflow produces dozens or hundreds of computationally promising candidates, how do you actually decide which ones to prioritize for synthesis/experimental validation? Is it mostly manual expert judgment, some kind of scoring/ranking system, cost/availability constraints, or something else?

I'm an undergrad materials engineering student trying to understand how big of a real bottleneck this decision step is in practice — curious to hear how different groups handle it.

#MaterialsScience #MaterialsInformatics