Could anyone direct me to a good site for some basic chemisty know-how.Ive had a look around on the web myself and alas my searching was in vane all i found was gobeldiegook i didnt understand ,i also had a look in a secondry school science book i found,but the information i seek was not included in its litrature. In a nut-shell i would like to know how to safely mix chemicals to make compounds. i have looked on megs ccl and i find myself clueless

im not lazy i have looked

Usually I should slap you on the wrist for not composing your post properly, but you seem to be one of the very few noobs that starts out with chemistry.

First, read up on the different properties of the elements, there are several periodic tables online.

Then advance through inorganic salts and thier reactions and finally study redox theory, necessary for pyrotechnic reactions.

It's always an asset to have some "hard copy" books to study from when starting out. The net can act as a supplement after that, once you've got the hang of the basics.

I wouldn't suggest delving into details of all the elements directly. It'll do more harm than good to someone without previous knowledge of chemistry. You should start out with the basics- oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, sulfur, sodium, calcium etc. (and their compunds) Laboratory preparations, industrial preparations, and common reactions are a must for a beginner. Simultaneously, you should read up on physical chemistry a bit- redox reactions, chemical and ionic equilibria. After you get the hang of the basics, you could proceed to transition elements, coordination compounds et al.

Could anyone direct me to a good site for some basic chemisty know-how.

Try Cameman Chemistry (http://cavemanchemistry.com/cavebook/) It is a pretty good resource, you will go all the way from making charcoal to black powder, plastics, guncotton and more if you follow the lesson plan.

There is this grade 11 (and 12 too BTW) chemistry text book. It's a modern book and I think it's pretty good. If you're serious about learning some chemistry from the start you could go through it methodically and I think it would give you a start.

The entire thing is 187 megs and not available unless requested since it is too big. The core textbook part (pdf format) is 48 megs. It is available here:

www.pigscanfly.ca/pyropage/Chem11Student_Text_Pages.zip

It won't be there there forever because of the space it takes. Maybe in two weeks it will be gone.

Now, each pdf file is titled with the page on it. This isn't a very handy way to browse the book so if anyone has any ideas to make it handier then feel free to let fly.

Unless specifically asked for it, the same thing won't happen with the gr 12 one. This is because it takes up a fair amount of room on the web server. Both will of course appear (along with other things) on the next FTP when it (hopefully) comes up.

I second caveman cemistry,great site. Thank you Bert. Also via Kazaa or emule try chemistry or chemie as search terms. Theres a MacMillan publishing Chemistry book out there that I believe is high school level,in addition to Vogel and the college level stuff. I found a little book by Barrons at my local book store called Chemistry:The Easy Way. It was meant for high schoolers to get their grades up. Its great and I love it,would'nt part with it for the world.

Well for the basic knowledge for what you would need tho know for pyrotechnics and chemistry, you would want to take at least a highschool chemistry class. they teach things that help with making pyrotechnics such as double replacments, redox reactions, ect. If you are looking for a way to teach yourself chemistry check amazon.com or another online book store where you can buy a highschool or colledeg chemistry book.

I actually find that learning the science behind chemistry is not the hard part, it can be easily researched though high school or college level text books available at the library, as well as other books, actual courses, and a wealth of online information. The problem I found is learning the practically applicable process of chemistry, just basically laboratory techniques, learning the methods of distillation, proper filtering, proper vacuum techniques, how water aspirators work and how to make them for $15, dehydrating certain products, and how to improvise with impure OTC chemicals. The reason is that most of these problems apply to the home chemist whereas the schools have ACS, analytical, and lab grade reagents and proper vacuum sources, they do not teach methods of distillation, chemical purification, and such. Sure they teach the basic how to dilute, titrate, and etc, but they rarely teach that which to a home chemist is truly golden: the actual synthesis of and purification of desired substances. Even when doing synthesis in school, they usually never purify the product of the synthesis, because they do not intend to use it, like when we were doing fulminate synthesis in very small trace amounts, we just left it in solution instead of filtering it out, and used chemicals such as silver nitrate, which are not easily available or maybe not at all to the OTC chemist. Most of this I have been able to figure out with the help of the forum members, but I still don't know what the hell they are talking about when they refer to "refluxing" or "reflux distillation". Anyway, I have borrowed a 1941 book called "Brief Course In Organic Chemistry" by Reynold C. Fuson, Ralph Connor, Charles C. Price, and H.R. Snyder; from my AP chemistry teacher. The book was written in 1941 and thus contains little of the censorship of most of todays chemistry books. It is written in simple easy to understand language(I think) and provides a wealth of knowledge on organic chemistry and its reactions. It has tons of useful syntheses outlined such as acetamide, acetic anhydride, etc. The really nice part of the book is the back which has a 50 page section on proper laboratory techniques such as distillation, gas generation and harvesting, filtering, drying, bubbling, and etc. If you are looking to get into amateur chemistry this book is definitely on my top 5 list.

I also had a couple of questions, which is more pure, ultrapure or ultratrace grade reagents, and is there anything higher than those? Also, I am very curious concerning acid strength, I have always believed nitric to be the strongest, but when considering corrosion of organic substances would sulfuric be stronger than nitric? And what if you had anhydrous HCl under enough pressure to make it liquid, that would would make it about 40M if at the same density as nitric acid, whereas anhydrous nitric is 25M. And what of perchloric, HI, and HBr? Its so freakin' confusing.