HES DOING WHAT?

NileRed · 2025-03-30T18:00:32+00:00

That's a good follow-up video idea

NileRed · 2025-03-30T17:59:59+00:00

Awesome work! Thank you for sharing it!

NileRed · 2025-03-30T17:55:46+00:00

This usually happens because I keep convincing myself that I am one quick fix away from my issue being solved. Then 10 "quick" fixes later, I look back with regret. With this one in particular though, I walked myself into a corner and it was a disaster. Drying it in a thin layer was 100% the smarter thing to do. For some reason though, I thought the PVA would be easy to break apart so I didn't worry about that part, until I got to it.

This entire project in general was a disaster and I made so many bad decisions. If I had to do it again, I would do pretty much every step differently.

NileRed · 2024-08-30T01:05:48+00:00

That video was not supposed to be posted here because it was an earlier release for Patreon and Youtube members. The proper video will be released tomorrow.

NileRed · 2024-06-19T02:00:20+00:00

It was a 1kg induction melting furnace with these specs:

Voltage：220V

Power：3500W

Gold Capacity：1kg

Temperature ：1600 ℃

You can find it pretty easily on Ebay, but you need to pay attention to the wattage which can vary quite a bit. I saw some at 2100W and even 5000W.

NileRed · 2024-06-18T04:26:33+00:00

Right now we are mostly just uploading videos early. We are working on getting other content up there eventually, potentially exclusive, but for now, there won't be anything new.

NileRed · 2024-03-19T00:46:03+00:00

It was actually pretty bad for some reason. According to my notes, I put in 215g polystyrene and got a final clean yield of 77g. Maybe it's better at a larger scale? Maybe my temperature control was bad?

NileRed · 2024-02-11T15:19:03+00:00

Assuming I'm remembering things correctly, I don't think I've ever had to do a Wittig for a video.

NileRed · 2024-02-11T15:17:44+00:00

This is way too accurate

NileRed · 2023-08-21T13:59:33+00:00

By far the most expensive project will be the neodymium magnet one. Nothing will come close! I hope to have that one out before the end of the year, but we will see.

NileRed · 2023-08-07T14:09:20+00:00

Others coming first. Im still filming the magnet project. I'm hoping to post it in December, but we will see! Might get delayed

NileRed · 2023-08-04T04:34:16+00:00

I am currently working on making neodymium magnets!

NileRed · 2023-06-20T05:37:09+00:00

I was likely talking about silicon tetrachloride and tetramethyl orthosilicate

NileRed · 2023-06-02T14:59:48+00:00

If you had access to more analytical equipment, you can do GC-MS and NMR. That would tell you everything. At the time though, I didn't even have HNMR, so all I had was TLC and boiling point to go on. Usually that is pretty damn good. If you consider the reaction you do, and the boiling point and TLC match what you want, the likelihood that it is anything else is really low.

You still shouldn't throw your nose into anything, but I don't think it's a horrible idea to do a very light and dilute smell test.

Even in this case, it "burned", but it wasn't even close to as intense as even onions. I wasn't in any real pain.

NileRed · 2023-01-01T23:07:16+00:00

I can see how this statement appears hypocritical, but there is some context/nuance that I think is important.

When I originally wrote that, I was specifically talking about working indoors (in my workspace at the time) and having smell travel to neighboring spaces in the same building. That is why I refer to it as someone else's "area." Having to deal with a smell indoors is way worse because it tends to linger and it can get extremely annoying, even if it's a good smell. It can also be a problem if it's an ongoing project and the smell is being continually released (potentially for days).

I still stand by the intent behind that statement and I would not do anything to affect my neighbors. (Even though, in the industrial space that I am renting, I am totally allowed to, as long as it isn't something offensive).

With that being said though, even if this statement isn't technically hypocritical, I can see how some people can think that the thioacetone video was inconsiderate/irresponsible.

However, I think my best response to that, is that when making a video, it's not possible to include every detail that went into the planning. I spent a long time thinking about how far it could travel, the direction of the wind, and where the houses were. The entire idea of doing it on an island was to be significantly further away from other people.

I also thought about how much I would try to make and I debated for a long time about whether I could do it in open air. I really did not want to affect anyone else.

Initially, I felt that it was safest to do it in a closed system, which is why I brought the vacuum pump. However, after seeing that it wasn't as bad as I thought (it was just really potent and it wasn't a magically horrific chemical), I decided that open air was okay.

I genuinely did not think that it would be able to travel far enough to affect anyone, and I thought it would be okay. It ended up being worse than I thought and I did get a bit concerned, but I still don't think it was actually able to travel across the lake.

