chemistry Archives - Total Lab Supplies

Save on Automatic Titration

Total Lab Supplies — Mon, 19 May 2025 09:30:49 +0000

Save on Automatic Titration

Download the flyer now and save before 30th June 2025. Was £6084.50. Now only £4995.00! Download here.

Was £6084.50

Now only £4995.00

The HI-931 includes:-

Method program
Hanna laboratory verification of method on your sample
Free installation by Hanna qualified technician
Free on site training on delivery
Peace of mind with 2 year warranty

Applies to orders received by 30th June 2025 only

These titrators also function as a titrator, pH meter, mV/ORP meter, and ISE meter. Valuable laboratory bench space is saved, and multiple analyses can be performed on one sample.

The HI931 comes supplied with a 25 mL burette but may be equipped with a 5 mL, 10 mL, or 50 mL burette. Each burette is constructed with a ground glass syringe and chemically resistant PTFE plunger.

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Caesium

Steve Morris — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 11:24:30 +0000

Cæsium is a soft, silvery-gold alkali metal with the symbol Cs and atomic number 55.

It has a melting point of 28°C (82°F), which means it will be liquid on a warm summer day, and revert to a solid later that night after the ambient temperature cools. Cæsium is just one of five elemental metals that are liquids at or near room temperature.

Its name comes from the Latin word for sky-blue because when burned, cæsium turns the flame a lovely blue colour.

Since the 1990s, the largest application of the element has been as caesium formate for drilling fluids, but it has a range of applications in the production of electricity, in electronics, and in chemistry. The radioactive isotope caesium-137 has a half-life of about 30 years and is used in medical applications, industrial gauges, and hydrology. Nonradioactive caesium compounds are only mildly toxic, but the pure metal’s tendency to react explosively with water means that caesium is considered a hazardous material, and the radioisotopes present a significant health and ecological hazard in the environment.

Caesium is also know for its use in atomic clocks and use the electromagnetic transitions in the hyperfine structure of caesium-133 atoms as a reference point. The first accurate caesium clock was built by Louis Essen in 1955 at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK.

These clocks measure frequency with an error of 2 to 3 parts in 10¹⁴, which corresponding to an accuracy of 2 nanoseconds per day, or one second in 1.4 million years. The latest versions are more accurate than 1 part in 10¹⁵, about 1 second in 20 million years. The Caesium standard is the primary standard for standards-compliant time and frequency measurements. Caesium clocks regulate the timing of cell phone networks and the Internet.

For more information visit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium

https://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2012/mar/23/1

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Why is milk white?

Sysadmin — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 13:12:36 +0000

Milk is mostly made up of water, with smaller amounts of fat, protein, minerals, and other compounds. Fats and water don’t usually mix, but in milk the fat and water form an emulsion. It is also a suspension of a multitude of different proteins in water.

The Chemistry of Milk – Click for more info

In milk, proteins cluster together to form structures called micelles. These clusters grow from small clusters of calcium phosphate, which help hold them together. There are a number of different models of these micelles, with the exact structure still being subject to scrutiny.

It’s the protein micelles which give milk its white appearance. The micelles are on average about 150 nanometres in diameter, and this very small size means they are able to scatter light that hits them. The overall effect of this scattering by the huge number of micelles in milk is that it looks white.

For a fuller explanation and for more information please visit:-

http://www.compoundchem.com/2018/06/02/milk/

The post Why is milk white? appeared first on Total Lab Supplies.

Do you need a catalogue?

Sysadmin — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 13:28:32 +0000

Do you need a catalogue? Total lab Supplies have a quantity of general chemical and consumable catalogues left. Simply contact us to request one.

We can supply a full range of chemicals from various leading brands such as Honeywell including Hydranal and Fluka as well as Sigma, Alfa, Fisher and our own brand.

We also offer a full range of equipment from balances and stirrers to ovens and washing machines as well as various consumables from beakers to flasks.

We would love to hear from you so if your require any further information or would like to place an order then pelase do not hesitate to contact our sales desk on 01744 455000.

