Poisoner's Handbook Chemistry Project Reflection

The part of the book that inspired this project is the entire chapter about Cyanide. While I was reading the book I was immediately drawn to this chemical because of the horrible plotting way people used this chemical to get rid of others who got in their way. I immediately started thinking about the terror people must have experienced when they either found the body of a person killed by cyanide, accidentally killed someone with a tainted food or drink, or even while dying themselves from ingesting the lethal chemical. I thought ,"how could I let people know what this chemical can do to them and why they should avoid it?" and I thought of a newspaper. So I decided to make a fake newspaper Prezi to talk about the dangers of cyanide, where its found, what it does to the body, its impact during Prohibition and how people can avoid it.

Now, since I did a mock newspaper it was somewhat difficult to add information about cyanide's molar mass, bonding ability, etc. and my project ended up looking more like a presentation about the dangers of cyanide because there was hardly anything chemistry related. I am going to add that stuff now.

Below is the equation I used to find Cyanide's molar mass:

                                      C (12.01) + N (14.00) = CN (26.00)

So I suppose that equation shows I know how to find how much Cyanide there is in one mole of Cyanide....

There are actually several kinds of cyanide but that it caused then the molecule above (pure cyanide) bonds with a hydrogen or a chlorine atom, for example. I was able to do the equation above by looking at the mass numbers (located on a periodic table at the bottom of the element's square) of the two elements that make cyanide and adding them together. If I were going to find the molar mass of another type of cyanide, it would be a slightly more challenging process, as I would have to find the charge of all the elements involved (for example Cyanogen Chloride (Cyanide- and Chlorine-))

                                       CN (26.00) + Cl (35.45) = CNCl (61.45)


  It may not look like much, looking at the equations I have written above, to the non-chemistry educated eye, but those equations can actually teach you a lot of things. I have listed them with explanations below:

• The Law of Conservation of Mass- The Law states that in a chemical reaction no matter is created or lost. As you can see, the same elements are still there, they are literally just added to another element(s) to make a different molecule.
• Matter (more specifically, compounds)- A compound is a type of matter that consists of two or more elements bonded together. Most things on this earth are made of compounds (Ex: table salt {NaCl}) Not to be confused with a mixture, which is just two or more elements together is a given space and no chemical reaction occurs and they do not bond (Salt and Water {NaCl and H20}).
• Chemical Formulas- Chemical formulas are the shorthand way to write the name of elements, compounds and mixtures. Scientists developed this when they got tired of writing things like Dinitrogen Tetroxide all the time. With chemical formulas, compounds with names like that can be simplified to N2O4, which also make it easier to know how many atoms of each element will be needed to make the compound.  
• Chemical Bonding- In order to form a compound or carry out a chemical reaction two or more elements must bond. Bonding is usually why chemical reactions are so fun, because sometimes weird and exciting things happen like explosions
• Chemical Reactions- By now you may have figured out what a chemical reaction is, but I'm going to explain it anyway. A chemical reaction is when two or more molecules rearrange to form a new molecule. Like I said earlier, sometimes exciting things happen when a chemical reaction occurs, but there are also some pretty tame reactions too. Here is the check list to tell if a chemical reaction occurred:
• Color Change
• Formation of water
• Formation of a Precipitate- Formation of a solid
• Formation of gas- Bubbles
• Energy released or absorbed as light or heat

Here is a picture of Cyanide's atomic structure: Cyanide has a polar covalent bond because the electrons are shared, just not equally.

I got this picture from www.chemistry.wustl.edu, just in case you were wondering.

