You can scroll everywhere these days. YouTube, social media, news outlets, Google news feed, you name it. Doom scrolling is so deeply and covertly ingrained into the digital world that it is easy to overlook.

Worse, they have somehow hacked it so that it is no longer a choice to scroll, but a compulsion. Even when I’m not interested in the content, even when it’s no longer showing me what I clicked to view, even when it’s not enjoyable anymore, I have to keep swiping.

I don’t like that. I don’t like the control algorithms have over me. This is a problem; and like the termites that once ate through my books, this is eating away at my time. I don’t doubt that it is the same for some of you as well.

Over the years, I’ve developed some methods to stop to wrestle back the control (at least some of it). Different scenarios require different techniques, and it almost always comes down to a healthy mindset and proper tools.

In this article, I will share how I was able to wrestle back the control YouTube had over me, and especially how I won the battle against YouTube Shorts.

1. Unhook

For desktop users, this is the solution, hands down.

Unhook is a free chrome extension that lets you easily and effectively carve out all the unhealthy aspects of YouTube. It works by giving you a list of all elements found in your YouTube Web app, and letting you choose which ones to keep and which ones to toss. The elements you turn off disappear completely, and it’s like they never existed at all. It’s delightful.

My suggestion with Unhook is to design your YouTube space in the healthiest way possible. Evaluate your relationship with YouTube. What do you need it for? Work or entertainment? Ask yourself what makes you start watching and what keeps you going even when you don’t want to or even when you shouldn’t.

Then, responsibly remove every element that you consider unhealthy or addictive. If Shorts are the problem, remove Shorts tab; if you keep clicking on recommended videos impulsively (Just one more and then I stop”) remove video sidebars. Be thorough and be real with yourself.

Personally, I keep the default settings, with shorts and the sidebar disabled, and have it so that it redirects me to the Subscriptions Page.

2. Curate the Subscriptions page.

It seems that the majority of the time I spent on YouTube, I spend watching videos I don’t want to watch. Videos that give me neither joy nor knowledge. Which is sad, because there really are creators whose content is well-worth my time. The key, here, is to not let the algorithm control what you watch.

Using Unhook, remove the Home Page of YouTube and redirect to Subscriptions page. Now, prune your subscriptions. Go through all the channels you have subscribed and keep only the ones whose content are well and truly worth your time. The rest of them will just have to lose a subscriber.

Boom, now you have a Home Page alternative filled with only quality content and free from the whimsies of an unfeeling algorithm. Enjoy.

3. Cold Turkey Blocker

Sometimes, simple Unhook isn’t enough. Simply blocking certain elements isn’t always sufficient, especially when it’s so easy and tempting to just turn the flashy parts back on. Sometimes, you need to go Cold Turkey.

Cold Turkey is another completely free chrome extension-app hybrid which takes things to the next level (It is basically an extension, but is controlled through an app on the desktop, both are installed simultaneously so its not a hassle). It can block YouTube, and practically any website, completely.

There’s no easy way to turn the thing off; you have to open the app and even then, there are ways to make the unblocking process more tedious, like needing to restart your device until it opens. It’s cumbersome, it’s solid, and it’s pretty much enough to stop you from using the sites completely. I recommend it for high-productivity periods, such as exam season, or to curb an addiction.

You probably won’t find Cold Turkey in the extension store for whatever reason, but get the extension here, and download the free version of the app here. The default block worked out fine for me, but feel free to customize it to your liking.

4. Use Browsers in your Phone, not the App (or, even better, Desktop)

Delete the YouTube app from your phone (if it won’t let you delete it, disable and hide).

This is not a complete solution, but browsers are a bit more inconvenient than the YouTube app. For me, at least, this means it’s easier for me to not use YouTube when it’s only on my browser than when I have the app. Plus, this saves precious storage space.

I found this hack by accident. I was getting addicted to the app, so I deleted it. Then I started watching YouTube on Chrome, and when that got too far, I got rid of it too and downloaded the Bing browser. It was worse, so it was easier to not watch YouTube.

It is probably better if you can shift all your YouTube watching to your desktop, but that’s not always an option for everyone, and the temptation is still there.

