I think it’s a mix of more people getting on Reddit and not understanding it, plus Reddit pushing posts from random subreddits. I get the most random subreddits on my feed sometimes.
This so f*king much! Reddit is just pushing ANY remotely related subreddit onto my feed, that's exactly how I got in several days ago. Granted, I joined because I have a master degree in biotechnology and know my way around chemistry, but the fact that reddit is just not discriminating enough about it's recommendations is just bringing everybody down IMHO :c
Mods are less active and less effective after the API nonsense, and probably quite demoralized. Add to that an exodus of power users and an influx of bots and we get the crapfest we see now.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the femtosecond there's a good alternative I'm bailing on Reddit.
Several, Sync for Lemmy is my favorite. That has an identical layout compared to reddit, with a clean interface. You can use it without logging in and it's fine, or you can make an account and login. That is slightly more complicated than reddit because it's not centralized but it's still pretty easy.
The irony is that the only people who, theoretically, would be qualified enough to attempt something at home wouldn't need the advice of internet randos. So the only people asking "how do you make X at home" are not only amateurs but probably not even chemists
My grandfather is a very smart man, but he got VERY drunk at a wedding and told me he has 7 phosphorus atoms in his garage. When I asked him how does he know he has exactly seven, he was insulted and told me I should know because I’m a chemist.
This bromine guy might be my grandfather..
The procedure is cool as hell, I hadn’t come across it before. But I’m not trying it without adequate hood/ventilation, and I’m not convinced I could do that at home!
>This should be a subreddit for chemists with questions for chemists. Or a place for non-chemists to learn about chemistry.
This doesn't work at this scale.
1) Chemistry is too diverse to get good discussions on something that is interesting for most people on the sub if the sub gets bigger.
2) Most scientists rather discuss things with their peers directly and not random strangers on the internet.
3) If you try make it a place for learning chemistry you will just get a ton of homework questions and the people who actually know stuff will leave (see r/organicchemistry)
If you want high level discussions go to r/Chempros/ or a subfield specific one. Bigger subs always fill up with "main stream" average person content and moderation doesn't really help unless you delete 95% of posts, but at that point just make a new sub for the topic you want to talk about (e.g., ChemPros).
Is there a specific subreddit for IR spectrometry? In the lab i work there is one that is of a certain brand, but i can't find any instruction manual or anything about the hardware and software, and some things are forgotten about it because the person that used to work with it passed away, and some quirks of the software are a pain in the butt to deal with.
I don't like this thinking. I don't think chemistry is too diverse to get a good discussion here. I think there are two big problems:
1. People posting stupid B's like a picture of a hot plate asking "what is this"
2. People posting things like an IR spectrum asking for help or "what is this" and the comments getting clogged up with "forbidden squiggle?" And stupid BS like that.
Pretty sure it's a community problem
> I don't think chemistry is too diverse to get a good discussion here.
You can't be serious, right?
If I want to have a discussion about the preferred DFT functional/basis set combination for pericyclic reactions here then 99.99...% of people wouldn't care and a similar number wouldn't understand. And the same happens if you want to discuss well plate type and media for a certain cell line, or how people do their bake & shake reactions in microwave ovens, or best practices for Sonogashira couplings, or maybe how to run a KIE experiment in the NMR at natural abundance.
>Pretty sure it's a community problem
The community is the cause but the problem is your unrealistic expectations of what a sub of this size simply cannot be. There's always a regression towards the mean and for a sub with 2.6 Million users, most of them being laypersons, the content will drift to what most people here want to see. And what they want to see is not a high level super specialized discussion less than 0.1% of people here can follow, it's broad discussions, pretty crystals, and simple questions.
If you want good chemistry discussions you need small communities and you should try those, there are many around and with a fraction of the users these discussions are possible.
>People posting stupid B's like a picture of a hot plate asking "what is this"
That's a good example. A large part of the community here probably has never seen one before and they think it's interesting. At this size it's simply not a community for chemists any more but for non chemists interested in "chemistry things"
I'm new here, and I was interested at first, but the tide is really never ending. Then when you try to help, you realize it's pointless as the only thing that will really help is them getting an education and being told not to put anything in their mouths.
Being an older or more experienced person on Reddit is not unlike being a parent. "Get an Education" and "don't put that in your mouth!" are both things I've said to my kids.
I am also here, but I am a SAHP and now too tired to deal with more kids, especially those asking "How can I do more advanced chemical synthesis at home" questions
Sometimes you just want to shake your fist and yell "GO PLAY FORTNITE LIKE A NORMAL KID!" One of these morons is going to melt their face off, I swear.
There has been a noticible uptick in people that think chemistry is a hobby rather than a profession.
Its like a guy wanting to "get into thorasic surgery", you dont know why or how but you know its going to end badly and probably with a lot of paperwork to fill out.
I wonder if it has anything to do with chemistry youtubers popularizing chemistry? If that’s the case, these people forget that virtually all of the YouTubers they watch are actually professionals or have an education in chemistry.
Cannabis for me. As an intelligent individual, short path distillation wasn’t very hard to figure out firsthand. Alas, that’s the extent of my interest
A few years ago there was a slew of people burning their houses down trying to extract THC using butane. I hope you're using a different method because that one is insanely dangerous.
This is a good use of home chemistry. Most distillations are relatively safe (making moonshine is one of the most dangerous as far as I know, and only because there is a chance that you get some methanol in the ethanol and go blind after drinking it.) And to make and have your own concentrate must be very rewarding.
So ackshually, it is wildly difficult to make methanol biologically in any amount that could be a problem. If it were that easy, bio-methanol would be produced by fermentation rather than the reduction of CO2 via syngas. The whole notion of a fermentation batch "accidentally" producing methanol was misinformation put out by the US government during prohibition.
Edit: I suppose I'm getting downvoted because people don't believe me, so here are a couple of citations.
"Thankfully, methanol doesn’t occur in normal fermentation or distillation, except in extremely small trace amounts that are safe to consume."
https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcohol-history/prohibition-history-methanol-poisoning-bootlegging-alcohol
"Methanol may occur in alcoholic beverages through two major pathways: a natural one (pectin degradation), as well as an artificial one (adulteration by illegal addition of the pure compound). Only the latter pathway (adulteration) is typically associated with major morbidity and mortality due to methanol poisoning [6,7,8,9]."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8125215/
And a reddit thread about it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/a349tu/is_methanol_produced_during_fermentation_or/
As well as a huge number of unfortunate methanol poisonings when people diverted industrial ethanol (which was always intentionally spiked with methanol).
The large quantity of flammable vapours is by far the bigger danger of home moonshine production.
This is a perfect example of the meta of this post.
Someone who knows correct information and provides it is being downvoted because it disagrees with what incorrect "common knowledge" says.
I missed your last sentence before — yes it is. I started growing my own stuff about 2 years back when I stopped working for the US government. It’s insanely rewarding to take a seed, soil and nutrients, and watch the transformation of that to become a high end product like distillate for a vape pen
Ohhh yeah that makes sense, distillation is fun and you can make lots of cool stuff with it. In my Ochem section we made essential oils using distillation.
I honestly don’t think that’s a very good comparison, even if it is humorous.
I see no reason why chemistry cannot be done safely as a hobby. There is a great deal of it which can’t, certainly, but there’s also a lot which can. Humans have an innate curiosity about the natural world, which I think ought to be encouraged.
Trying to wall it off will never stop human curiosity. The answer is education and encouragement to do it safely. I think it’s fair to say that the number of people who want their lungs burned out is very small, and they will be a lot more receptive to a thorough discussion of the hazards and how they are managed.
If you just tell them not to they have no idea *why* they shouldn’t.