So, I know we are supposed to demonstrate everything we know about chemistry through the project and my project is about Cyanide but I looked all over the internet to find a stoichiometry problem involving Cyanide but I couldn't find one so I guess I'm going to prove my skills with a couple non-Cyanide related problems. :)

1) How many grams of oxygen can be prepared by the decomposition of 25 grams of potassium chlorate?
                                                 2CaO = 2Ca + O2

                      25g CaO x 1 mole CaO  x 1 mole O2   x   32g O2      =  7.36g O2
                                        56.08g CaO     2 mole CaO   1 mole O2

 

          ***You may have noticed how all of the amounts are labeled, that is because it wildly important to the measurements you are using when you write an equation.***

 

 

2) The following is a Composition stoichiometry problem:  NaOH

                                                              Part

Na: 1 mole Na x   22.99g Na    =     22.99g Na     x 100 = 40%

                             1 mole Na         56.99g NaOH
                                                         Part
O2: 1 mole O2 x 32.00g O2  =     32.00g O2       x 100 = 56%             40% + 56% + 3.5% = 99.5% 
                          1 mole O2          56.99g NaOH                                               (Almost 100%)
                                                                                  Part
H2: 1 mole H2 x  2.00g H2   =      2.00g H2        x 100 = 3.5%
                                        1 mole O2         56.99g NaOH

                     22.99g Na + 32.00g O2 + 2.00g H2 = 56.99g NaOH

Now, Cyanide is extremely poisonous (it can kill you in less then 30 minutes after it enters the body) so I thought it might be nice to tell you some toxicity facts about it. (MSDS information about Potassium Cyanide)

• Appearance- White amorphous crystals
• Odor- Faint almond odor, toxic fumes
• Hazards- Highly toxic, may be fatal, avoid ALL body contact as that may cause poisoning, not super flammable
• Things to avoid- Acids; they release poisonous hydrogen cyanide gas, your body; it's HIGHLY toxic
• Solubility- Soluble in water, alcohol and glycerol

***I got this information from Flinn Scientific at www.mnps.org***

 

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Now for the reflection part of the blog, yay! As far as the actual project part goes, I did a mock newspaper Prezi warning people about the dangers of Cyanide, where its found, and what people should avoid in order to survive. Since it was a newspaper intended for the "general public" I couldn't really go on and talk about The Law of Conservation of Mass and how it relates to Cyanide, so I was really only able to add a little bit of my knowledge of chemistry to my actual project. The rest of my knowledge is listed somewhere above.

 One of the areas of my knowledge that contributed to my project is experimental design. When I was reading the chapter in The Poisoner's Handbook all about cyanides I came across a lab that the profiled forensic pathologist Dr. Gettler came up with to test if cyanide was in the body tissue of the organ involved in the experiment. I merely copied down the steps Dr. Gettler followed (don't worry, I gave credit), but then I made a list of the materials based off of what the lab either said or what I thought seemed like a practical item to use.

Another area in my project where my chemistry knowledge paid off is my ability to find an appropriate picture showing a proper chemical bond. I know it doesn't sound like much but when you Google "Cyanide chemical bond" you get a bunch of complicated and random pictures and all I wanted was a picture of a simple Cyanide bond. I managed to find picture of a polar covalent bond that was easy to look at by the non-chemistry educated mind.

But honestly, that point listed above is a stretch (to claim as a demonstration of my chemistry knowledge). I know my project isn't super rich in chemistry, I just wanted to go off the stories constantly told throughout the chapter about the unsuspecting bystander dying a terrible death of Cyanide poisoning and talk about why its a bad chemical. If I could do this project over again I would probably change the premise of my project and instead of trying to literally write a newspaper article about Cyanide's dangers I would make it more educational like the stuff I talked about in my reflection before the funny looking line. I thought the newspaper seemed like a good idea in the beginning but its actually incredibly difficult to include a stoichiometry problem into a news report.

If I could extend the project I would actually turn my "newspaper" into more of a medical journal and not only talk about the dangers of Cyanide but also include the things I listed earlier in my reflection, like the MSDS information and the equations. I would try to make an entire write-up of not only everything we learned this year but everything there is in regards to Cyanide. I would probably title the whole thing 'Cyanide' because it would literally be a journal with as many things about Cyanide as I could find. My extended project would have other experiments involving Cyanide, and extended MSDS section, ways to test for it in bodies and in nature, uses of it through out the decades, journals by other people about their studies of it etc. It would be like a Cyanide encyclopedia.