Now, however, I have Chrome again and rely more on the next trick (though I still don’t have the app).

5. Punishment Regiments

The thing about humans is that we don’t learn until we are stung. Set as many blocks and extensions as you like and your brain still might find ways around them.

So sting yourself, and sting hard.

What I mean is that it’s easier to stick to a rule if there are immediate ramifications to not following it. For example, if I was fined for every time I don’t wear a seatbelt, I would probably wear a seatbelt. It’s human nature, we are often more concerned with short-term, tangible results and ignore long-term, vague returns.

That’s what you exploit. Make yourself pay a fine for every time you indulge in a habit.

What you do is make a firm or realistic rule for yourself (or a commitment) and each time you break that rule you pay a predetermined fine (‘punish’ yourself). It can be anything, but make sure you feel the loss so that deters you the next time you think of breaking the rule. And be honest with yourself and pay up, otherwise, it doesn’t work.

I will hopefully write in more detail about this step in the future.

6. Commitment

I am a big fan of passive processes. Passive processes are those that work without active intervention. Like the punishment system, there is always a passive deterrence that you feel.

Active deterrence is where you need to use willpower. I don’t like active deterrence. They take effort, and mostly they have let me down. However, I have to admit, there is no victory without active commitment.

It starts with first you wanting to free yourself. First, you have to recognize that YouTube is taking up your time, that Shorts are not good for you, doom scrolling is not good for you, that you need to stop. Because without commitment, you get nowhere.

Make a strong conviction, a promise to yourself, and then let the passive deterrence ease you through the ordeal.

And remember: slipups are only human. If you fall once, pay the fine, and start over.

I hope that you are able to overcome your YouTube addiction and regain control of your time. I hope that you are able to use that time well.

Best of luck.

My name is Eira. I come from a beautiful land that grows bananas. Lots and lots of bananas. Bananas enough to color the horizon and cover the land. Bananas enough to fill our plates and drive our economy. Bananas birthed our civilization, it allowed us to grow, prosper, and eventually thrive.

Admittedly, we are not all bananas. We have other fruits as well, and fish, and nuts, and we make the silkiest of silks and roll the strongest steel. We have beautiful dance styles and a little bit of textile. The food is nice, though mostly sweet and banana-based, and our language is rather beautiful.

Still, bananas, whether we like it or not, defines who we are; and quite appropriately, too. Our economy is seventy percent bananas, and our land is eighty percent banana plantations. Sure, the capital is now an oil-guzzling, car-choked metropolis, and they’re trying to reduce dependance on bananas by subsidizing the IT sector, but bananas are who we are, and who we will be. They have made their way into our culture, into our songs, into our personalities, and even our governments. They make up the invisible hand that drives our market, they are the makers of bloody wars, and are also the weapon we have used time and time again to win those wars.

I have spent my entire life surrounded by bananas. I was born in a banana farm, the daughter to a medium ranking officer; I went to school next to another, larger banana plantation; and when I was allowed to play, I got my friends together and we frolicked insatiably through the acres and acres of tall banana trees. It was heaven, and I was seven.

When I was still seven, the adults were amused by my banana stories. They started when I was little. I was told that when I was little, I would cry horribly at bedtime unless my mother sang me a song or told me a story. Much to her delight, for she too loved stories, I soon started making up stories of my own. Silly, happy stories. Stories of little girls running about in banana plantations, playing games, laughing, screaming, frolicking. They were all from the perspective of bananas.

I was little then, so that was fine.

I don’t remember when exactly I told my mother that the stories weren’t my own, that they had all been told to me previously by the bananas themselves, but I must have said it very casually, since I didn’t find it strange at all.

In the early mornings, or in the afternoons after school, I went around the banana plantation, caressing the trees and playing with my friends. Often, I would put my ears close to the trunk of a tree, or to a banana itself, and I would stand there with a wonderous expression on my face as if I was listening to the bananas talk. Often the stories made me laugh, sometimes they made me solemn, while at other times the speech of the bananas made me grim and resolute.