The post Do you need a catalogue? appeared first on Total Lab Supplies.

Electrodes and pH

Sysadmin — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 14:55:29 +0000

Looking for pH Electrodes? Take a look at the Sentek range as per the pdf flyer below. We also offer a wide range of pH meters from many manufacturers not limited to Jenway, WTW, Hanna Instruments and more. Call us for more details.

TLS-New Sentek-MAR18

The post Electrodes and pH appeared first on Total Lab Supplies.

The chemistry behind why you shouldn’t eat laundry pods

Sysadmin — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 15:28:44 +0000

Laundry pods have featured in the news this week after cases of people eating them in what’s being referred to as the ‘Tide Pod Challenge’. In case you didn’t already realise that this is a pretty terrible idea, this graphic looks at the chemical reasons why you really don’t want them anywhere near your mouth

The Chemistry of Laundry pods

Eating laundry pods is particularly risky since the detergents are at a higher concentration than in liquid detergents. They are highly alkaline; just as highly acidic substances can cause burns, so too can very alkaline ones. If you eat a laundry pod, you run the risk of burns to your throat and stomach from the high concentration detergent they contain. As they pop in your mouth, they can also be accidentally inhaled – definitely not good for your airway and lungs either.

In addition, eating them can also cause breathing problems. Why exactly this is is currently unclear. It seems that in some laundry pod formulations, a sedative effect is seen when they are ingested. This can lead to drowsiness and breathing difficulties. It’s been speculated that a solvent used in the pods, propylene glycol, might contribute. Alternatively, it might be an unknown effect of certain ethoxylated alcohols.

Laundry pods like this also contain a bitter substance to deter children from putting them in their mouths. For more information visit the full article at the excellent Compound Interest

http://ift.tt/2GiQClE

For all your chemical needs contact us on 01744 455000

TOTAL LAB SUPPLIES

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On this day in science history: the first U.S. patent for a liquid soap was issued

Sysadmin — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 15:28:53 +0000

In 1865, the first U.S. patent for a liquid soap was issued to William Sheppard of New York City (No. 49,561). The patent described his “discovery that by the addition of comparatively small quantities of common soap to a large quantity of spirits of ammonia or hartshorn is thickened to the consistency of molasses, and a liquid soap is obtained of superior detergent qualities.” The proportions given were to dissolve one pound of common soap in water or steam, and then add 100-lbs of ammonia such that the liquid thickens to the consistency of molasses. The product was expected to be useful for both domestic and manufacturing purposes. (Hartshorn is an ancient name for an aqueous solution of ammonia).

Decorative soaps, by Phanton at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

So, how does soap clean?

Action of soap

When used for cleaning, soap allows insoluble particles to become soluble in water, so they can then be rinsed away. For example: oil/fat is insoluble in water, but when a couple of drops of dish soap are added to the mixture, the oil/fat dissolves in the water. The insoluble oil/fat molecules become associated inside micelles, tiny spheres formed from soap molecules with polar hydrophilic (water-attracting) groups on the outside and encasing a lipophilic (fat-attracting) pocket, which shields the oil/fat molecules from the water making it soluble. Anything that is soluble will be washed away with the water.

Effect of the alkali

The type of alkali metal used determines the kind of soap product. Sodium soaps, prepared from sodium hydroxide, are firm, whereas potassium soaps, derived from potassium hydroxide, are softer or often liquid. Historically, potassium hydroxide was extracted from the ashes of bracken or other plants. Lithium soaps also tend to be hard—these are used exclusively in greases.

Effects of fats

Soaps are derivatives of fatty acids. Traditionally they have been made from triglycerides (oils and fats). Triglyceride is the chemical name for the triesters of fatty acids and glycerin. Tallow, i.e., rendered beef fat, is the most available triglyceride from animals. Its saponified product is called sodium tallowate. Typical vegetable oils used in soap making are palm oil, coconut oil, olive oil, and laurel oil. Each species offers quite different fatty acid content and hence, results in soaps of distinct feel. The seed oils give softer but milder soaps. Soap made from pure olive oil is sometimes called Castile soap or Marseille soap, and is reputed for being extra mild. The term “Castile” is also sometimes applied to soaps from a mixture of oils, but a high percentage of
olive oil.