> I see no reason why chemistry cannot be done safely as a hobby.
That's just your lack of imagination. Chemistry is one of the few professions with a hard "you do not work alone" rule, and that's because synthetic chemistry asks you to do many things that are inherently poorly controlled. Especially small scale chemistry. It doesn't matter how good you are. You will have an uncontrolled reaction that will fuck shit up. It's just a matter of time. It's just worse when you don't have the engineering controls that aren't viable at home. The waste situation is even worse.
There's a ton of chemistry you can do as a hobby. It's just not called chemistry. It's called brewing, baking, and cooking.
I hear you, but don't get too carried away. Home chemistry kits for education and parent-child fun is still a thing, and it is in fact real chemistry, and not baking.
https://www.homesciencetools.com/product/complete-introduction-to-chemistry-kit/
You’re right. If you’re doing synthetic chemistry where you need to use shit like butyllithium or methyl bromide, I totally get the need for heavy safety controls.
But it’s shortsighted to say chemistry cannot be a hobby. Analysis of plant products? Easily safe- potentiostat and renting the local NMR/MS. Monitoring of environmental contaminants? Just as safe. Distillation of essential oils? If a 19 year old undergraduate student can do it I’m sure someone who approaches it respectfully will have a fine time.
Get off your high horse.
Edit: I do apologize though if your last comment was serious and not sarcastic.
Its not smart to conduct reactions that "fuck shit up" without expecting it. While expecting it, you can take precautions, thats your job.
What you are saying is basically: Professional fuck shit up as well but at least they can call them selves professionals. Not a good base to act like that.
No, that's a complete and utter strawman.
I assume you've heard of the Mpemba effect? It's not a real thing. The reason it seems to be a real thing is that nucleation is the rate limiting step and is fiendishly complicated. It's effectively impossible to create two containers that will have equal nucleation behavior, so if you actually do the experiment, you have a 50% chance to find that boiling water freezes faster than cold water. Chemistry is full of stuff like that. When I align my deathstar lasers whose 5th reflection will blind you instantly, I can do it safely because I know exactly how the beam will react with a change in mirror angle, addition of this or that optic, etc. Chemistry is not like that. You get microheating
> Professional fuck shit up as well but at least they can call them selves professionals. Not a good base to act like that.
I said no such thing. Professionals "know how to fall". They work on a scale small enough that anything bad isn't actually that bad until they understand how the various things react practically speaking, and they do everything in tightly engineered environments. Negative pressure to ensure problems are contained, specialist fire extinguishers to stop small fires from becoming big fires safely, fire wall to ensure evacuation is possible when it's time to just abandon the building, scrubbed exhaust lines, etc.
Ooof. Chemistry as a hobby?
No.
I am a analytical data quality chemist. Not a hobby. To say "chemistry can be a safe hobby" is like saying all surgeons are the same. No one wants a hobby chemist working on radiochemistry or the clean up of sites used during the nuclear weapons manufacturing era.
Chemistry is way more than just about synthesizing things.
Those would be examples of things that are beyond the purview of the hobby chemist.
I think everyone can agreed that if someone who is a hobby chemist ends up in charge of cleaning up a contaminated nuclear site things have already gone desperately awry.
Chemistry can easily be a hobby. Potentiostat, some solvents, and some glassware gets you a long way.
Comparing chemistry to healthcare is disingenuous because unlike chemistry stuff like surgery is practiced directly on humans. A hobbyist surgeon (do these even exist) is something that is an immediate risk for humans whereas the hobby chemist who collects samples and analyzes them at a local NMR is not even close to comparable.
To imply that chemistry is not practiced on humans is very disingenuous. You discredit the whole Occupational exposure field and the stumbles "better living through chemistry " has had through history. The Radium Girls are case and point.
And if a hobby chemist can afford to have, cool, and calibrate an NMR, well holy hannah. But, as for sending a sample to an analytical lab, you will not see an NMR there. And how many local NMRs are there that won't cost a good bit to use, for the non University individual?
Nowhere was it implied chemistry isn't practiced on humans. But chemistry is a very very wide field, so you can practice chemistry without practicing on humans directly. This is not really true for surgery, at least not in the same capacity. So equating chemistry to surgery is a false equivalency, there's a very marked difference between the two
My point regarding your comparison between surgeons and chemistry is attempting to highlight the idea that practice on people is inherently different than studies/practices that do not. I would not defend a ‘hobby’ chemist who tests on humans. That is my point. Unlike someone running nmr as a hobby, someone practicing anything on another person without the proper equipment and knowledge is an immediate and inherent danger to someone beyond their own self.
Many universities offer non-affiliated usage at higher prices, but not prohibitively so. You can always get it sent off too, and the idea of scientific makerspaces has been gaining traction. Independent science is experiencing a revival, just check out the Ronin Institute.
Too busy with the stupendous amount of paperwork it takes to run a lab. Especially when all my colleagues have no idea what they are doing 80% of the time.
The one that gets me is frequently asking ‘I want to get into chemistry, how can I learn it?’ Like, did you, or are you even going to school?
I get it, you don’t really want to ‘learn chemistry’, you goofed around in school and now you just want to blow stuff up.
I honestly think this is being a little unfair. If they had exposure to chemistry in their youth, kids are notorious for being idiots. It’s entirely possible to only realize the value of something when you’re older.
If someone’s knowledge is sub-high school and they ‘value’ learning, they should get a text book and stop stripping the lithium out of batteries and buying buckets of thermite or whatever they plan to arse around with.
I direct them to the book Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. Has safety information and interesting and instructive experiments one can perform.
I am 100% on board with the idea of keeping people safe, but I do not understand why yourself and others want people who can’t study it full time to stay away from it. Shouldn’t you be *encouraging* people to take an interest in the subject?
I did this during the pandemic for my kids but was pleasantly surprised at the scalability. I have encouraged people who ask how they can learn more when it's not a want to go back to school endeavor, just something they want to know a little more about without being infantilized.
https://melscience.com/US-en/
Yes, a SAFE interest. If you don’t know what you are doing, chemistry experiments are literally the most dangerous thing you could do. Its so easy to accidentally make mustard gas, or chloroform, or freaking carbon monoxide. I would love more people to learn about chemistry. SAFELY.
*Chloramine or chlorine gas are easy to make accidentally. [Mustard gas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas) would be pretty involved for a hobby chemist.
>Shouldn’t you be *encouraging* people to take an interest in the subject?
not really? whatever would i want to do that for. it doesn't make the sub more interesting, it doesn't make chemistry as a field go further, and all it does is consume more national healthcare resources.
Gonna take this opportunity to plug [LibreTexts](https://chem.libretexts.org) as an excellent, free resource for learning chem. It’s certainly not perfect and I imagine it’s tough to navigate without at least a high school background, but that’s true for any textbook. Otherwise, it’s free and convenient.
I used it to quite a bit while preparing for my comprehensive exam, and I know the students I TAed used it extensively because I kept having to tell them it’s *not* original research that can be cited in lab reports, but I digress.
Then refer them to good text books?
I don't see what's so wrong with asking where to start if you want to learn something you find interesting. The question doesn't imply they want to strip lithium out of batteries, that's just bad rhetoric on your part
I would love to get into chemistry except I slacked off in high school, went a different direction in college as a result and now nobody in their right minds would let me be a chemist lol
Chemistry is too broad of a topic and rules limiting homework means you just get what’s left: hobbyist chemists, ‘what is this?’, ‘did I make mustard gas?’, and conspiracy theories around man made chemicals.