My whimsical habit made my mother laugh at first; she must have thought I was still playing the story-telling game from last night. I noticed, however, that as this habit persisted, my mother grew more watchful of me, more vigilant. She didn’t say anything yet, but she would glance at me more frequently, and increasingly forced me to only play near where she was working.

The other girls thought it was because I might fall and hurt myself, and they laughed at me.

Then one day, as I was hearing the story of a banana from a bunch that had been recently cut, I was yanked up high into the air and brought back ferociously onto the loamy soil. My mother was towering over me, livid, thunderous.

She asked me why I had tears in my eyes. I told her that the banana had been telling me a rather tragic story. I tried to explain that the tree was extremely sad and extremely hurt from being cut so mercilessly. I tried to tell her that this banana had witnessed its very neighbor being ripped away from the neck, and then peeled and stripped and chewed and eaten, and that it was scared. But by then she wasn’t listening to me.

My mother pulled me by the ear and the pain made me scream, and then sob. She dragged me all the way to our house, and then into her room, where she finally threw me onto the bad and locked the door. I was bawling; by then my ear was agony and my head felt dizzy. Several minutes passed and, little by little, I got hold of myself. My ear still hurt, and the tears flowed heavily, but I wasn’t making those awful sobbing noises anymore (which I hate).

It was about then that the door reopened. Mother was back, and she had brought my father along.

Father, at least, was a bit more sympathetic to my situation. He looked more concerned than angry, and asked me what the matter was. I refused to tell them, my pride was hurt, but he pieced two and two together.

He told my mother to calm down, told her that I was just being childish, foolish, playing games.

Mother wanted to put a stop to my games. She was ready, at that moment, to lock me up. She was about to forbid me from playing in the plantation, from going to school, from tending to the bananas, even from going outside or working in the plantation. She wanted to imprison me in the house and in the company offices. In her moment of rage, she was determined to uproot my entire life and happiness.

I gaped at her from the floor with eyes as wide as our banana farm and my little heart almost tore itself apart. Thankfully, my father intervened.

That will be too suspicious, he said, what will we tell everyone? Just keep an eye on her, she’ll grow out of it.

But I didn’t grow out of it.

I kept listening to the bananas and they kept talking to me. Telling me stories of all sorts, most joyously happy, some wrenchingly tragic. All told from the perspective of bananas.

My mother did a very good job of keeping an eye on me, but, for some reason, she let me be.

Unfortunately, I kept growing older. At nine, my mother started hiding me from the priest. The priest was a beloved and frequent guest at our little cluster of houses, and whenever he came, my mother made sure, by any means necessary, that I was nowhere in sight of him nor in the sight of bananas. The latter proved to be more difficult. Only one man, millions of bananas.

At ten, I was banned from being around the seniors of the neighborhood.

At eleven, mom tried to ban me from the plantation again, but by that time it was too late. To ban me from the plantations then would be admission of guilt.

At twelve, I was sent to a boarding school near the capital. It was horrendous. It was far away from home, far away from the bananas, from their stories, and far away from my friends. It was dirty, and murky, and full of city noises. Still, it must have been an expensive affair for my parents, and I must say I was touched, even though I despised it thoroughly, that they would go through such financial pains to keep me from being exiled.

At thirteen, I was exiled.

I learned of my great sin in the Banana Boat. I had conjectured much earlier, and the bananas had told me a lot as well. The son of the captain of the ship told me the rest. He is seven, so I trust him. He says he overheard the crew talking about me.

The bananas in the boat talk to me. They didn’t say much earlier when they were green, green is when they are distorted and choked up. The stories the green ones tell are muddled, otherworldly, and I can’t make sense of them. Now, they are sunlight yellow, and speak so freely and simultaneously that I cannot keep up with all of them. There are, of course, a lot of bananas.

The Banana Boat has been sailing for a long time, in Banana Boat terms, and with no land in sight. Bananas ripen quickly, they have to be transported quickly. We have done a marvelous job of breeding the bananas to be longer lasting, but they are still bananas. I hope we arrive soon. The bananas will not be store-ready for long.

I just want to see how this goes.

