Apoptosis

Hey everyone! I just wanted to apologize for not uploading anything the past month and just sorta being MIA (assuming anyone actually noticed).
Long story short I've just been swamped with work at my real job and haven't really had any time to work on my videos here. That said, I do have a few fairly short videos I'm planning to have out ASAP before I start working on editing some of these major projects I've finished filming but not had time to edit into coherent videos.
That's all to say sorry for the delay, but expect new content very soon!

5 months ago | [YT] | 356

Apoptosis

Hey everyone! I just wanted to share a few quick screen-grabs I took from a few of the projects I recently wrapped up shooting. The first is from the huge cobalt video I've been working on the last year, the second is from a video on the science of atomic emission spectra, the third is from a video making an anti-seizure medication from toluene (4 part organic synth), and the 4th is from a video on separation techniques for organics (mostly column chromatography and liquid-liquid)
I just thought they looked neat :)

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6 months ago | [YT] | 312

Apoptosis

Quick update on my Patreon: They did finally get back to me to let me know my appeal was denied, and that my account was is permanently banned.
I'm going to try another appeal, and likely make a little petty YT video on how arbitrary their policies are, but in the meantime I'm looking at alternatives for those of you who would like to help out.

I'll probably start reaching out to sponsors, make a ko-fi, and if one more person becomes a member here on YT I'll be able to feature members on my home page.
That's all I've got for now, and I'll keep you guys updated!
Thanks as always for the support :)

BTW, I've started working on some mid/long-form videos featuring specific elements. Basic idea is to showcase all the most interesting things I could think of to do with a specific element, and the length is essentially a function of how chemically versatile the element is.
That said, feel free to vote on an element you'd like to see a deep-dive on. Aside from the ones listed below I've begun work on Silver, Iron, Lead, mercury, tin, Vanadium, and Nickel. I also have one finished on Gallium that I'll probably put out first since its the shortest (and actually finished)

11 months ago | [YT] | 153

Apoptosis

Hey everyone! Quick note:
My YouTube channel here was originally just a receptacle for my TikTok reuploads, until I eventually realized I like making YouTube videos more than TokToks.
That said, I've got like 150+ videos here that are low/mid quality vertical aspect ratio reuploads less than 5 minutes that can be annoying to sort through as they are indistinguishable my videos that were intended for YouTube.

Separately, I made a shorts account several months ago because YouTube used to clog the homepage with shorts and I didn't want to do that to you guys. These days though shorts are completely separate and there is a 3-minute short length limit.
That said, my plan is to slowly move about 100 of my old TikTok reuploads to my shorts account so they are separate from the type of content I make now, but still accessible as many of them contain good information or cool demos. I also plan to begin upload higher-quality shorts here to my main account which will consist mostly of cool reactions that aren't worth a full video or condensed versions of my full videos.
This is mostly meant as a notification, but if any of you as viewers/subscribers have any input here I figured I'd open a place for you to voice it before I pull the trigger on this.

1 year ago | [YT] | 206

Apoptosis

Hey everyone! Just wanted to give one more quick update and get your thoughts on future video ideas since I haven't done so in quite a long time.
As for the update on Patreon, the appeal is still pending and I've read all your comments on my last post (although I have not had time to respond yet)
I'm thinking if I can't get my Patreon back I'll probably switch to Kofi for donations, and Nebula for exclusive content. I could also take Memberships here on YouTube seriously if there's any interest there.

As for future videos, my next planned release is on complex chemistry. Planning to do 3 different totally unique cobalt complexes (one of which I don't believe exists yet on YouTube). Going forward though let me know what y'all would like to see more. My professional training was in organic synthesis so that's what I can do best/most easily, but because I spent so long doing organic chem as a job I tend to be drawn to the inorganics as a hobby so I'm biased. Below I've got 4 projects that are wrapped but not yet edited, lmk what you'd like to see next!
NOTE: In addition to the projects listed I can also prioritize the following synthesis projects if there is sufficient interest in any of these:

Ethylenediamine, Piperidine, Nitromethane, gallium compilation, crystallization compilation, Erythrosine, methanol from wood, PLA, perchloric acid, Kjeldahl method, benzaldehyde (2 ways), Methylammonium Bromide for lead Testing, acetyl chloride, Morpholine, 4-methylpyridine, 4-hydroxybenzaldehyde, Nile Blue/Nile Red, Sudan 1-3

1 year ago | [YT] | 61

Apoptosis

Hey everyone! I just wanted to send out a quick update about my Patreon. I wanted to wait for a resolution on this before making a post about it, but the process is taking longer than I expected.
So as you may know, the primary point of my Patreon aside from a place to take donations for the sake of increasing my production quality was to post videos that were not acceptable for YouTube (mostly energetics).
My logic here was that after speaking to friends who post on Patreon and after reading their community guidelines thoroughly it did seem that they were more lax about the type of content you could post there (especially if it was behind a paywall)
As it turns out this is not the case. After I uploaded my TNG video there my account was frozen so I could not post or message pending an investigation in response to a report (so apologies if you tried messaging me there). A few days ago the "investigation" concluded and in response my Patreon was terminated and Patrons refunded.

I did immediately appeal this decision as:

1) There are 7 other videos on Patreon right now that show the EXACT same process I demonstrated in my video.