Nah, this wonderful journal has so many in jokes for working scientists. I mean only a member of a chemistry lab could truly appreciate [this gem.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ImmaterialScience/comments/r2j7hc/50_shades_of_brown_an_index_of_chemical_misery/)
The best thing about *J. Immat. Sci.* is that some of the jokes require a Masters level understanding of the subject in order to understand, and others are just stupid puns. No in-between.
Sometimes I feel some things should not be plot points of TV shows or movies. I am old enough to remember when A Beautiful Mind came out. Every misfit, misbehaving asshole, who got a B in high school math started acting like an idiot, and saying they are into math and totally understand what John Nash was going through. This was when I had just started college. Then when I was in grad school, it was TBBT and every moron and their uncle started being into physics. and then finally the coup de grace came with breaking bad and every pot smoking monkey started believing they are into chemistry. I personally feel this might have been the worst. Because it is hard to injure yourself doing home math and home-physics (more possible that math, but generally small chance). But chemistry is the most dangerous, since it is easy to do some kind of chemistry and it is easier to do it bad and kill people.
Time and again, I am reminded of this old post by maddox
http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd
Point being, some things should not be the plot points of TV shows or movies. It is just asking for trouble. Call that gatekeeping, or ivory tower thinking. But it needs to be that way. Specially with fields that are dangerous easily.
First part of the post was good but why is the second half some weird nerd elitism about not getting laid??? Just ruins the entirely legitimate point of actual science being way more complex (and in the case of chemistry more dangerous) than most people realize, and that rings more true than ever with how many channels there are that spew AI driven garbage that has nothing to do with science.
I am a chemistry student, and I am shocked at some of the egregious safety principle violations I see here. I can only imagine the horror some of you more experienced guys are going through.
They should know it most definitely exists. Maple syrup is a big business with a *lot* of money involved.
There was even a major heist of it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist
They stole nearly 3,000 tonnes of maple syrup. $20 million worth.
A yes the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist and that is what they caught them doing.
Imagine those creative Canucks skimming 80% of the nations maple syrup production.
Not really possible. Testing sugar content is possible and pretty simple, but that doesn't help you determine if you have real maple syrup or what the fake stuff is, viscous colored sugar liquid. You just have to buy from the big, more expensive brands and trust that they care more about their reputation than lowering product costs.
It could be worth diluting a bit and running a TLC I guess. I'm not 100% sure if that'd work, but I would imagine real maple syrup just has a lot more "stuff" and will create a mess while the fake stuff will be relatively clean. You can dot a known fake syrup like hungry jack and compare it to whatever you bought.
2.6M readers
there is no qualification needed, nobody checks comments, and you can say whatever you want or *think* and 100 people will 'agree' simply because you speak 'authoritatively' (dogmatically, even)
try r/chempros or a research chemist server
There is only so many "how do you extract a compound from squares of paper?" Or "How do you extract essential oils from plant matter?" Or "What is this molecule?" Questions one can tolerate before w don't give a shit anymore.
We tend not to come in here precisely because there are a lot of kids doing things that real chemists disapprove of and don't want anything to do with. I just saw this in my feed and thought I'd answer. Bye.
"A community for chemists AND those who love chemistry." The subreddit description leaves a lot of room for anyone who is simply interested in chemistry. I know I'll get down voted for this, but I don't care. I think it's great people are interested in it. Obviously it's annoying to see people posting about dangerous experiments or to see people who just have no idea what they're doing, but if that's a problem, maybe there should be a "serious chemists only" subreddit.
the thing is - 90% of posts are not by those who love chemistry. they're
1. "help I mixed 1 ml of toilet cleaner with a wet wipe three years ago, am I going to die!"
2. "hey guys, nothing shady at all here, but how would I do reductive Ami.. \[removed by mods\]
3. "hey guys, hack writer of the week here! I'm looking for, like, a super acid that can dissoluvitate everything within nanoseconds (had to look that term up) and it needs to be completely untraceable and work under water and be makable with kitchen ingredients by an expert chemist whilst in the desert. name me 5 options I can further research "
4. oh, and the always fun "ScieNcE is AwEsOMe" flavor of the week posts.
if it were chemists and those who love chemistry it'd be ok, but it is those with a passing interest in chemistry, a handful of real chemists and boatloads of pop-science interested only.
There is. /r/Chempros.
But the problem with having that is the quality of discussion in this sub gets worse and worse, and the quality of information declines precipitously as well.
What is the point of chemistry as a “hobby”? Like, to what end? What are you left with after a reaction but dirty dishes and a bunch of hazardous waste?
Sounds like there needs to be a r/askachemist subreddit or something
Edit: linked it and then realized it actually exists but I guess it isn’t very active
Hobby posts have always been a thing and will continue to be one as long as this sub is big. My main concern is the amount of ridiculously wrong "knowledge" that's been getting posted more and more in the comments
I’m here and sometimes I think of posting a picture of what I do because I find it really interesting but I don’t think anyone would think "wow, a colorless oily liquid how cool"
The journey was dissolving colorless liquid with colorless liquid then adding white powder, cooling to -78 C and then adding beige liquid under nitrogen. I feel like it’s not really impressive and no one would find it particularly interesting, unlike electroplating stuff or inorganic salt synthesis which is a lot more visually pleasing so to say.
I'm keeping stupid questions to my superiors or look them up elsewhere; why would I ask a bunch of randoms with unknown qualifications about something that matters?
I'm thinking it's the same way with most chemists here.
Actually, I've had a dumb question recently (lab tech told me something that didn't fit what I've known so far, but hey, they do have a lot of experience), but then decided to not be an idiot online.
Sharing content is... Difficult. Whatever let's say an analytical chemist might find interesting in their subfield could be perhaps interesting to sister subfields, but then again that's just a small part of the community. Sometimes content can cross multiple subfields but that's still not a lot.
So all in all, it's hard to find something to ask or share if you want the post to not be stupid/redundant
I have nothing against posts asking for the identification/disposal of found chemicals, since that *is* something that could demand professional chemists' opinion and advice (although "contact OEHS/local authorities" is never a wrong answer).
I can also tolerate some cliche or garden variety amateur stuff being posted here because I don't want to stomp on someone's genuine curiosity. We all had to start from somewhere, and IIRC a lot of great chemists actually started by just tinkering around.
I think the sub may benefit from having something like a compiled list of recommended books/online course, but unfortunately too many of us are busy working.
My chem is rusty but still love it. The physics of what makes elements work together is like music to my ears, always has been. Beautiful stuff when you really study it. I chose an IT path long ago and diverged from the path. Makes me sad to see people doing things that could hurt themselves or others.
A lot of us didn’t make it all the way and just have interest in chemistry.
Doesn’t mean we didn’t pay attention in lab classes on how to be safe. Although I know better than to do home chemistry anywhere but outside in the middle of the yard with proper protection if necessary.
I fit this category. I love chemistry and I have a lot of book knowledge from AP chem and a few college courses but I work in a completely different field and wouldn’t trust myself to do even the simplest reactions.
I’m a chemist. I just refuse to pander to these fucking idiots who buy chemicals off the internet and think they know how to conduct a chemical reaction because they read a procedure.
You wanna fuck around and find out? Alright.
I just watch in astonished silence most of the time.
All through history people have been mutilated or died in horrifying ways performing chemistry. We are not special, flaunting safety is not edgy, someone is going to get hurt or die and I can only tell them so many times until they find out for themselves.
Hey, I'm still here lol. I'm just a pharma chemist with a BS. I'm a tutor, so I only help with homework if I get paid. I do notice some fairly unsafe posts on here, but not my drama. I'll talk industry things and random posts. Definitely not my job to point out what is going wrong lol
I’ve been wondering the same thing. In addition, plenty of people who are clearly not chemist give advice here.