Theses appetizing little packets accompany our shoes, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and other packaged goods that require protection from moisture. I recently found one in this lovely new flask I received as a gift, and, me being me, I ripped it open, but instead of finding scrumptious beads of silica, I was met with utter disappointment.

More on that later, but first, what are desiccants and why are they in our shoes?

The desiccant we are most familiar with is silica gel. These little beads of silica. Desiccants are substances that are able to absorb water from their surroundings, either physically or through chemical reactions. Silica Gel does this through absorption, where the water molecules adhere to the silica surface, allowing them to essentially remove moisture from their environments.

This is important for two reasons. The first being that products stay crisper and fresher for longer if they are kept dry. Second, it prevents molding; since fungi are notorious at thriving in moist environments but fail completely at growing in dry conditions.

Which is all good inasmuch, but there might be one change incoming, and it might just mean those little sachets proclaiming ‘DO NOT EAT’ are becoming edible (though not entirely safe for consumption, you still should not eat them).

Remember the flask I was mentioning earlier? The one I found a silica gel packet in? So I rip open the little packets and instead of those lovely, spherical little balls we all know and love, I am greeted with this junk.

Needless to say, this leafy spread left me confused, and I wondered whether this could some fancy new desiccant technology, and I decided use an extremely sophisticated scientific testing procedure to test my hypothesis, and by which I mean I Googled it. Turns out, it’s really just tea. Used tea for that matter.

Apparently, tea also possesses desiccating properties, and some people have already begun monetizing it. I’ve found at least one company- apart from this Chinese brand that made my flask- that is aiming to collect tea waste from shops, repackaging it, and selling it to industries to be used as a desiccant. While tea waste as desiccant is still an emerging field and might or might not end up revolutionizing the entire industry (I’m no economist), the probability of finding a packet of used tea in your new flask is certainly not zero.

At least, it certainly wasn’t for me.

But hey, if you’re the glass half-full kind of person, I get my first drink for free and don’t even have to put a teabag in.

(For the record, I did not drink the tea, and neither should you.)

Next week, I hopefully have something slow and satisfying in store. Till then, don’t eat silica gel.

For this experiment, I will be reacting sulfuric acid with various concentrations of Sodium Hydroxide solution. In essence, this is a neutralization reaction, but the purpose is not to titrate or make a salt. The purpose for today is to simply make the reaction as violent as possible.

The idea is simple, and I’ll save the theory for more sophisticated acid-base reactions.

If you’re hyper-impatient, here is the second-best run I got.

As for the best run, I want to take you through the whole journey.

I started out the experiment by busting out all the glassware and preparing all the reactants.

The first few reactions were trial runs, and I couldn’t get much out of them, but eventually I arrived on the technique that worked best. Bear with me:

My solutions, especially the Sulfuric acid, were too dilute to yield anything interesting on their own. I couldn’t concentrate the acid further, as much as I would’ve liked to, since I had acquired it at that concentration, but I could just go ballistic add solid Sodium Hydroxide directly to the acid.

Immediately, I was hit with a satisfying, overflowing, bubbling, gurgling reaction. I wish I could share the audio as well, but that is still under construction.

Eventually, I decided to scale up the reaction and switched to a beaker, and the results were absolutely wonderful. I’ll let you judge for yourself:

Tangent, for a couple of reactions, as I added the sulfuric acid to the sodium hydroxide pellets, the reaction started out sufficiently violent, yet as I added more acid it went conflictingly tame.

I suspect it must be because the acid was dilute, and as I added more it eventually overdiluted the reaction to the point that it went limp.

Second confession time. I conducted the preliminary tests for this reaction in the middle of the Egg Shell Experiment, and honestly, the tests yielded far better results than most of my full-scale runs. The contents of the test tube had spewed out in a sudden violent erupted that had splattered all over my worktable and shelves and had just narrowly missed my exposed face. I’ve been trying to replicate that ever since.

The original experiment:

And the best part:

When I attempted the experiment full-scale, I just couldn’t get it to explode like it had done originally. But even as I was about to throw in the towel, I knew that I couldn’t just give up with that diluted mess of a run, and eventually:

This is another experiment I did in my amateur days, and I would like to recycle it here in anticipation of a larger scale experiment that is coming in a few weeks.