Poisoner's Handbook Chemistry Project

http://prezi.com/gvrnbhypnn9t/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy


Above is the link to my Prezi about the dangers of Cyanide!

Tie Dye Lab: Post 1

Dyeing fabric is a practice that literally goes back almost to the beginning of time. The first recorded use of dye and dyestuffs was used in China in 2600 B.C., that's 4614 years ago! Alexander the Great even found 190 year old royal purple robes (worth approximately $6 million!) in the Persian empire Susa, when he conquered it in 334 B.C. That brings up an interesting point, purple dyes, more specifically Royal Purple dyes, have long been associated with royalty (hence the name Royal Purple) For generations purple clothes were reserved for only royals, and that may be because the key ingredient for the dye had to be extracted from small mollusks, and that was not an easy job. About 1700 years later Pope Paul II introduced the Cardinal Purples, though these colors were actually scarlet, these too became known as luxury dyes. Now, obviously since the king, queen, and pope were wearing purple and red cloth then everyone else had to wear purple and red cloth too right? The answer is yes, the earliest dyes were highly valuable and constantly sought after, that's probably another reason why dye was reserved for royalty. However, even though dye was rare and valuable, it didn't actually work that great. The cloth the dyes were put on typically were not treated with mordents, so the colors leaked out with every wash and faded in sunlight.

According to Wikipedia, in a fiber reactive dye "a 1)chromophore contains a 2)substituent that is activated and allowed to directly react to the surface of the 3)substrate. Reactive dyes have good fastness properties owing to the bonding that occurs during dyeing." This means that an 1)atom that is responsible for the color of a compound contains

an 2)atom(s) takes the place of another atom(s) occupying a certain position in a molecule and allows it to directly react with the 3)surface of a substance that underlies something else or has a process occur on it. If I simplify this explanation more I would say when you put the dye (color) on the cloth the molecules in the dye replace a molecule in the cloth so that it (the color) may attach itself to the surface of the cloth permanently.

**The words in the Wikipedia definition with a number next to them have a definition with their corresponding number.

The chemical structure of dye molecules and how dye molecules bond with things actually have an interesting story behind them. The following is a photo of and indigo molecule's journey into becoming blue.

The first compund labeled Indican is the compound that comes out of the indigo plant. Indican has an attached glucose unit and is colorless until it is fermented under alkaline conditions (otherwise known as bases) and the glucose unit breaks off. After fermenting in the base Indixal is produced. Indoxal then reacts with oxygen in the air to produce the blue color we know as Indigo. The Indoxal compound doubles and flips to form the actual Indigo compound. 

The following is a photo of the Tyrain Purple compund. It's 'journey' into becoming a Tyrain Purple compoundis much like that of the Indigo, however, it does not need to be fermented. Tyrain Purple is actually a derivitative of Indigo. The compound harvested from the mollusk's secretions has attached Bromine atoms and an attached glucose unit (like the Indigo). When the compound is oxidized in air the color is released. 

 

Now lets talk about how we see colors. When you look around your house, you can tell that everything is a different color, but do you know why? It has to do with the wavelengths emitted from the different colors. The color is a physical property of chemicals that usually comes from the "excitation of electrons" due to the absorption of energy performed by the chemical. What you see is not the color absorbed but the complementary color from the removal of the absorbed wavelengths. I borrowed the picture below from www.societyofrobots.com to show you the kind of wavelengths and colors people can see.

                                 

When the wavelength is within the visible light spectrum (Between 390nm and 700nm) it is called visible light, people cannot see ultraviolet or infrared rays. Something I learned from the Societyofrobots.com is that color does not actually exist, the color we see is actually somewhat of a byproduct of the molecules emitting light. Each molecule is formed differently so it absorbs a different amount of light, thus giving off the colors we see. Each color emits light at different wavelengths and at different frequencies.