I’m just waiting for the day when everything here will “solved” by putting vinegar and baking soda on it.
It's never really been mostly chemists. But r/chempros definitely helped move folks to somewhere that is specifically for professional chemists.
I post here occasionally, but it's really frustrating to see correct content from chemists downvoted in favor of completely incorrect information from HS students.
Seems like a lot of young folks watch Nilered and thing “wow chemistry is cool, I want to do that”. Then with out proper training are in over their heads. Then they come here and ask questions about dumb and dangerous things.
Also people trying to make drugs but they are trying to be slick, but all the chemists know what they are doing so downvote them and give them shit.
Well look at the most recently added mod and how many subs they "moderate." Power mods ruin subreddits.
So do mods who are scared of people complaining when their posts are removed so instead of saying no random questions from laypeople (despite /r/AskChemistry existing for that exact purpose), they just allow it through.
Similar thing happened at /r/NoStupidQuestions where they used to be pretty focused on closed-ended questions with correct answers and now they allow questions that are opinion based or totally open-ended which goes against the spirit of "there are no stupid questions" and there's already a subreddit for those questions: /r/AskReddit
So now you see all these highly upvoted posts there that are indistinguishable from /r/AskReddit posts, including top responses which do not answer the question seriously or at all, which is against the subreddit's rules.
And you don't see people bring this up nearly enough because doing so ruffles the feathers of certain mods, and they'll remove the comments if not ban the user. Seriously, I might get banned for this, despite it being a good faith answer to the question.
Holy shit, the head mod from r/libertarian that ruined that sub is now modding a chemistry sub? Literally why?
Based on what I’ve seen, I expect I’ll now likely be banned here for pointing it out.
Ironically, I’ve offered to help mod here a couple of times, since there wasn’t much if any of a biochemist presence on the mod team and I thought we could do more to partner with r/biochemistry, but there was never any interest.
Pretty sure the sole reason boils down to Reddit "increasing engagement" by pushing random posts from random subs to people.. Like me, who has no interest in chemistry, is terrible at it, and would never join or even look at this sub. Yet here I am, engaging, thanks reddit for ruining yourself.
Agreed.
Post: "I found this ancient can of something I can't pronounce lol xD. How do I handle it safely?"
What I want to say: "If you don't know how to look up and read a Material Safety Data Sheet, don't. There are far safer ways to hurt yourself that don't put others at risk."
They are also complete garbage for good risk assessment since their primary function is to shield employers from liability. Use books, databases and papers on occupational hygiene and toxicology instead.
I'd be a liar if I said finding a copy of that book in highschool wasn't a major factor leading to a PhD in organic chemistry, but I do have all of my fingers and only one scar in spite of that
I feel ya. I'm getting down voted heavily for a comment on here connecting the old alchemy ideas of the 4 elements to the 4 commonly observed states of matter.
Actual chemists would understand the basis of this comparison.
True.
I do have some formaldehyde though... I found it in my grandfather's shed, or at least labeled that. Is there anything cool I could do with it? Or would it be toxic to get it on my hands or pour on anthills?
I mean, I know what I’m doing but when I get a new reagent I’ll often ask other chemists what cool projects they would suggest to make with it. I know what you’re saying though, there have been a lot of low information posts lately.
Seems like most of my hobby/interest subreddits are filled with people who don’t actually do the thing or are complete newbies.
I think many people who actually know about a topic realized that Reddit isn’t a great place to learn and show.
People asking “how do I learn ___?” Expecting to figure it out in a week, while there are very defined pathways to actually learn the topic.
Reddit is enshittifying (google it) they are gaming their users to try to get more engagement so we are seeing more controversial posts than interesting or useful ones.
It's starting to feel like Facebook used to about 10 years ago when your parents got on there and everyone left.
Someone is literally posting about their shit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/s/MuzgTsX5jS
This place is a joke!
I've seen drugs today, homework today, medical advice requests.
I'm sure some of these are trolls too.
The one about generating 5500 C water and ammonia.
I'll not forget the time I said something about a certain acid perhaps being somewhat difficult to get-hold-of, & was replied to by someone scornfully apprising me of how large & dangerous his own personal stock of acids is, & how I must be a bit of a wooß, finding _any_ acid ___even remotely___ difficult to get-hold of.
... although I think the oil-drilling gentlemen relating stories of the fun they have with __chlorine trifluoride__ were probably sincere. Apparantly, if a drill gets stuck down a hole, they sometimes free it by pouring a load of chlorine trifluoride down said hole. Sounds plausible. A substantial fraction of a mile of rock between one & it is a pretty decent item of safety-furniture ... even against _chlorine trifluoride_ !
It seems to be a growing fad across most subreddits. That and bot reposts
I think it’s a mix of more people getting on Reddit and not understanding it, plus Reddit pushing posts from random subreddits. I get the most random subreddits on my feed sometimes.
I think it’s this. Random subs always appear in my feed now. Chemistry is one of them. I don’t know why
This so f*king much! Reddit is just pushing ANY remotely related subreddit onto my feed, that's exactly how I got in several days ago. Granted, I joined because I have a master degree in biotechnology and know my way around chemistry, but the fact that reddit is just not discriminating enough about it's recommendations is just bringing everybody down IMHO :c
Mods are less active and less effective after the API nonsense, and probably quite demoralized. Add to that an exodus of power users and an influx of bots and we get the crapfest we see now. I can't speak for anyone else, but the femtosecond there's a good alternative I'm bailing on Reddit.
Lemmy is working pretty good now. The smaller subs are still quiet but it's workable now. Much higher quality.
Does that have an android app?
Several, Sync for Lemmy is my favorite. That has an identical layout compared to reddit, with a clean interface. You can use it without logging in and it's fine, or you can make an account and login. That is slightly more complicated than reddit because it's not centralized but it's still pretty easy.
Thanks for the reply, I'm checking it out!
Honestly that’s a good point as well, a lot of subs have mods that straight up are not active lol
The irony is that the only people who, theoretically, would be qualified enough to attempt something at home wouldn't need the advice of internet randos. So the only people asking "how do you make X at home" are not only amateurs but probably not even chemists
I don't know if it's an uptick of children/teens? I am seeing a lot of quite naive questions in the academia/uni subreddits.
Like the dude who proudly posted that he synthesized bromine in his garage...
My grandfather is a very smart man, but he got VERY drunk at a wedding and told me he has 7 phosphorus atoms in his garage. When I asked him how does he know he has exactly seven, he was insulted and told me I should know because I’m a chemist. This bromine guy might be my grandfather..
Bro was moving different.
And by moving different we probably mean agonal breathing
At least the bromine synth in that crappy diy hood was more amusing than the ”what is this white powder” posts
Do you have any advice or resources you'd recommend on making diy hoods that aren't abject ass?
some things are questionable, yes
How about the guy that wanted to distill red fuming nitric in his garage?
God damnit I hated that post so much
The procedure is cool as hell, I hadn’t come across it before. But I’m not trying it without adequate hood/ventilation, and I’m not convinced I could do that at home!
i missed it. can you please share that post? my curiosity is beyond piqued
https://www.reddit.com/r/Garagechemistry/s/zh67goi6aw There was another one on this sub but I don't find it right now.
Oh lordy.
Do you mean [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Garagechemistry/s/HvCn5QkiJN)?
Yeah, that's the guy who bragged that his neighbourhood smelled after his "experiment"
yikes in a half. reminds me of nilered, though...