For more information visit:-

http://ift.tt/1hPWANC

http://ift.tt/2g1Npyb

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On this day in science history: oxygen was identified

Sysadmin — Tue, 01 Aug 2017 15:28:33 +0000

In 1774, Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called “dephlogisticated air” – later known as oxygen. Priestley found that mercury heated in air became coated with “red rust of mercury,” which, when heated separately, was converted back to mercury with “air” given off. Studying this “air” given off, he observed that candles burned very brightly in it. Also, a mouse in a sealed vessel with it could breathe it much longer than ordinary air. A strong believer in the phlogiston theory, Priestley considered it to be “air from which the phlogiston had been removed.” Further experiments convinced him that ordinary air is one fifth dephlogisticated air, the rest considered by him to be phlogiston.

Joseph Priestley, by Charles Turner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

However, oxygen was in fact first discovered earlier, by Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. He had produced oxygen gas by heating mercuric oxide and various nitrates in 1771–2. Scheele called the gas “fire air” because it was the only known supporter of combustion, and wrote an account of this discovery in a manuscript he titled Treatise on Air and Fire, which he sent to his publisher in 1775. That document was published in 1777.

Because Priestly published his findings first, he is usually given priority in the discovery.

The French chemist Antoine Laurent Lavoisier later claimed to have discovered the new substance independently. Priestley visited Lavoisier in October 1774 and told him about his experiment and how he liberated the new gas. Scheele also posted a letter to Lavoisier on September 30, 1774 that described his discovery of the previously unknown substance, but Lavoisier never acknowledged receiving it (a copy of the letter was found in Scheele’s belongings after his death). Long before this, one of the first known experiments on the relationship between combustion and air was conducted by the 2nd century BCE Greek writer on mechanics, Philo of Byzantium. In his work Pneumatica, Philo observed that inverting a vessel over a burning candle and surrounding the vessel’s neck with water resulted in some water rising into the neck. Philo incorrectly surmised that parts of the air in the vessel were converted into the classical element fire and thus were able to escape through pores in the glass. Many centuries later Leonardo da Vinci built on Philo’s work by observing that a portion of air is consumed during combustion and respiration.

In the late 17th century, Robert Boyle proved that air is necessary for combustion. English chemist John Mayow (1641–1679) refined this work by showing that fire requires only a part of air that he called spiritus nitroaereus. In one experiment, he found that placing either a mouse or a lit candle in a closed container over water caused the water to rise and replace one-fourteenth of the air’s volume before extinguishing the subjects. From this he surmised that nitroaereus is consumed in both respiration and combustion.

Mayow observed that antimony increased in weight when heated, and inferred that the nitroaereus must have combined with it. He also thought that the lungs separate nitroaereus from air and pass it into the blood and that animal heat and muscle movement result from the reaction of nitroaereus with certain substances in the body. Accounts of these and other experiments and ideas were published in 1668 in his work Tractatus duo in the tract “De respiratione”.

Robert Hooke, Ole Borch, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Pierre Bayen all produced oxygen in experiments in the 17th and the 18th century but none of them recognized it as a chemical element. This may have been in part due to the prevalence of the philosophy of combustion and corrosion called the phlogiston theory, which was then the favored explanation of those processes.

Established in 1667 by the German alchemist J. J. Becher, and modified by the chemist Georg Ernst Stahl by 1731, phlogiston theory stated that all combustible materials were made of two parts. One part, called phlogiston, was given off when the substance containing it was burned, while the dephlogisticated part was thought to be its true form, or calx.