 

Now lets talk fibers... yay! In this particular lab we used fiber reactive dyes to tie dye our shirts. Earlier I talked briefly about what a fiber reactive dye actually is, but not what it does, now you'll find out. Certain dyes react better with certain fibers, in our case, cotton. If you plan on using fiber reactive dyes you MUST use a cotton shirt, cotton/polyester blends don't work because polyester is a synthetic fiber and dyes wash out of polyester, as a result you will have a faded shirt, and tie dye is no fun if the colors aren't vibrant. Silk and rayon are also good choices of materials you can dye. If you're not concerned about how rayon wears, rayon is actually the best kind of material to dye because it is made of processed cellulose and the cellulose is more readily available to react with the dyes.

 

Before you actually start putting the colors on your shirt, you have to treat the shirt with a mordant first. Decades of tie-dyers have learned that a mordant is key to a vibrant and long lasting tie dye shirt. Mordants are usually inorganic oxides that combines with a dye to fix it to a material. In other words, mordants are chemicals you need to soak your shirt in so that the dyes don't wash out every time you wash it. In this lab we used Sodium Carbonate. 

Okay, we are finally to the actual dyeing part! Yay! I have prepared step by step instructions and list of materials for you to follow. 

-Materials:

   *Sodium Carbonate

   *Plastic bin

   *5+ sheets of newspaper 

   *A countertop (most likely one you dont mind getting messy)

   * 3 pipettes 

   *Colors of dye

   *Rubber bands

   *A 100% cotton tee shirt (or whatever else you want to dye)

   *A plastic garbage bag

  

Step 1:

   -Fill the bin with enough Sodium Carbonate to soak your tee shirt

      *leave the shirt in there for many hours

Step 2:

   -Take your shirt out and wring out as much liquid as you can

      *Sodium Carbonate is a skin irritant so WEAR GLOVES!

Step 3:

   -Lay your shirt out on the counter and twist or scrunch the pattern you want your shirt to have

      *You dont have to add the newspaper yet

Step 4:

   -Put the rubber bands on your shirt in a cris-cross pattern so that it won't un-fold (use 5 or more bands) Your shirt should be in a small pie-like shape

Step 5:

   -Pour 50-100 mL of each color into their own beakers (if you have 3 colors, you'll need 3 beakers) and put a pipette in each beaker

Step 6:

   -Lay the newspaper on the counter

Step 7:

   -Use the pipette to drop the dyes onto the cloth

      * Be somewhat generous here, you dont want too much white space, but dont use to much or your colors will bleed together. 

***USE COLORS THAT LOOK GOOD MIXED TOGETHER OR LEAVE WHITE SPACE IN BETWEEN***

Step 8:

   -When you think that you are done carfully take the shirt pie off the newspaper and place it inside the garbage bag

      *Tie a knot in the bag

Step 9:

   -Wait for 6+ hours for the dyes to soak in and complete chemical reactions

Step 10: 

   -After 6+ hours take your shirt and the emptied bin outside

      *Fill the bin with water and soak your shirt in it

      *Keep filling the bin and rinsing your shirt until the water isnt overly colorful anymore  

Step 11:

   -Wash shirt in washing machine either by itself or with items you dont mind the dye bleeding on

Step 12: 

   -Wear your shirt!! 