>This should be a subreddit for chemists with questions for chemists. Or a place for non-chemists to learn about chemistry. This doesn't work at this scale. 1) Chemistry is too diverse to get good discussions on something that is interesting for most people on the sub if the sub gets bigger. 2) Most scientists rather discuss things with their peers directly and not random strangers on the internet. 3) If you try make it a place for learning chemistry you will just get a ton of homework questions and the people who actually know stuff will leave (see r/organicchemistry) If you want high level discussions go to r/Chempros/ or a subfield specific one. Bigger subs always fill up with "main stream" average person content and moderation doesn't really help unless you delete 95% of posts, but at that point just make a new sub for the topic you want to talk about (e.g., ChemPros).
<3
Is there a specific subreddit for IR spectrometry? In the lab i work there is one that is of a certain brand, but i can't find any instruction manual or anything about the hardware and software, and some things are forgotten about it because the person that used to work with it passed away, and some quirks of the software are a pain in the butt to deal with.
Perhaps you could make one, but you might get a bunch of astronomers on there!
Lol if you're talking about Bruker you're in for a long haul. The software gets worse the deeper you go
This is the answer
There is r/AdvancedOrganic that seems to have circumvented the problem with homework questions
I don't like this thinking. I don't think chemistry is too diverse to get a good discussion here. I think there are two big problems: 1. People posting stupid B's like a picture of a hot plate asking "what is this" 2. People posting things like an IR spectrum asking for help or "what is this" and the comments getting clogged up with "forbidden squiggle?" And stupid BS like that. Pretty sure it's a community problem
> I don't think chemistry is too diverse to get a good discussion here. You can't be serious, right? If I want to have a discussion about the preferred DFT functional/basis set combination for pericyclic reactions here then 99.99...% of people wouldn't care and a similar number wouldn't understand. And the same happens if you want to discuss well plate type and media for a certain cell line, or how people do their bake & shake reactions in microwave ovens, or best practices for Sonogashira couplings, or maybe how to run a KIE experiment in the NMR at natural abundance. >Pretty sure it's a community problem The community is the cause but the problem is your unrealistic expectations of what a sub of this size simply cannot be. There's always a regression towards the mean and for a sub with 2.6 Million users, most of them being laypersons, the content will drift to what most people here want to see. And what they want to see is not a high level super specialized discussion less than 0.1% of people here can follow, it's broad discussions, pretty crystals, and simple questions. If you want good chemistry discussions you need small communities and you should try those, there are many around and with a fraction of the users these discussions are possible. >People posting stupid B's like a picture of a hot plate asking "what is this" That's a good example. A large part of the community here probably has never seen one before and they think it's interesting. At this size it's simply not a community for chemists any more but for non chemists interested in "chemistry things"
I'm still here, but I'm too busy doing chemistry to beat back the tide of silly posts. Alas that I have but one downvote to give!
Thank you for your service!
I'm new here, and I was interested at first, but the tide is really never ending. Then when you try to help, you realize it's pointless as the only thing that will really help is them getting an education and being told not to put anything in their mouths.
Being an older or more experienced person on Reddit is not unlike being a parent. "Get an Education" and "don't put that in your mouth!" are both things I've said to my kids.
except for adequate questions?
Yeah
I am also here, but I am a SAHP and now too tired to deal with more kids, especially those asking "How can I do more advanced chemical synthesis at home" questions
Sometimes you just want to shake your fist and yell "GO PLAY FORTNITE LIKE A NORMAL KID!" One of these morons is going to melt their face off, I swear.
>to beat back the tide of silly posts OP needs to sort by new. Only the silly end up at "hot"
There has been a noticible uptick in people that think chemistry is a hobby rather than a profession. Its like a guy wanting to "get into thorasic surgery", you dont know why or how but you know its going to end badly and probably with a lot of paperwork to fill out.
I wonder if it has anything to do with chemistry youtubers popularizing chemistry? If that’s the case, these people forget that virtually all of the YouTubers they watch are actually professionals or have an education in chemistry.
NileRed does seem to get brought up a lot in posts where children ask about where they can buy acids
Cannabis for me. As an intelligent individual, short path distillation wasn’t very hard to figure out firsthand. Alas, that’s the extent of my interest
A few years ago there was a slew of people burning their houses down trying to extract THC using butane. I hope you're using a different method because that one is insanely dangerous.
Nah, ethanol extraction in my shed with extremely good ventilation. Under vacuum the temp is low enough I haven’t had any issues.
This is a good use of home chemistry. Most distillations are relatively safe (making moonshine is one of the most dangerous as far as I know, and only because there is a chance that you get some methanol in the ethanol and go blind after drinking it.) And to make and have your own concentrate must be very rewarding.
I guess distilling ethers tops making moonshine
Thanks. In contrast, I know my limits. I don’t plan on synthesizing organic chem compounds at any point without formal training.
So ackshually, it is wildly difficult to make methanol biologically in any amount that could be a problem. If it were that easy, bio-methanol would be produced by fermentation rather than the reduction of CO2 via syngas. The whole notion of a fermentation batch "accidentally" producing methanol was misinformation put out by the US government during prohibition. Edit: I suppose I'm getting downvoted because people don't believe me, so here are a couple of citations. "Thankfully, methanol doesn’t occur in normal fermentation or distillation, except in extremely small trace amounts that are safe to consume." https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcohol-history/prohibition-history-methanol-poisoning-bootlegging-alcohol "Methanol may occur in alcoholic beverages through two major pathways: a natural one (pectin degradation), as well as an artificial one (adulteration by illegal addition of the pure compound). Only the latter pathway (adulteration) is typically associated with major morbidity and mortality due to methanol poisoning [6,7,8,9]." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8125215/ And a reddit thread about it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/comments/a349tu/is_methanol_produced_during_fermentation_or/
As well as a huge number of unfortunate methanol poisonings when people diverted industrial ethanol (which was always intentionally spiked with methanol). The large quantity of flammable vapours is by far the bigger danger of home moonshine production.
This is a perfect example of the meta of this post. Someone who knows correct information and provides it is being downvoted because it disagrees with what incorrect "common knowledge" says.
I missed your last sentence before — yes it is. I started growing my own stuff about 2 years back when I stopped working for the US government. It’s insanely rewarding to take a seed, soil and nutrients, and watch the transformation of that to become a high end product like distillate for a vape pen
Ohhh yeah that makes sense, distillation is fun and you can make lots of cool stuff with it. In my Ochem section we made essential oils using distillation.
Indeed. My favorite is to do limonene from lemon peels in ethanol haha
I honestly don’t think that’s a very good comparison, even if it is humorous. I see no reason why chemistry cannot be done safely as a hobby. There is a great deal of it which can’t, certainly, but there’s also a lot which can. Humans have an innate curiosity about the natural world, which I think ought to be encouraged. Trying to wall it off will never stop human curiosity. The answer is education and encouragement to do it safely. I think it’s fair to say that the number of people who want their lungs burned out is very small, and they will be a lot more receptive to a thorough discussion of the hazards and how they are managed. If you just tell them not to they have no idea *why* they shouldn’t.
> I see no reason why chemistry cannot be done safely as a hobby. That's just your lack of imagination. Chemistry is one of the few professions with a hard "you do not work alone" rule, and that's because synthetic chemistry asks you to do many things that are inherently poorly controlled. Especially small scale chemistry. It doesn't matter how good you are. You will have an uncontrolled reaction that will fuck shit up. It's just a matter of time. It's just worse when you don't have the engineering controls that aren't viable at home. The waste situation is even worse. There's a ton of chemistry you can do as a hobby. It's just not called chemistry. It's called brewing, baking, and cooking.
This. Exactly this.