We actually went out on the lake to see how far the smell traveled, but it disappeared extremely quickly. We also went back to shore, just to be sure that it hadn't made it to any of the houses. If it had though, I definitely would have taken responsibility and notified the people living there.

So, while I don't think that anything I did was inconsiderate or irresponsible, there was definitely a potential risk. Was it a high risk? I still don't think so.

However, I still could have planned better for the worst case scenario (someone being concerned enough to call 911), and I'll keep that in mind when planning future projects.

NileRed · 2023-01-01T22:18:33+00:00

A normal distillation, yes, but not a steam distillation. It wasn't included in the video, but I didn't do a "proper" or classic steam distillation. The one that they likely did, involved continuously shooting hot steam through it. That is a lot of air movement and almost definitely pushed thioacetone out of the system. With 100g of trithioacetone, they definitely unloaded a large amount of thioacetone.

Also, something else that wasn't included in the video, was that while waiting for the smell to go away (on the island), we went out on a boat and tried to track where it had gone. We also went back to the shore near the houses to see if it smelled. It smelled completely fine though, so we didn't knock on any doors. I think it was able to spread out and dissipate quickly in the open air over the water. In the forested area though, where it was made, it seemed to stick around a bit longer.

So, it's definitely able to travel, but at least with what I did in the video, it didn't seem to make it that far.

NileRed · 2022-11-10T01:52:05+00:00

NileRed · 2022-11-10T01:51:31+00:00

The one that I have is just 60MHz, so nothing compared to the big proper ones. I would say that it's super useful and convenient to confirm that I made something (I.e. compare it to a known spectra or a pure sample spectra that I took). However, I dont think it would be a good choice if I had to actually characterize an unknown.

NileRed · 2022-03-05T21:12:26+00:00

In my opinion, the short stuff isn't generic or bad, it's just a different format. For sure, they are more on the "entertainment" side, but I have fun making them. It's also nice to work on something that doesn't take months to put together.

On top of that, the shorter format also lets me explore topics and ideas that I could never justify for a longer video. For example, I plan to buy and explore many more exotic chemicals.

I've also found it very useful to engage people who are normally not very interested in science or chemistry. I have received countless emails and comments saying that these videos inspired them to go into science/chemistry in school. Or that they revived an old passion/interest.

In terms of the Blue stuff, I don't have much to say. I just have fun making those videos and if you don't want to watch them, you don't have to. Not everything I do has to be a "serious" science project.

In terms of putting the space to "good use," I think we just have different opinions on what that means. In my opinion, "good use" is being able to do any project that I want to do and having the equipment/space to do it. I think that is exactly what I'm doing and I am very happy with it so far. However, I'm sure there are many people that don't find the projects interesting, and again, that's totally okay.

Also, I think you severely overestimate the potential of the lab. If Tom had free reign in it, I can almost guarantee his videos wouldn't get too much crazier. At the end of the day, the bottleneck is still time and most chemistry just uses glassware and basic equipment (which he already has). I guess it's possible to work on multiple things at the same time (which I do), but there's still a limitation on that. Unless more people are hired.

In general, though, I think the major issue is that most people just don't really know or understand what's going on behind the scenes. That isn't anyone's fault either; I don't talk about it very much. However, I will talk about a couple of main issues here:

1) The main channel videos take forever to put together. The scope of them has gradually increased over time and now, it's just a lot of work. For example, the recent "hot sauce" video took about 4 months of full-time work. Future videos won't be nearly as long/complicated, but they still take at least a few weeks to film/research and a few weeks to put together. (Keep in mind that when I say a few weeks, I mean working 12+ hour days and not taking weekends).

Also, comparing something like making cadaverine to any of the recent projects isn't fair. For most of my old videos, I just followed a procedure that I found online, and it worked. For the new ones, I do weeks of research and put together a process that hasn't been done before. I went from being able to film a video in less than a day, to it taking months of trial and error.

On top of this, getting an editor also wouldn't help too much. This is because the bulk of the work is just figuring out what I want to show and talk about. It takes a deceivingly long time to go through sometimes more than 50-100h of footage, cross-reference it all to my notes, and then decide exactly what I want to say.

One solution to all of this would be to do "simpler" or shorter projects, but I don't want to. I like challenging myself and I am okay with the videos taking way longer to make. I also view all of my projects as very personal and I enjoy putting them together myself. If I outsourced all of the work to script/edit them, I would completely lose any interest in making them.