The original post is both hilarious and excruciatingly contains terrible grammar, definitely not something I would post today. However, I believe that relics of the past should be preserved, and this is one relic worth preserving (though with a few brush ups).

ORIGINAL POST: I had to de-rust some nails for an upcoming experiment and, honestly, the process had me kind of mesmerized.

The de-rusting process was pretty easy and I just had to dip the nails into some vinegar. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of smelling it and apparently rust is salty [I mean, it is a salt, but that’s probably not what I was smelling]? The whole mixture smelt like vinegar mixed with rock salt and it was awfully close to concentrated pee, but more potent.

Here is a bit of theory for anyone interested:

Rust is basically an oxide of Iron. Any surface of iron that is not protected from rusting through galvanizing or any other means will slowly react with the oxygen in the atmosphere in presence of water or moisture, which serves as a catalyst. This reddish-brown Iron (III) Oxide is basic in nature, and reacts with the acidic Vinegar (Ethanoic Acid) in a neutralization reaction to produce a soluble salt and water, thus, clearing the surface of the solid rust.

The other day I came across one such motor- a small one, the kind used in toy cars and the like- and knew instantly that I had to pry those magnets out. Why? Because my destructive inner self (whom I have nicknamed curiosity, after the Martian rover) compels me to dismember everything I chance upon.

Unfortunately, try as I may, I could not get the magnets out through mechanical means. I tried poking them with screwdrivers, tried tearing through the metal body with pliers, tried reasoning with them firmly to come out of their own accord, but the twin magnets refused to budge.

In the end, as curiosity gave way to malice, I decided to annihilate the motor body completely and utterly and rip it apart using some sulfuric acid.

In essence, I was reacting away the other metal body and converting it to a soluble salt, which would allow me unrestricted access to the magnets. The motor bubbled steadily throughout the process, and a cloudy off-white plume hung densely over the motor, though I am not exactly sure what that was about.

The entire process took way longer than I anticipated, and in the end I had to leave it overnight. However, the slow montage of the acid attacking the metal body and turning it to mere, colorless bubbles was oddly satisfying, and I don’t grudge the time it took.

After wards, I separated the magnet from the solution, which appeared pretty and green.

Afterwards, I washed off the magnets and soaked them in water for a day to get rid of any acid or solution that still persisted on the walls of the magnet. This turned out to be a mistake, because when I returned to them, they looked rusty, and rust had accumulated around the bottom of the beaker.

I quickly got the magnets out and dried them, and thankfully it hadn’t been damaged all that much.

In the end, I was left with exactly what I had hoped for, and the two magnets were apparently unscathed. The solution had turned a clear, deep turquoise green, and I suspect that was due to the Iron (II) Sulfate solution that had formed. However, I must confess that this experiment was completely dashed off, and I did it basically on a whim, and I am not exactly sure what my products were. Regardless, I am fairly confident that the body was made of iron, or some alloy of it, and the green color of the resulting solution also indicates it being Iron (II) Sulfate.

Anyway, the experiment was a success, and here are my cute little magnets.

In doing this experiment, I learnt a lot about magnets and human cognition, and maybe one day I will ramble about it here, or on my other account where I post flash fiction and short stories

Till, then, stay safe, and keep your eye out for my next experiment where I conduct (slightly) unsafe and wonderfully violent reactions.

Back in the day, when I was still a blundering child, I performed a rough, ill-documented, yet surprisingly successful experiment where I reacted away the calcium carbonate egg shell from a raw egg, leaving behind only a thin, translucent sac that held inside it an undeveloped yolk and some chicken’s unfulfilled dreams and desires. The deshelling experiment was pretty fun, considering it was one of my firsts, yet I was sure that I could get far more aesthetic results with a real, laboratory acid.

Also back in the day, but not so far as the egg incident, I judiciously acquired a large, one-liter bottle of dilute sulfuric acid through completely, definitely, absolutely legal and regulated means. I had been trying to put the acid to use since the very day I acquired it, but time is fleeting and opportunities elusive.