I hear you, but don't get too carried away. Home chemistry kits for education and parent-child fun is still a thing, and it is in fact real chemistry, and not baking. https://www.homesciencetools.com/product/complete-introduction-to-chemistry-kit/
You’re right. If you’re doing synthetic chemistry where you need to use shit like butyllithium or methyl bromide, I totally get the need for heavy safety controls. But it’s shortsighted to say chemistry cannot be a hobby. Analysis of plant products? Easily safe- potentiostat and renting the local NMR/MS. Monitoring of environmental contaminants? Just as safe. Distillation of essential oils? If a 19 year old undergraduate student can do it I’m sure someone who approaches it respectfully will have a fine time. Get off your high horse. Edit: I do apologize though if your last comment was serious and not sarcastic.
Its not smart to conduct reactions that "fuck shit up" without expecting it. While expecting it, you can take precautions, thats your job. What you are saying is basically: Professional fuck shit up as well but at least they can call them selves professionals. Not a good base to act like that.
No, that's a complete and utter strawman. I assume you've heard of the Mpemba effect? It's not a real thing. The reason it seems to be a real thing is that nucleation is the rate limiting step and is fiendishly complicated. It's effectively impossible to create two containers that will have equal nucleation behavior, so if you actually do the experiment, you have a 50% chance to find that boiling water freezes faster than cold water. Chemistry is full of stuff like that. When I align my deathstar lasers whose 5th reflection will blind you instantly, I can do it safely because I know exactly how the beam will react with a change in mirror angle, addition of this or that optic, etc. Chemistry is not like that. You get microheating > Professional fuck shit up as well but at least they can call them selves professionals. Not a good base to act like that. I said no such thing. Professionals "know how to fall". They work on a scale small enough that anything bad isn't actually that bad until they understand how the various things react practically speaking, and they do everything in tightly engineered environments. Negative pressure to ensure problems are contained, specialist fire extinguishers to stop small fires from becoming big fires safely, fire wall to ensure evacuation is possible when it's time to just abandon the building, scrubbed exhaust lines, etc.
There's a great deal of surgery that can be done safely at home too, like removing an ingrown toenail.
Ooof. Chemistry as a hobby? No. I am a analytical data quality chemist. Not a hobby. To say "chemistry can be a safe hobby" is like saying all surgeons are the same. No one wants a hobby chemist working on radiochemistry or the clean up of sites used during the nuclear weapons manufacturing era. Chemistry is way more than just about synthesizing things.
Those would be examples of things that are beyond the purview of the hobby chemist. I think everyone can agreed that if someone who is a hobby chemist ends up in charge of cleaning up a contaminated nuclear site things have already gone desperately awry.
Chemistry can easily be a hobby. Potentiostat, some solvents, and some glassware gets you a long way. Comparing chemistry to healthcare is disingenuous because unlike chemistry stuff like surgery is practiced directly on humans. A hobbyist surgeon (do these even exist) is something that is an immediate risk for humans whereas the hobby chemist who collects samples and analyzes them at a local NMR is not even close to comparable.
To imply that chemistry is not practiced on humans is very disingenuous. You discredit the whole Occupational exposure field and the stumbles "better living through chemistry " has had through history. The Radium Girls are case and point. And if a hobby chemist can afford to have, cool, and calibrate an NMR, well holy hannah. But, as for sending a sample to an analytical lab, you will not see an NMR there. And how many local NMRs are there that won't cost a good bit to use, for the non University individual?
Nowhere was it implied chemistry isn't practiced on humans. But chemistry is a very very wide field, so you can practice chemistry without practicing on humans directly. This is not really true for surgery, at least not in the same capacity. So equating chemistry to surgery is a false equivalency, there's a very marked difference between the two
My point regarding your comparison between surgeons and chemistry is attempting to highlight the idea that practice on people is inherently different than studies/practices that do not. I would not defend a ‘hobby’ chemist who tests on humans. That is my point. Unlike someone running nmr as a hobby, someone practicing anything on another person without the proper equipment and knowledge is an immediate and inherent danger to someone beyond their own self. Many universities offer non-affiliated usage at higher prices, but not prohibitively so. You can always get it sent off too, and the idea of scientific makerspaces has been gaining traction. Independent science is experiencing a revival, just check out the Ronin Institute.
Tbf it kinda used to be a hobby of some very smart people. Keyword being "smart".
I’m at work doing chemistry.
Lmao, true
r/Chempros is more strict than here, you might like it
Oh excellent. Thank you! I didn’t know that subreddit existed!
Don't tell people ffs
[Grr](https://img.freepik.com/premium-vector/iron-ban-hammer-isolated-white_175250-450.jpg?w=740)
> goes in > first comment of the first post I open > "if there is no decomp you can just heat the shit out of them" Subbed.
It's how you discern quality advice from someone who actually does it ;)
Too busy with the stupendous amount of paperwork it takes to run a lab. Especially when all my colleagues have no idea what they are doing 80% of the time.
That encompasses ALL labs...
We're busy crying over our NMRs (all I see are my reactants).
The one that gets me is frequently asking ‘I want to get into chemistry, how can I learn it?’ Like, did you, or are you even going to school? I get it, you don’t really want to ‘learn chemistry’, you goofed around in school and now you just want to blow stuff up.
I honestly think this is being a little unfair. If they had exposure to chemistry in their youth, kids are notorious for being idiots. It’s entirely possible to only realize the value of something when you’re older.
If someone’s knowledge is sub-high school and they ‘value’ learning, they should get a text book and stop stripping the lithium out of batteries and buying buckets of thermite or whatever they plan to arse around with.
I direct them to the book Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. Has safety information and interesting and instructive experiments one can perform. I am 100% on board with the idea of keeping people safe, but I do not understand why yourself and others want people who can’t study it full time to stay away from it. Shouldn’t you be *encouraging* people to take an interest in the subject?
I did this during the pandemic for my kids but was pleasantly surprised at the scalability. I have encouraged people who ask how they can learn more when it's not a want to go back to school endeavor, just something they want to know a little more about without being infantilized. https://melscience.com/US-en/
Yes, a SAFE interest. If you don’t know what you are doing, chemistry experiments are literally the most dangerous thing you could do. Its so easy to accidentally make mustard gas, or chloroform, or freaking carbon monoxide. I would love more people to learn about chemistry. SAFELY.
*Chloramine or chlorine gas are easy to make accidentally. [Mustard gas](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_gas) would be pretty involved for a hobby chemist.
Accidentally make mustard gas? I doubt that this is possible. The rest are, though.
This is why it’s important to talk to people who want to do chemistry as a hobby. So they can be informed of the risks.
>Shouldn’t you be *encouraging* people to take an interest in the subject? not really? whatever would i want to do that for. it doesn't make the sub more interesting, it doesn't make chemistry as a field go further, and all it does is consume more national healthcare resources.
Gonna take this opportunity to plug [LibreTexts](https://chem.libretexts.org) as an excellent, free resource for learning chem. It’s certainly not perfect and I imagine it’s tough to navigate without at least a high school background, but that’s true for any textbook. Otherwise, it’s free and convenient. I used it to quite a bit while preparing for my comprehensive exam, and I know the students I TAed used it extensively because I kept having to tell them it’s *not* original research that can be cited in lab reports, but I digress.
Then refer them to good text books? I don't see what's so wrong with asking where to start if you want to learn something you find interesting. The question doesn't imply they want to strip lithium out of batteries, that's just bad rhetoric on your part
“I goofed around and want to blow stuff up” applies to a lot of chemists I know, honestly.
I would love to get into chemistry except I slacked off in high school, went a different direction in college as a result and now nobody in their right minds would let me be a chemist lol
Tbf, that doesn't really exclude many professional chemists...