Highly combustible materials that leave little residue, such as wood or coal, were thought to be made mostly of phlogiston; non-combustible substances that corrode, such as iron, contained very little. Air did not play a role in phlogiston theory, nor were any initial quantitative experiments conducted to test the idea; instead, it was based on observations of what happens when something burns, that most common objects appear to become lighter and seem to lose something in the process. The fact that a substance like wood gains overall weight in burning was hidden by the buoyancy of the gaseous combustion products.

This theory, while it was on the right track, was unfortunately set up backwards. Rather than combustion or corrosion occurring as a result of the decomposition of phlogiston compounds into their base elements with the phlogiston being lost to the air, it is in fact the result of oxygen from the air combining with the base elements to produce oxides. Indeed, one of the first clues that the phlogiston theory was incorrect was that metals gain weight in rusting (when they were supposedly losing phlogiston).

For more information visit:-

http://ift.tt/2u0qKYW

http://ift.tt/1rcOU7A

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Moon has a water-rich interior

Sysadmin — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 13:28:45 +0000

A new study of satellite data finds that numerous volcanic deposits distributed across the surface of the Moon contain unusually high amounts of trapped water compared with surrounding terrains. The finding of water in these ancient deposits, which are believed to consist of glass beads formed by the explosive eruption of magma coming from the deep lunar interior, bolsters the idea that the lunar mantle is surprisingly water-rich.

Scientists had assumed for years that the interior of the Moon had been largely depleted of water and other volatile compounds. That began to change in 2008, when a research team including Brown University geologist Alberto Saal detected trace amounts of water in some of the volcanic glass beads brought back to Earth from the Apollo 15 and 17 missions to the Moon. In 2011, further study of tiny crystalline formations within those beads revealed that they actually contain similar amounts of water as some basalts on Earth. That suggests that the Moon’s mantle – parts of it, at least – contain as much water as Earth’s.

“The key question is whether those Apollo samples represent the bulk conditions of the lunar interior or instead represent unusual or perhaps anomalous water-rich regions within an otherwise ‘dry’ mantle,” said Ralph Milliken, lead author of the new research and an associate professor in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. “By looking at the orbital data, we can examine the large pyroclastic deposits on the Moon that were never sampled by the Apollo or Luna missions. The fact that nearly all of them exhibit signatures of water suggests that the Apollo samples are not anomalous, so it may be that the bulk interior of the Moon is wet.”

Full Moon photograph taken 10-22-2010 from Madison, Alabama, USA. By Gregory H. Revera (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://ift.tt/HKkdTz) or GFDL (http://ift.tt/KbUOlc)], via Wikimedia Commons

The research, which Milliken co-authored with Shuai Li, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii and a recent Brown Ph.D. graduate, is published in Nature Geoscience.

Detecting the water content of lunar volcanic deposits using orbital instruments is no easy task. Scientists use orbital spectrometers to measure the light that bounces off a planetary surface. By looking at which wavelengths of light are absorbed or reflected by the surface, scientists can get an idea of which minerals and other compounds are present.

The problem is that the lunar surface heats up over the course of a day, especially at the latitudes where these pyroclastic deposits are located. That means that in addition to the light reflected from the surface, the spectrometer also ends up measuring heat.

“That thermally emitted radiation happens at the same wavelengths that we need to use to look for water,” Milliken said. “So in order to say with any confidence that water is present, we first need to account for and remove the thermally emitted component.”

To do that, Li and Milliken used laboratory-based measurements of samples returned from the Apollo missions, combined with a detailed temperature profile of the areas of interest on the Moon’s surface. Using the new thermal correction, the researchers looked at data from the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, an imaging spectrometer that flew aboard India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter.

The researchers found evidence of water in nearly all of the large pyroclastic deposits that had been previously mapped across the Moon’s surface, including deposits near the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites where the water-bearing glass bead samples were collected.

“The distribution of these water-rich deposits is the key thing,” Milliken said. “They’re spread across the surface, which tells us that the water found in the Apollo samples isn’t a one-off. Lunar pyroclastics seem to be universally water-rich, which suggests the same may be true of the mantle.”

