As for me...I am plotting and scheming. Pondering what to do, for my first time in the lab in too long. What projects to reactivate and where to assign my available resources best. I have some ideas though already. The labile sulfonic acids line of inquiry is calling me, as is something involving certain alkylamido and bis-amidopiperazine compounds for in the latter case two separate purposes from the same common intermediate. Two separate lines of inquiry with the piperazine compounds, one of them an analgesic or pair of analgesics of closely related structure, whilst the other is a nootropic ag.ent, working as a glutamate receptor modulator of AMPA-type ionotropic glutamate receptors (as a positive allosteric modulator, or AMPAkine) which is intended to and should, as with other AMPAkines, enhance and boost the effectiveness of the fundamental processes behind learning and memory, as well as facilitating neuron to neuron synaptic connections being formed in the right places and facilitating neurological adaptations to information and also should possess some mood lifting/antidepressant activities.
And I've been for some reason been getting a hankering for some inorganic experimenting. I'd quite like to resume my work attempting to isolate manganese metal in a decent quantity and purity (the compounds are accessible, I have a kilo or so of potassium permanganate to work with, and a mixture of MnO2 and carbon (manganese dioxide) is available for free in bulk by raiding the dead battery jar I keep (I have a container for dead batteries, for the purposes of recycling of useful or interesting elements from the electrolytic chemical compositions of the batteries, and especially E-cig batteries, those seem to have a HUGE attrition rate, and drop like flies, The damn things are always getting dropped, falling out of pockets, or the contacts failing, leaving them (very usefully for cost purposes and for certain reactions since the lithium metal present in a charged battery is in the form of a roll of thin foil with a large surface area so it reacts quickly in certain processes and more so than lithium from my lar of lab grade stuff that I keep stored under argon with dessicants and magnesium powder to absorb any stray O2
(which believe it or not works it seems a lot better when done
right, than storing it under light mineral oil, with some sort of weight to keep it from floating to the surface, my lab-grade Li is in much thicker cuttings, and it reacts a lot slower in some processes than battery Li foil which is really thin. Takes a little practice yanking it out intact and unoxidized but it can be done, and once one gets used to the process it gets easy to take a suitable battery, making a couple of cuts with wirecutters, snapping endcaps off and peeling it like an orange, after dunking under petrol or naphtha lighter fuel to stop it oxidizing too badly and too quickly, and stop it getting too hot in your hands, unrolling the strip of lithium and separating it from the depolarizer part in a few seconds followed by a quick snip with a pair of scissors and doing whatever I'm going to do with it.)
Other batteries aren't so convenient, but the conventional Li ones are (not counting things like lithium-thionyl chloride cells which are filled with corrosive, acid-fuming, water/moisture reactive liquid SOCl2, those need special care taken with them, since the electrolyte will inflict SEVERE burns on flesh (got a nasty ass scar from the first time I found out about the existence of Li-SOCl2 cells, burnt its way right through my thick leather gloves, rusting the steel spines on them before my eyes and then disintegrating the gloves and chewing the skin off most of one of my hands after I tried opening one and didn't know what it was as a kid. But thankfully I had quite a few more (and big ones too) Li-SOCl2 batteries, and after realizing the nature of the contents, and after I'd regained the flesh of my burnt hand and a layer of skin over it, those I was a lot more careful with and managed to retrieve the FAR more valuable (than the Li content) thionyl chloride content and clean it up from the suspended bits of battery gunk.
Might just get to some digging around in my non-Li battery jar (those are kept separately for recycling the Li and anything else useful in there) and see what turns up. Wouldn't mind seeing if there are any nickel mesh sections to be ripped out of Ni-MH or better yet, Ni-Cd cells for stripping out the cadmium as well. Although its been difficult to come by those now, dead or alive, since Cd is toxic, similar to lead but more toxic AFAIK. A bit of a bugger. Banning things like mercury cells pissed me off big time since Hg salts are useful and it was a lot cheaper per gram of Hg salt to gut batteries and get creative than to buy the needed salts. Might go see where my stash of silver oxide button batteries are so I can get the silver content out and smelt it down or else clean it up and use it for my chemistry tinkering.
Yep...I am definitely searching for something to do and the inspiration to decide on a specific 'something'. Plenty to choose from but I'm in one of those odd moods halfway between decisions and sort of need a poke in the right direction. Think I'll watch american dad on TV first and use the time to decide, do some reading online and get my inspiration that way.