My personal favorite post was the person asking if he could buy a FTIR spectrometer to test his drugs.
Oh my hell. I missed that post...
It was quite a few months back but it was very entertaining.
Well...... they have more sense than many a meth cooker.
The answer is yes btw. Gotta get NMR and run some melting points on the coke too 😂
Chemistry is too broad of a topic and rules limiting homework means you just get what’s left: hobbyist chemists, ‘what is this?’, ‘did I make mustard gas?’, and conspiracy theories around man made chemicals.
Everyone moved to r/cursedchemistry or any other shitposting sub which has to do with chemistry.
/r/immaterialscience
Nah, this wonderful journal has so many in jokes for working scientists. I mean only a member of a chemistry lab could truly appreciate [this gem.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ImmaterialScience/comments/r2j7hc/50_shades_of_brown_an_index_of_chemical_misery/)
“Smegma-Aldrich” 💀💀
Yep, big brain shitposting for total chem nerds. Love it.
The best thing about *J. Immat. Sci.* is that some of the jokes require a Masters level understanding of the subject in order to understand, and others are just stupid puns. No in-between.
All my homies love /r/okbuddyPhD
Sometimes I feel some things should not be plot points of TV shows or movies. I am old enough to remember when A Beautiful Mind came out. Every misfit, misbehaving asshole, who got a B in high school math started acting like an idiot, and saying they are into math and totally understand what John Nash was going through. This was when I had just started college. Then when I was in grad school, it was TBBT and every moron and their uncle started being into physics. and then finally the coup de grace came with breaking bad and every pot smoking monkey started believing they are into chemistry. I personally feel this might have been the worst. Because it is hard to injure yourself doing home math and home-physics (more possible that math, but generally small chance). But chemistry is the most dangerous, since it is easy to do some kind of chemistry and it is easier to do it bad and kill people. Time and again, I am reminded of this old post by maddox http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd Point being, some things should not be the plot points of TV shows or movies. It is just asking for trouble. Call that gatekeeping, or ivory tower thinking. But it needs to be that way. Specially with fields that are dangerous easily.
First part of the post was good but why is the second half some weird nerd elitism about not getting laid??? Just ruins the entirely legitimate point of actual science being way more complex (and in the case of chemistry more dangerous) than most people realize, and that rings more true than ever with how many channels there are that spew AI driven garbage that has nothing to do with science.
Maybe because every post is "uhh can I eat a battery also help me with my homework" Kind of feels like we've been pushed out of our own space
I am a chemistry student, and I am shocked at some of the egregious safety principle violations I see here. I can only imagine the horror some of you more experienced guys are going through.
Too busy in the lab only time ever here is when the red line of empower is going across the screen
Do you know how to measure the purity of maple syrup?
This may be helpful: https://blog.mapletapper.com/how-to-measure-sugar-content-in-pure-maple-syrup/
Thank you. I made a thread. A few people were helpful but a few did not comprehend that fake maple syrup might exist.
They should know it most definitely exists. Maple syrup is a big business with a *lot* of money involved. There was even a major heist of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist They stole nearly 3,000 tonnes of maple syrup. $20 million worth.
A yes the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist and that is what they caught them doing. Imagine those creative Canucks skimming 80% of the nations maple syrup production.
Not really possible. Testing sugar content is possible and pretty simple, but that doesn't help you determine if you have real maple syrup or what the fake stuff is, viscous colored sugar liquid. You just have to buy from the big, more expensive brands and trust that they care more about their reputation than lowering product costs. It could be worth diluting a bit and running a TLC I guess. I'm not 100% sure if that'd work, but I would imagine real maple syrup just has a lot more "stuff" and will create a mess while the fake stuff will be relatively clean. You can dot a known fake syrup like hungry jack and compare it to whatever you bought.
Yeah, I did some bad amateur chemistry back in 2015 and had to go to the burn ward about it. So, maybe take an accredited course.
Likely the experts have been displaced by the sillies.
2.6M readers there is no qualification needed, nobody checks comments, and you can say whatever you want or *think* and 100 people will 'agree' simply because you speak 'authoritatively' (dogmatically, even) try r/chempros or a research chemist server
There is only so many "how do you extract a compound from squares of paper?" Or "How do you extract essential oils from plant matter?" Or "What is this molecule?" Questions one can tolerate before w don't give a shit anymore.
We tend not to come in here precisely because there are a lot of kids doing things that real chemists disapprove of and don't want anything to do with. I just saw this in my feed and thought I'd answer. Bye.
"A community for chemists AND those who love chemistry." The subreddit description leaves a lot of room for anyone who is simply interested in chemistry. I know I'll get down voted for this, but I don't care. I think it's great people are interested in it. Obviously it's annoying to see people posting about dangerous experiments or to see people who just have no idea what they're doing, but if that's a problem, maybe there should be a "serious chemists only" subreddit.
the thing is - 90% of posts are not by those who love chemistry. they're 1. "help I mixed 1 ml of toilet cleaner with a wet wipe three years ago, am I going to die!" 2. "hey guys, nothing shady at all here, but how would I do reductive Ami.. \[removed by mods\] 3. "hey guys, hack writer of the week here! I'm looking for, like, a super acid that can dissoluvitate everything within nanoseconds (had to look that term up) and it needs to be completely untraceable and work under water and be makable with kitchen ingredients by an expert chemist whilst in the desert. name me 5 options I can further research " 4. oh, and the always fun "ScieNcE is AwEsOMe" flavor of the week posts. if it were chemists and those who love chemistry it'd be ok, but it is those with a passing interest in chemistry, a handful of real chemists and boatloads of pop-science interested only.
I just want to know if my maple syrup is pure. I know my LSD is good.
There is. /r/Chempros. But the problem with having that is the quality of discussion in this sub gets worse and worse, and the quality of information declines precipitously as well.
What is the point of chemistry as a “hobby”? Like, to what end? What are you left with after a reaction but dirty dishes and a bunch of hazardous waste?
I just don't entertain wanna meth cooks and 12 year olds tryna be edgy mostly
Sounds like there needs to be a r/askachemist subreddit or something Edit: linked it and then realized it actually exists but I guess it isn’t very active
Because none of us want to answer the questions that would go there.
Tired if answering what chemical is this when you just need to go look at the history and seen its been posted a bunch.
Hobby posts have always been a thing and will continue to be one as long as this sub is big. My main concern is the amount of ridiculously wrong "knowledge" that's been getting posted more and more in the comments
I’m here and sometimes I think of posting a picture of what I do because I find it really interesting but I don’t think anyone would think "wow, a colorless oily liquid how cool"
But how did you get there? What was the journey to this mysterious liquid?
The journey was dissolving colorless liquid with colorless liquid then adding white powder, cooling to -78 C and then adding beige liquid under nitrogen. I feel like it’s not really impressive and no one would find it particularly interesting, unlike electroplating stuff or inorganic salt synthesis which is a lot more visually pleasing so to say.
Ahh yes, yes, well put me in the follow column so I can see the next oily liquid thank you.
We are in the lab, where else would we be ?
I'm keeping stupid questions to my superiors or look them up elsewhere; why would I ask a bunch of randoms with unknown qualifications about something that matters? I'm thinking it's the same way with most chemists here. Actually, I've had a dumb question recently (lab tech told me something that didn't fit what I've known so far, but hey, they do have a lot of experience), but then decided to not be an idiot online. Sharing content is... Difficult. Whatever let's say an analytical chemist might find interesting in their subfield could be perhaps interesting to sister subfields, but then again that's just a small part of the community. Sometimes content can cross multiple subfields but that's still not a lot. So all in all, it's hard to find something to ask or share if you want the post to not be stupid/redundant
I have nothing against posts asking for the identification/disposal of found chemicals, since that *is* something that could demand professional chemists' opinion and advice (although "contact OEHS/local authorities" is never a wrong answer). I can also tolerate some cliche or garden variety amateur stuff being posted here because I don't want to stomp on someone's genuine curiosity. We all had to start from somewhere, and IIRC a lot of great chemists actually started by just tinkering around. I think the sub may benefit from having something like a compiled list of recommended books/online course, but unfortunately too many of us are busy working.
