Australia's Science Forum

I'm lucky in that there are 2 large glass sealed tubes of NO2 that someone made over 20 years ago when it was last in the syllabus.

Thank you so much West lab
I have missed this forum, there are a lot of things I would post on here that are just not appropriate for Facebook. This is an incredible resource that should not be lost

I have fixed these by slowly and carefully, with the aid of surgical forceps/artery clamps, working the ball back to where it should be.
A pair of artery clamps is invaluable for all sorts of tasks.

We have used polypropylene cylinders for the junior school for the 20 years I have been here with no problems.
I keep the glass for the seniors

We have never done this experiment so I Googled it.
The page I found used Iron Nitrate, nitric acid and Potassium thiocyanate.
Where does the Tin Chloride come into it?

I wrote in another thread that I had been told that the old drawers that many of us use for storage had Asbestos in the Lacquer and had to be removed. Fishy sent me a private message asking what they looked like and as is they be of interest to others I decided to reply to all. Firstly I don't know ...

I give the senior students cut lengths of dialysis tubing
The junior students get small freezer bags from Woolworths as they do the job just as well for junior students at a fraction of the cost.
We do have 7 or 8 junior classes in each year group so dialysis tubing can get rather expensive for them

I have been told that the old drawers from the banks of drawers in the labs prior to the refurbishment have asbestos in the lacquer and must be removed from the school I have about 200 of them used for equipment class sets etc. Most importantly there is one under each lab workstation containing a bu...

I have put a small dob of different coloured paints from sample pots we were given from Bunnings about a 5 Cent size Each type of rock eg igneous, sedimentary has a different colour and then a number is written on the paint blob to indicate the type of igneous rock, eg Andesite is 1, Basalt is 2 etc...

I hand out a class set of 8 boxes of matches but each box has only about 11 matches in them, this 11 usually lasts a week or 2. Most often I get all 8 boxes back at the end of a class. I now have a collection of about 100 match boxes and when I feel like an easy job I sit down and fill my collection...

My thought on this is that the teacher should do them
The lab assistant does not know the intricacies of that particular class which needs to be taken into consideration with regards to the risk assessment.
Besides that, they are being paid for that, we aren't.

2M Ammonium Molybdate is impossible to make. The solubility of Ammonium Molybdate is approximately 50gm/100mls 125 gms at the most will dissolve in 250mls. What does she need it for? The 0.1 M solution I have in the Chem Store is not all dissolved. For the record, to make up 250 mls of a solution I ...

We went for a "drive" We left from home in Tamworth and drove to the Snowy Mountains via Broken Hill and Mildura! :w00t: Basically we wanted to see the Menindee lakes full of water, then down the Darling River to the Confluence with the Murray. We then followed the Murray, mainly from the ...

I have just knocked my magnetic Stirrer hotplate off the bench and totally smashed the ceramic plate under the actual plate. Into the bin for that one :cry2: My question now is, as I look at a replacement, should I get simmerstat or thermostat controls? It is mainly used for agar and heating solutio...

This is my interpretation of an enzyme prac I found here many years ago. From what i understand of the sylabus it doesn't have to be at X pH just show that pH makes a difference with different enzymes. We found that the dilute NaOH and HCl worked well with no mucking around trying to get the pH at a...

Sorry Liz that I am taking your best teacher. Your loss is my gain. We were all so thrilled to hear she was our new Head Teacher. Looking forward to working with Gina, I was really worried about gaining a new Head Teacher after having the same one for 14 odd years. My old head teacher was fantastic,...

We have used these for several years now.
Got them from the manufacturer in Queensland
We have the 25ml ones for senior chemistry and use them instead of the old bulbs and pipettes, works a lot better.
I have built up to a class set of 20, broken tubes can be replaced.

My recipe has 15gm Potassium Iodie and 3 grams of Iodine in 1 litre. The starch solution is just put in freezer bags for the junior school as it is much more cost effective and works just as well. They need to put about 10ml of iodine solution into 200ml beaker of water making it the colour of unhea...

This came from the Departyment of Education earlier this year.

I listened to this yesterday, it was rather interesting. The most salient point that I got from the facilitator was in answer to a question regarding what to do when the information regarding a chemical is different on Chemwatch or Risk assess to that which is in CSIS. The answer was that CSIS ALWAY...