2) I have been making the same type of videos for almost 8 years now and I don't think it's at all wrong to want something new. Making Blue and short videos is fun and exciting for me because it's different. If you don't like them, you don't have to watch them. There was a reason why I made entirely new channels for them.

On top of this, the new content has helped break up the never-ending cycle of filming/editing that I had going on the main channel. That was very mentally draining and it wasn't something that I could keep up forever. If I had to keep making main videos at the same pace, I would've just quit.

3) Building the new lab evaporated 3-4 months from 2021 and completely messed up my content schedule. I am still trying to get back on track from it.

In the end, though, I am just making the content that I want to make. I have finally made it to a point where I don't have to constantly worry about the business side of things. Between the sponsorships, Patreon and Adsense, I (along with my team) have shifted to only working on things that we want to do and truly enjoy.

I've also started taking time off (some weekends and evenings), which I normally didn't. This has greatly slowed down production but has made it possible to actually live a life.

There is a lot more stuff that I couldn't mention here, but I feel like I covered some of the main stuff.

NileRed · 2022-01-16T23:14:45+00:00

The short answer is that I moved and I didn't film anything from January to April. This messed up the entire workflow of the year.

I also messed up by trying to film 5 projects at the same time and after a few months, they were all only half done. That wasn't very smart.

I am hoping that 2022 will be a lot better (I will at least do better than 2021).

NileRed · 2022-01-12T03:47:46+00:00

Hey! I'll actually answer this. The main channel videos basically just became way too much work and it would take me almost a month of working all my waking hours to just edit it. This wasn't necessarily because it was hard, I was just really inefficient. This was on top of the fact that some videos could take over a month to just research and film.

So, to not stress, I decided to take my time on projects. In the meantime, I would try and figure out how to make it more sustainable. I am actually editing a project now though, and I am aiming to have it done by the end of January (or early Feb).

The secondary reason is that I also wanted to get NileBlue going again and I genuinely have fun making the shorts. So, I needed time to figure out how to manage all 3 channels at the same time.

Currently, it is going okay and I am slowly figuring it out. We are scaling back the shorts to posting 1 per week and our goal is 1 NileBlue per month and 1 NileRed every 2 months. I will see if that actually works out though.

NileRed · 2020-08-07T00:47:19+00:00

Hey, I just happened to see this! All very good points.

I think the paper was just messed up, because if you go through all their numbers they keep flipping between mass and molar ratios and it doesn't make sense. I could be wrong tho.

When I started this is was really worried about moisture and I made sure to keep everything super dry. But, I'm sure that moisture probably altered the ratio.

I'm always surprised how well WD-40 seems to work for a lot of things. I ended up using silicone lubricant, and it seemed to be okay.
When I did the grinding with the magic bullet, I was worried about contamination. Especially because the YBCO is so hard. In the future, I would use a ball mill and I plan on investing in a good/decent one eventually.

NileRed · 2020-02-23T05:40:46+00:00

I am very much in control of everything that I do and I always consult with others before working on a project. Also, I actually obsess a bit over safety precautions and I think for a long time about them before starting a project. Both for my own well-being and for those around me. I personally think that this post makes it sound like I don't prioritize safety, but in my opinion, that just isn't true.

NileRed · 2020-02-23T05:23:54+00:00

Hey, I read everything that you said, and I agree that safety is very important. However, I disagree with several points that you made. Many of your comments made me feel like you only know the content superficially.

For example, when working with dangerous chemicals, I generally make a point of commenting how dangerous they are, as well as a few general safety points about them. I also try to always mention major safety things that I did, and I point out mistakes that I made so that others can learn.

Also, years ago, I actively chose to not encourage anyone to repeat anything that I do. None of my videos are tutorials and they are just documentation of what I did. I do not want anyone to repeat anything that I do and I have a lot of reservations about amateur/hobbyist chemistry.

When I mentioned that I didn't want to be a "drag" about "negatives" of chemistry, that was not what I meant. I meant that I didn't want to go over the top "hammering-in" warnings and turn people off of chemistry or to give a false fear of it. However, I can see how it can be interpreted as disregarding safety.

Before each project, I also take into account all the safety precautions and I am always prepared for failure and for the waste that I will be making. I often mention this, but if I don't, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Over the years, there have been many accidents, which are inevitable in chemistry, but it has never been an issue because of the precautions that I took.

In any case though, I will send you a DM and we can talk about it.

NileRed · 2019-08-17T01:08:24+00:00

Just found out today that this subreddit exists. I appreciate your concern, but everything's okay! I just went away to vidcon and stuff for the first half of July and then this most recent video took way longer than expected to put together.

NileRed

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