Until now, that is, now I have the time.

It’s time for Egg Deshelling 2.0.

This time around, I used egg shells and not an entire raw egg because I wanted to do multiple runs and you should never waste food, and I should also confirm that the acid I used was relatively dilute, and hence the reaction was tamer than you would expect.

I’ll get to the videos now without further ado. However, in my research of egg shells, I came across a lot of interesting literature, and I’ve added the theory down below.

I started out with some preliminary runs, where I simply crushed some shells as finely as I could and doused them with sulfuric acid.

I tried a few different combinations to see which yielded the best results, but they were all quite similar, yet still strangely engrossing.

The reaction I desperately wanted to see was a montage of uncrushed hemispheres of egg shells being quickly dissolved and stripped away by the acid, leaving behind only the membranes that clung on.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. Not only did the acid fail to give me the satisfying and quick action I wanted, it failed to give me anything at all. I attempted the thing twice, once with a lot of shells and once with only one half, and both times I was only left with some bubbles and the unscathed halves of shells.

Regardless, I then scaled up the tests I did in the test tube with crushed shells, and the results were positively lovely.

While the experiment wasn’t exactly what was I imagining it to be, (most things in life aren’t, and probably for the better), it was enough to be worth it (just like you are), and after this final run I concluded that I was ready to declare the experiment a success, and start the tedious yet meditative process of cleaning up.

Anyway, next week: toy motors, changed perceptions, and my insatiable malice.

Ah, right, the theory:

The reaction between the shell and the acid is fairly straight forward:

CaCO3 + H2SO4 → CaSO4 + H2O + CO2

Egg shells are formed primarily of calcium carbonate, the substance that is chalk and limestone; which is compositionally white. The color of (some) eggs is due to various pigments deposited into the shell, and rarely some developmental or coating related reasons.

The shell is porous, with makes sense since gas exchange must be facilitated to allow aerobic respiration, but is also something I never really considered intuitively. Over the porous shell there is a protective layer called the bloom or cuticle that protects from bacterial invasions and dust. On the inside are membranes holding the contents together, the contents themselves, the albumen, the yolk, the air sac, it’s all very complex. I’ll leave some links down below for further reading.

Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Chemical-compositions-of-egg-shells_tbl1_26469281

Wikipedia:

Eggshell - Wikipedia

Explanatorium:

https://www.exploratorium.edu/explore/cooking/egg-anatomy#:~:text=Eggshell%20is%20made%20almost%20entirely,keep%20out%20bacteria%20and%20dust.

By the way, I am also not a researcher (it’s fascinating how many things I’m aren’t), this isn’t your Complete Guide to the Egg, I found these articles interesting, confirm their validity further before proceeding down this rabbithole.

Vinegar is just ethanoic acid- a weak organic acid which is, in its essence, an acid. Meanwhile, egg shells are formed mostly of Calcium Carbonate, the stuff you find in chalk or limestone. Calcium Carbonate reacts readily with any kind of acid in a reaction that produces carbon dioxide gas and water-soluble salts, leaving behind just a clear solution. This reaction is exactly what I intended to use in order to deshell my egg, but since ethanoic acid is a weak acid, and since the commercial solutions of vinegar are disappointingly dilute, the reaction was extremely slow.

If I remember correctly, the whole thing took me about a week, but the results were worth the wait.

As always, here is the reaction if you’re interested:

2CH3COOH + CaCO3 →H2O + CO2 + Ca(CH3COO)2

Further experiments detail can be found in this video by NileRed, from which I took my inspiration from.

So here goes:

[No, I did not have any kind of apparatus whatsoever back then.]

Initially, I used far too little vinegar, so the solution (probably) got saturated extremely quickly and the reaction slowed down fairly soon. I tried taking the egg out and washing it carefully with water [that sounds like a bad idea, past Shuck] and filtering the vinegar [why?], but it didn’t help much.

I eventually gave up and just used a fresh batch of vinegar, however one side just wouldn’t bubble.