2) The representative who notified me said that the reason for the termination was quote "Creators may not offer discounts, promotions, coupons, or other incentives to purchase or obtain weapons, offer weapons as a benefit, or create instructional works related to making, handling, or modifying explosives."
The word "explosives" was added by him and does not exist in the actual community guidelines. Feel free to check. If something so incredibly broad as "handling explosives" was truly against their policy than a vast number of videos on their platform would be in violation of their own policy (including fireworks).

There is also a stated exemption that videos featuring explosives are allowed if done through an educational or historical lens, and I'd argue that my video is both. He/they ignored this exemption entirely.

3) TNG in its pure form is simply not a weapon, despite being an extremely dangerous energetic. My video was akin to showing how to purify gasoline from crude oil insofar as gasoline CAN be weaponized. Taking an energetic and fashioning it into a usable weapon is an entirely different process that I did not show in my video, and in fact the procedure I showed could not be easily modified to a scale necessary for weaponization. This was intentional and I actually got several comments about it.

4) I feel that total channel termination is a rather harsh first strike policy for something that I genuinely uploaded in good faith and had no idea would be an issue.

Anyway, I'm still hoping for an appeal and I'll update when I hear back on that front. In the case that the account can't be restored I'd love to hear any ideas on either some other platform that would be safe to upload such videos for you guys and/or somewhere else you guys would be interested in donating to help fund my work.
Worst case scenario I could always contact those sponsors that are always emailing me.. they do offer more money for a single video than Patreon paid out in a year, but I did like the idea that all my videos could be crowdfunded..
Regardless let me know your thoughts, and I've got a new upload scheduled for Saturday!

PS: As always I am beyond grateful to those of you who believed in and enjoyed my work enough that you helped to financially support it. Even if I can't get the Patreon back, I'll I'll continue to credit those of you who had active subscriptions at the point I could last sign in for at least the next month or so.

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 134

Apoptosis

Hey everyone!
Sorry I haven't posted in a couple weeks, I was working on putting out this patreon-exclusive video and it just ended up taking me a lot longer to finish than I expected.
Check it out if you're a Patreon member and haven't seen this yet!

(I plan to have another YouTube video finished soon as well)

1 year ago | [YT] | 130

Apoptosis

Hey everyone! In lieu of YouTube's new community guidelines changes I'll be moving my videos on ammonium nitrate and gunpowder along with possibly a few others to my Patreon. I feel if these are behind a "paywall" YouTube won't be able to claim "reckless dissemination of dangerous information" (despite the fact I've only ever shown processes clearly detailed on wikipedia but whatever) Aside from that I decided to just leave my video titles clear and direct.
Oh and I'll also add a $1 tier on patreon to make it more accessible, as well as possibly upload to another video hosting site if y'all have any ideas.
Anyway just figured I'd give that little update to my last post!

1 year ago | [YT] | 170

Apoptosis

So you may have heard already, but around two weeks ago YouTube updated its guidelines on "Firearms and regulated goods", and augmented its algorithm accordingly. This is obviously not ideal for chemistry content creators, especially when the changes are not explained, and when most of the "work" is done by AI before being manually reviewed by moderators who probably didn't study chemistry and thus have no clue what they're looking at.
As far as how this has played out, I got my video on "Making Ammonium Nitrate 3 ways" removed along with a community guidelines strike. I've also had several other random videos demonetized or age-restricted. I've been talking to other chemistry YouTubers to see if there is any kind of pattern in what the AI is targeting, and so far NurdRage has had a restriction over potassium nitrate, LabCoatz got a restriction over phosphoryl chloride, chemdelic got one over benzyl chloride, Thy labs got one over benzyl bromide, and Chemiolis got one over the bromination of ketones.
So yeah I'm not really sure what the logic is here, it does seem like binary nitrate salts and benzyl halides are off-limits now... for some reason. Nitro-compounds seem fine with there still being a dozen videos up on nitroglycerin..

In either case I do really like to make my video titles very direct, and show exactly what the title claims. I do this because I personally really hate clickbait titles, but just for the time being I might make the title of any new upload a bit more ambiguous if its something I worry YouTube's broken AI might catch.. So if you see any uploads from me with a title that doesn't really specify what chemical is being made, you'll know why.

Also I might type out and post my "Top 10 favorite ways to make ammonium nitrate" later out of spite. The idea of blocking videos on how to make binary salts is just so absurd to me.

1 year ago | [YT] | 275

Apoptosis

So in my seemingly endless mission to make every possible Alum I've been dissolving all my lanthanide samples in sulfuric acid. I've never really done much of anything with the f-block elements so when I saw the colors of some of their sulfates I was quite in awe of how vivid they were.

However, I use several types of lighting in my lab and I noticed the holmium sulfate solution was distinctly yellow under my broad spectrum light, but almost red under my fluorescent bulb. I thought I was going crazy at first, but I confirmed holmium sulfate is yellow under full spectrum light and reddish under cathodic light. I then found that there is a distinct color change for 3 of the other lanthanide solutions I made, although none as dramatic as holmium.
Below are the 4 lanthanide solutions in question under the two types of light.

I then decided to hit them all with UV light to see what happened. Turned out that two of the colorless solutions (terbium and europium) are distinctly fluorescent under 365nm UV while the rest unfortunately are not.

Sorry if this is common knowledge. As I've mentioned I go into every project pretty much blind (after I've made myself aware of all potential hazards) so this is very new and fascinating to me. Hope at least some of you find this interesting as well!

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1 year ago | [YT] | 170