     

Candy Lab: Post 3

      After conducting our lab I was able to make some conclusions about what I stated earlier in Candy Lab: Post 1. However, I also had some misunderstandings about crystallization. As far as my conclusions go, I am now able to better understand the processes of solubility and concentration having been able to observe it first hand. For solubility, after we poured the sugar into the mixture and stirred, you could see that the substance was hazy. As the substance got hotter, we saw the liquid become clearer. From this I was able to conclude that sugar does indeed dissolve better the longer it is exposed to a hotter temperature.  For concentration, the sugar was dissolved at 110 degrees so by the time the concoction got around 260 degrees we added 1 drop of each color, red and blue, to our boiling sugar. Since it was at a rolling boil the sugar almost instantly turned a pale purple. Then we added our flavoring after the boiling ceased and since it was maple it turned (the mixture) a somewhat nasty shade of brown. So we added a few more drops of red and blue to give the liquid candy a nice shade of dark purple. From this expiriment I concluded that if there are multiple colors in a mixture, they can cancel each other out and in order to get the color you want, there needs to be a much higher concentration of that color.  Now my misunderstanding was the candy crystallization. I didn't see any of that while the candy was boiling or while we were pouring it onto the wax paper. I went back and reviewed our recipe and it only mentioned crystallization once: you need to scrape excess sugar crystals off the sides of the can while the sugar was boiling. If you look at the photos I took of the cooking process (on the observations blog post) you will see there wasn't any visible crystalization on the sides of the can. I'm not saying crystallization wasn't part of this lab, I just wanted to mention that I didn't witness it first hand in this particular lab. 

      If I were to apply what I have learned and stated to another substance, I would choose to apply it to salt water, since salt has very similar characteristics to the finished hard candy product. I say this because I can apply all of my earlier statements about the hard candy and candy making process to salt and have the very same explanation for both. For example, concentration. If you just put a few grains of salt into, let's say a cup of water, you don't really taste it; but if you put a whole table spoon of salt in the same amount of water, the salty flavor becomes very over powering. This is just like my comparison of one drop of food dye vs. several drops of food dye; one drop only adds a tiny bit of color, but multiple drops make the color very vivid and noticeable. As for solubility, if you put a teaspoon of salt in a cup of room temperature water and only stir it, it takes quite a while to completely dissolve. If you put a teaspoon of salt in a cup of 110 degree (like our lab observations) water and stir, it only takes a few seconds to dissolve. On a larger scale, like with the candy making experiment, the sugar takes a while to dissolve in room temperature water but if you put it in hot water, the sugar takes less time to dissolve. Finally, I still believe that there is still a lack crystallization in both salt and sugar. When I think of crystals I think of snowflakes with feathery whispy ice particles extending outward. I never really witnessed any of that in any stage of the sugar or in salt. However, I do believe each individual grain of sugar and salt is a crystal, but at no point did sugar form another kind of crystal that I was able to witness. The same would go for salt, I think if you could put a bunch of salt in water, then let the water evaporate the salt crystals would look the same as they did before exposed to water. 

     If I was going to compare my results to another person's results I would go through a series of equations that look like this:

 2 cups sugar X 206g sugar/1 cup sugar 

                         = 412g sugar 

                   (How much sugar was used) 

3/4 cup water X 236 mL/1 cup X 1g/1 mL 

                         = 177g water

                    (How much water was used)

412g sugar/ 412g sugar + 177 H2O 

            = .699 ==>

                               69.9g sugar/ 100g  (Another way of finding the amount of sugar used)

412g sugar/ 177g H2O

    = 2.33g ==> 

                          233 g sugar/100g water  

In our lab, in 100g of water there is 233g sugar. In the example solubility curve, in 100g of water there was about 170g of sugar. As the temperature rose, the example sugar's dissolving rate increased from about 30g/ 20 degrees to about 50g/ 10 degrees. My data would suggest that the sugar in our expirament rose about 2.33g/ 10 degrees. 

Lab Observations

This is what we discovered while conducting our lab.
        _The sugar dissolved at 110 degrees
        _The mixture boiled at 210 degrees
        -The stuck temperature was at 223 degrees
        -Steam was rising at 210 degrees
        -The maximum temperature the substance reached was 305 degrees

Boiling sugar 

Sugar with food coloring  

Our concoction hardening 

The finished product!!