[Noisebridge-discuss] chemistry 101

[Meredith L. Patterson]

Hi all,

Per Jake's and Rachel's request, I've put up a page at 
https://www.noisebridge.net/index.php/Chemistry listing the equipment 
and reagents I have.

I've also listed off some workshops we could do which will be a great 
start for teaching people how to use equipment safely and perform basic 
lab techniques which will be useful for just about every workup you'll 
ever do. If there's something you'd like to learn how to do, please add 
it to the list. (Legal stuff only, please -- no explosives or anything 
that would get us in trouble.)

Of the possible workshops I've listed, I think distillation and steam 
extraction would be the easiest to start with. We could do these in an 
afternoon. I'd like to start by distilling alcohol (from cheap vodka or 
everclear) to 95% ethanol and then drying it to produce anhydrous 
ethanol. We can then do steam extraction on various kitchen herbs to 
produce hydrosols and essential oils, and everyone could take some home 
with them. I've done this at home before, and it's a lot of fun and 
smells really good.

One question: what kind of heat sources do we have available? I usually 
do this kind of thing over the electric burner on my stove. I don't have 
a hot plate, so if we don't have an electric stove available, someone 
will need to bring one. Distillation with volatile solvents produces 
fumes, and an open flame *will* blow up the lab.

--mlp