Australia's Science Forum

Are we still allowed to do the Permangernate and glycerol one? Itused to be a regular, especially for volcano dems, but the teachers here won't do it any more. We had fun last term when our Physics teacher ordered in some Liquid N2. There was about 9L left over, so I was invited in to one of the yea...

Yesterday, I had this conversation. Teacher: "I have a year 6 class comming down from the junior school this afternoon. Which of these two experiments do you think I should do with them?" Me: (after reading through the two pracs and deciding which one will require the least equipment, and ...

Perhaps the Economics department might be teaching about "Blue Chip Companies"?????

Ian

Dear Labbies,
One of my teachers has been asked by the HM to find out about the availability of any Government grants for environmental initiatives. Is anybody out there aware of any grants that might be available to schools to do environmental things?

regards
Ian

Hi Everyone, Is there anyone out there that has experience in using Multiplo incubators. On two occasions, I've had a great number of fertile eggs that have died at about day 18. Those that make it through the hatching process do so only just. Through out the incubation period the eggs lose the req...

Richard,
I have used your first method with Mercury thermometers too and had good success. (I like living dangerously!)
Ian

Wow! I have just got back after a couple of weeks off, and this is the first thread that I have looked at! I think I might have to go and find an "alcoholic environment". :D I often just throw "a bit" of KI in a beaker, and throw in "a bit" of I and top it up with water...

Thanks All! "Page 261" was an important piece of information! When my predecessor set up all the chemical information, she copied out all of "Appendix D" and put it in a ring binder, to make it easy to find the info...BUT she also included "Appendix A" AFTER "Appen...

Hi all, I hope this is an easy one. My Chem teacher has asked me to make up a solution of Zinc Nitrate, which I have done, however I can not find it in "Appendix D" and so do not know what kind of "Coloured Dot" it requires. Does anybody have any info? (I know this e-mail will so...

Hi everyone, I'm interested to know who is a lab assistant by choice. Well, I guess I could choose to be unemployed! Seriously though, I was a teacher for 12 years, but eventually came to me senses and got out of that! I came to this school as the Maintenance Supervisor (read: "Glorified GA&qu...

Now, perhaps this might be a question for Dr Robb! I googled "Fire Assaying" and determined that it was more to do with extracting silver from lead/silver ore, rather than solid silver from powdered silver. I did an experiment! (Heck, what's the point of working in a laboratory if you can'...

I was fortunate enough to have had the help of a lab technician to show me how to bend tubing (still wearing "L" plates)... but I never found out how to flame polish the ends of glass rods. Can anyone tell me how? Thanks, Lou P. The flame polishing of the rods is easy enough. Just hold th...

Good Morning Chemtalk Family, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a way to clean sintered glass gooch type crucibles of a porosity of 3? Lou P. OK, I admit that after 18 months in the job, I am STILL a "Newbie", but what the dickens is a "sintered glass gooch type crucible"...

SGG wrote:Hi
One of my teachers wants to grow other things besides onions for the reproduction topic. Does anyone have some ideas? Please list all steps as I have a black thumb.
Regards
sueg

White mice??

Ian

I know that it is not strictly speaking about Van de Graffs, but has anybody had a look at the web site

http://tesladownunder.com/index.html

Now some of THOSE sparks would make a good class dem!!!!

Ian

Hi All, we have always put a small piece of rubber tubing to fit at the bottom of all our glass rods used for stirring to avoid glass to glass collisions, even though we round the ends by polishing. Does anyone else do this or am I just old-fashioned? ~Robyn I have used clear plastic tubing on my s...

G'day all! Does anyone know an excellent way of rounding/polishing the ends of fibre optic cable. If it's cut with scissors or stanley knife it doesn't transmit light very well at all to the other end no matter how carefully you do it! Any ideas? Have you tried heating VERY GENTLY over an electric ...

That Computer program sounds marketable! You will have to give me some more details on how it works. My staff are still very reluctant to do RA's and seem to want me to do them for them, (which I think defeats the purpose a little, as I am not the one that needs to know the risks!) We have a "D...

If you have used nice clean sterile, clear petri dishes, then you might get a good view of the cultures THROUGH the lids, uneer a binocular microscope. These usually have lower magnification, but might be sufficient to see the cultures without having to open up the containers. One of the local labbi...

We purchased a "Vertex" bench top filter from Serrata over Christmas, and so far I am very happy with it. The pH is a little low at 5.5, but we were getting similar results from the bottled distilled water that we had been purchasing last year. The conductivity is 0.0uS. You can't get much...