The second batch produced a lot of effervescence and I was legitimately worried that it had molded or something [past me had weird concerns], but thankfully it was alright. In any case, one particular side exhibited no real change; regardless, it was rough to the touch and looked visually off. I had to peel it off the shell in that area extremely carefully by hand and the albumen there almost looked as if it was boiled, again I can’t say why.

The other hemisphere looked amazing though. Not yellow as in the video by NileRed, but that might just be due to the differences in our egg.

The end product was a shell-less egg that looked more-or-less like a hard-boiled egg, save for the fact that it was was super fragile and prone to bursting. Due to this, I was hesitant to play around with it as much as I had hoped for, but I did pop intentionally it in the end.

Unfortunately, I did not take as many pictures and videos of the experiment as I would prefer, however I still consider this to be a valuable experience.

I leave you now with a final picture, one of the membrane that held the contents of the egg within itself while it had still been intact, yet was not strong enough to bear the weight of the unyielding malice that I guise as my curiosity.

Next week, I shall hopefully meet you again with another egg related project.

All that being said, I did a displacement reaction, and it was about as fine as you could hope for, given my setup.

The liquid I used was a solution of copper sulfate in distilled water, and I hoped to displace the copper out of the compound using some commercial aluminum foil. The reaction goes as such:

CuSO4 (aq) + Al(s) → Al2(SO4)3 + Cu(s)

So I began prepping my equipment and reactants.

I measured out about 10 grams of Hydrated Copper Sulfate and made a solution with 100ml of distilled water.

[Ignore the background, that’s old news.]

Then I added a bit of salt to the solution because apparently it’s supposed to make the reaction quicker, but don’t quote me on that I did not look that far into it.

I got some commercial Aluminum foil as my reagent and measured out about 11.6 grams of it, but the mass really does not matter, since I’m adding it as excess anyway [in retrospect I should have used the Copper Sulfate Solution as excess].

With everything done, and the reagents ready to go and everything else in place, I spilled my entire beaker of copper sulfate on the edge of the table and onto my electronics, phone and charging wires down below.

Crazy.

To be honest I was substantially scared at that minor incident, and though I cleaned up the spill vigorously right away and washed the floors with a bunch of water, and even though I was already familiar with the SDS for copper sulfate, I was still panicking because that is the most appropriate human emotion at the time. However, the spill possibly did not even pose a threat, and even my potato phone (which was hit directly) was perfectly fine afterwards.

Still, I took it onto myself right then on to be much safer with my experiments, and implemented some safeguards then on. Even though realistically speaking there will always be hiccups and I just have to be proactive in preventing a disaster.

I had abandoned the experiment for a good few days after that incident, but I eventually got back to it, and measured out everything as it was before, and remade everything (expect the salt because it slipped my mind).

I added the aluminum into the solution and waited for everything to spontaneously turn into a crystalline bronze.

Nothing.

Not even a singular bubble erupted from behind the metallic folds of the aluminum.

I gave it a bit more time. Then a lot more time.

Still nothing, everything stayed just as it was.

I was pretty disappointed, and was almost about to abandon everything again and dump out the reagents, but on a whim I decided to just cover up the beaker with a watch glass and leave it there for a few days while I went on a trip, and let post-vacation-Shuck deal with the results (or consequences.)

Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed a third time, and this is what I came back to, and I have to say I am pretty satisfied with the results, though at once confused.

While I had expected the slightly dirty and rusty look of the copper precipitate from preliminary trial runs, I could not make sense of the whitish look of the liquid or of the white powder that had accumulated, especially since I didn’t add any salt in this run (and definitely not that much), and also because the reagents I was using was supposedly adequately pure, or at least pure enough to not produce that much gunk.

I have some hypothesizes regarding this powder I created, but since they haven’t been properly tested, I will refrain from putting them here.

Anyway, I collected whatever remained of the aluminum balls and even stored the liquid.

If equipment permits, I might one day do a more detailed analysis of the products and deduce what might have caused these exact results.

Till then, I must go and collect some egg shells. See you in the next one.

P.S. I just have to write a short story on precipitates, don’t I?