Some tobacco.
Still bloody waiting for my fuckton of solvents, potassium iodide and pot perm.
Oh, and I did buy a load of tubes of a kind of candy called 'parma violets', those are pale round disk-shaped sweets, softish and crunchy, powdery in texture, dissolving not super-fast but quite quickly when sucked on, pale mauve in color and tasting of, well, violets (as in the scent of the flowering plant, sweetish, perfumed flavour, very old fashioned). My old man loathes them but I love the things. Got a couple of bags of irn bru flavour boiled sweets that actually do taste like irn bru the drink. Really nice they are too. And two bottles of bubblegum flavour fizzy pop, 2l sizes.
Some lavender essential oil.
And whilst I haven't bought yet, I am on the hunt for some mercury metal, and WFNA type HNO3 (white fuming nitric acid), or alternatively some mercury nitrate, or better yet, since it isn't the nitrate anion I want, its the Hg content, in fact I'd sooner have it as mercury (II) chloride or mercury (II) bromide. And I'd rather not bother spending the money to buy the nitric acid either as currently dissolving mercury, if all I can get is mercury in its elemental, metallic form, is pretty much the only need I currently would have for it (I.e if I came upon Hg(NO3)2 itself then I wouldn't require the WFNA, at least not right now I wouldn't, although it is one of the handier acids to have around, for its strongly oxidizing character. Not bad for cleaning things off glassware, preferable to a chromic acid bath as it doesn't leave behind chromium residues all the elements making up HNO3 being gaseous and therefore volatile, it leaves when asked without sticking its foot in the door haha. And MUCH safer to use, although not so effective on the very toughest of gunk, than using piranha bath (a mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid and conc. hydrogen peroxide. Eats the living shit out of most anything it touches, damn dangerous and has a nasty ass tendency towards forming things that can explode, and it will itself cause organics to go kaboomski. Nasty stuff, but good for removing burnt on carbonized crap from glassware because its quite capable of dissolving even the likes of a carbon rod, inorganic carbon itself is oxidized to CO2 by piranha acid. But everything damn well BETTER have been dealt with thoroughly first so the organics have been burnt off before its used, nitric is more of a first resort, and a lot safer)
Not quite decided whether to go for Hg(0) and dissolve the metal in nitric acid myself then prepare one of its oxides and thence a halide (other than mercuric iodide which is insoluble more or less in water and the lower alcohols..damn near most other things too afaik, although I've never had anything personally to do with it), or buy Hg salts directly. Because on the one hand the salts are more convenient and facile for my uses, but on the other, harder to turn to Hg metal, needing first converting to cinnabar, mercury sulfide, then roasting to distill off mercury as the vapor, condensing it, which I would really really REALLY not want to do. Mercury vapor being the nasty fucking shit that it is. But I also have something I'd like to do with mercury metal, if I can get it in bulk, namely make a mercury cell.
Not the battery type, not that kind of mercury cell, but one that uses liquid mercury as the anode, for electrolytic reduction of potassium salts, the molten salt sitting above the dense mercury being electrolyzed and as its produced, potassium metal dissolves into the mercury to form an amalgam, once the mercury is saturated with as much potassium or sodium as it can take, then the mercury-potassium amalgam is recovered and the mercury distilled off and recovered, or potentially made use of itself directly without having to distill off the Hg (which stays in the metallic form)
One issue though is I'd have to really find the mercury as metal, in this country because its so fucking heavy and dense and a bastard to have shipped, because of the way it can't go on air freight, as one spill and the plane could be eaten away in flight. Which of course is not conducive to the pilot retaining clean underwear to say the very least:D
And whilst my organic chemistry use for Hg as mercury (II) salts (mercury (I) being the mercurous oxidation state and Hg (II) is mercuric, the latter being much, much much more toxic than mercury (I) only requires small quantities, almost catalytic quantities often as not, for use as an electrode for the potassium/sodium amalgam type electrolytic refinement, that requires the use of liters of it. Which wouldn't come cheaply either. Shipping too would be monstrous if its international, as Hg is extremely heavy and very very dense. So dense, that apparently if one has a tank of mercury metal, its actually physically possible to stand on it without sinking. Would love to see if its true, and if it would only apply that one doesn't sink if horizontal, or if the narrow surface area of booted feet would in fact, sink despite its great density. I've seen pictures of the likes of pound coins floating on it though. But one day, I want to give it a try, to see if I can walk on mercury, like jesus christ was reputed to walk on water:D (wearing protective gear of course)