The idea that the interior of the Moon is water-rich raises interesting questions about the Moon’s formation. Scientists think the Moon formed from debris left behind after an object about the size of Mars slammed into the Earth very early in solar system history. One of the reasons scientists had assumed the Moon’s interior should be dry is that it seems unlikely that any of the hydrogen needed to form water could have survived the heat of that impact.

“The growing evidence for water inside the Moon suggest that water did somehow survive, or that it was brought in shortly after the impact by asteroids or comets before the Moon had completely solidified,” Li said. “The exact origin of water in the lunar interior is still a big question.”

In addition to shedding light on the water story in the early solar system, the research could also have implications for future lunar exploration. The volcanic beads don’t contain a lot of water – about .05 percent by weight, the researchers say – but the deposits are large, and the water could potentially be extracted.

“Other studies have suggested the presence of water ice in shadowed regions at the lunar poles, but the pyroclastic deposits are at locations that may be easier to access,” Li said. “Anything that helps save future lunar explorers from having to bring lots of water from home is a big step forward, and our results suggest a new alternative.”

The research was funded by the NASA Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research Program (NNX12AO63G).

For more information visit:-

http://ift.tt/2utakFu

http://ift.tt/1AofXC9

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Tipping points are real: Gradual changes in CO2 levels can induce abrupt climate changes

Sysadmin — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 13:28:40 +0000

During the last glacial period, within only a few decades the influence of atmospheric CO2 on the North Atlantic circulation resulted in temperature increases of up to 10 degrees Celsius in Greenland – as indicated by new climate calculations from researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Cardiff. Their study is the first to confirm that there have been situations in our planet’s history in which gradually rising CO2 concentrations have set off abrupt changes in ocean circulation and climate at “tipping points.” These sudden changes, referred to as Dansgaard-Oeschger events, have been observed in ice cores collected in Greenland. The results of the study have just been released in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Ice core sample taken from drill. Photo by Lonnie Thompson, Byrd Polar Research Center, Ohio State University. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Previous glacial periods were characterised by several abrupt climate changes in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. However, the cause of these past phenomena remains unclear. In an attempt to better grasp the role of CO2 in this context, scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) recently conducted a series of experiments using a coupled atmosphere-ocean-sea ice model.

First author Xu Zhang explains: “With this study, we’ve managed to show for the first time how gradual increases of CO2 triggered rapid warming.” This temperature rise is the result of interactions between ocean currents and the atmosphere, which the scientists used the climate model to explore. According to their findings, the increased CO2 intensifies the trade winds over Central America, as the eastern Pacific is warmed more than the western Atlantic. This is turn produces increased moisture transport from the Atlantic, and with it, an increase in the salinity and density of the surface water. Finally, these changes lead to an abrupt amplification of the large-scale overturning circulation in the Atlantic. “Our simulations indicate that even small changes in the CO2 concentration suffice to change the circulation pattern, which can end in sudden temperature increases,” says Zhang.

Further, the study’s authors reveal that rising CO2 levels are the dominant cause of changed ocean currents during the transitions between glacial and interglacial periods. As climate researcher Gerrit Lohmann explains, “We can’t say for certain whether rising CO2 levels will produce similar effects in the future, because the framework conditions today differ from those in a glacial period. That being said, we’ve now confirmed that there have definitely been abrupt climate changes in the Earth’s past that were the result of continually rising CO2 concentrations.”

For more information visit:-

http://ift.tt/2tBSNdH

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chemistry Archives - Total Lab Supplies

Save on Automatic Titration

Save on Automatic Titration

Was £6084.50

Now only £4995.00

Recent Posts

Categories

Caesium

Why is milk white?

Do you need a catalogue?

Electrodes and pH

The chemistry behind why you shouldn’t eat laundry pods

On this day in science history: the first U.S. patent for a liquid soap was issued

On this day in science history: oxygen was identified

Moon has a water-rich interior

Tipping points are real: Gradual changes in CO2 levels can induce abrupt climate changes