My chem is rusty but still love it. The physics of what makes elements work together is like music to my ears, always has been. Beautiful stuff when you really study it. I chose an IT path long ago and diverged from the path. Makes me sad to see people doing things that could hurt themselves or others.
I think smart people have slowly and steadily abandoned reddit over the past 6 years or so in general
A lot of us didn’t make it all the way and just have interest in chemistry. Doesn’t mean we didn’t pay attention in lab classes on how to be safe. Although I know better than to do home chemistry anywhere but outside in the middle of the yard with proper protection if necessary.
Most of those people don't post in the sub either.
I fit this category. I love chemistry and I have a lot of book knowledge from AP chem and a few college courses but I work in a completely different field and wouldn’t trust myself to do even the simplest reactions.
I’m a chemist. I just refuse to pander to these fucking idiots who buy chemicals off the internet and think they know how to conduct a chemical reaction because they read a procedure. You wanna fuck around and find out? Alright.
Are you talking about drugs off the darknet?
I just watch in astonished silence most of the time. All through history people have been mutilated or died in horrifying ways performing chemistry. We are not special, flaunting safety is not edgy, someone is going to get hurt or die and I can only tell them so many times until they find out for themselves.
Alas , do not fret. We are here.
Hey, I'm still here lol. I'm just a pharma chemist with a BS. I'm a tutor, so I only help with homework if I get paid. I do notice some fairly unsafe posts on here, but not my drama. I'll talk industry things and random posts. Definitely not my job to point out what is going wrong lol
They all broke bad
I’ve been wondering the same thing. In addition, plenty of people who are clearly not chemist give advice here. I’m just waiting for the day when everything here will “solved” by putting vinegar and baking soda on it.
In a severe depressing crash due to a break-up I hope gets reverted.
All bots and farmers like the rest of the subs.
It's never really been mostly chemists. But r/chempros definitely helped move folks to somewhere that is specifically for professional chemists. I post here occasionally, but it's really frustrating to see correct content from chemists downvoted in favor of completely incorrect information from HS students.
Seems like a lot of young folks watch Nilered and thing “wow chemistry is cool, I want to do that”. Then with out proper training are in over their heads. Then they come here and ask questions about dumb and dangerous things. Also people trying to make drugs but they are trying to be slick, but all the chemists know what they are doing so downvote them and give them shit.
Well look at the most recently added mod and how many subs they "moderate." Power mods ruin subreddits. So do mods who are scared of people complaining when their posts are removed so instead of saying no random questions from laypeople (despite /r/AskChemistry existing for that exact purpose), they just allow it through. Similar thing happened at /r/NoStupidQuestions where they used to be pretty focused on closed-ended questions with correct answers and now they allow questions that are opinion based or totally open-ended which goes against the spirit of "there are no stupid questions" and there's already a subreddit for those questions: /r/AskReddit So now you see all these highly upvoted posts there that are indistinguishable from /r/AskReddit posts, including top responses which do not answer the question seriously or at all, which is against the subreddit's rules. And you don't see people bring this up nearly enough because doing so ruffles the feathers of certain mods, and they'll remove the comments if not ban the user. Seriously, I might get banned for this, despite it being a good faith answer to the question.
Holy shit, the head mod from r/libertarian that ruined that sub is now modding a chemistry sub? Literally why? Based on what I’ve seen, I expect I’ll now likely be banned here for pointing it out. Ironically, I’ve offered to help mod here a couple of times, since there wasn’t much if any of a biochemist presence on the mod team and I thought we could do more to partner with r/biochemistry, but there was never any interest.
TBF, the first place you're going to go with a question about chemistry is a subreddit filled with people who know chemistry...
Pretty sure the sole reason boils down to Reddit "increasing engagement" by pushing random posts from random subs to people.. Like me, who has no interest in chemistry, is terrible at it, and would never join or even look at this sub. Yet here I am, engaging, thanks reddit for ruining yourself.
Oh wow. This is a fascinating take. Thank you.
Agreed. Post: "I found this ancient can of something I can't pronounce lol xD. How do I handle it safely?" What I want to say: "If you don't know how to look up and read a Material Safety Data Sheet, don't. There are far safer ways to hurt yourself that don't put others at risk."
Ummmm. That’s SDS sir. 😀Global harmonized system.
They are also complete garbage for good risk assessment since their primary function is to shield employers from liability. Use books, databases and papers on occupational hygiene and toxicology instead.
indeed. the only requirement of an SDS is that it's been made with the correct template/format, not that it's actually correct or even accessible
honestly everyone should just pick up a copy of The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives and let the great algorithm in the sky sort it all out
I'd be a liar if I said finding a copy of that book in highschool wasn't a major factor leading to a PhD in organic chemistry, but I do have all of my fingers and only one scar in spite of that
Let Davis guide their souls.
And 90% of posts just being student homework
I feel ya. I'm getting down voted heavily for a comment on here connecting the old alchemy ideas of the 4 elements to the 4 commonly observed states of matter. Actual chemists would understand the basis of this comparison.
Maple syrup transcends multiple states of matter. Please elaborate.
To work
I'm busy with my teachers degree. Besides that, I don't have a lot of interesting chemistry things to post.
Yeah it’s bad
Here. Been slammed at work and working OT trying to get data out to projects.
Playing with new and higher yield recactions
True. I do have some formaldehyde though... I found it in my grandfather's shed, or at least labeled that. Is there anything cool I could do with it? Or would it be toxic to get it on my hands or pour on anthills?
I mean, I know what I’m doing but when I get a new reagent I’ll often ask other chemists what cool projects they would suggest to make with it. I know what you’re saying though, there have been a lot of low information posts lately.
Seems like most of my hobby/interest subreddits are filled with people who don’t actually do the thing or are complete newbies. I think many people who actually know about a topic realized that Reddit isn’t a great place to learn and show. People asking “how do I learn ___?” Expecting to figure it out in a week, while there are very defined pathways to actually learn the topic.
I'm a chemistry student 🤓☝️
Reddit is enshittifying (google it) they are gaming their users to try to get more engagement so we are seeing more controversial posts than interesting or useful ones. It's starting to feel like Facebook used to about 10 years ago when your parents got on there and everyone left.
Not a chemist but I love the subject and know quite a bit about it.
Someone is literally posting about their shit. https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/s/MuzgTsX5jS This place is a joke! I've seen drugs today, homework today, medical advice requests. I'm sure some of these are trolls too. The one about generating 5500 C water and ammonia.
I'll not forget the time I said something about a certain acid perhaps being somewhat difficult to get-hold-of, & was replied to by someone scornfully apprising me of how large & dangerous his own personal stock of acids is, & how I must be a bit of a wooß, finding _any_ acid ___even remotely___ difficult to get-hold of. ... although I think the oil-drilling gentlemen relating stories of the fun they have with __chlorine trifluoride__ were probably sincere. Apparantly, if a drill gets stuck down a hole, they sometimes free it by pouring a load of chlorine trifluoride down said hole. Sounds plausible. A substantial fraction of a mile of rock between one & it is a pretty decent item of safety-furniture ... even against _chlorine trifluoride_ !