I was watching the new episode of House, and my curiosity was piqued by the gold compound that caused the patient’s symptoms. Looking around on Wikipedia, I found this:
OK, so that’s sort of cool, but this is even better:
In other words, de Hevesy turned two gold medals into liquid form and hid them in plain sight, and had them restored later. How awesome is that?
That is indeed cool.
Ok, I just tried that with some valuable old family photos, a watch, and some ancient coins. They dissolved beautifully and won’t get stolen now. How to I turn them back when I need to?
Moving thread from IMHO to MPSIMS.
Electrolyze the solution. You’ll get most of the component metals back. You can use a 9V battery and pencil lead for electrodes, but prepare to sit around for a while. 
You need to throw them into a blast furnace.
I love the ad at the bottom:
Buy sulfuric acid online. :eek:
Science? Way cool. I grew up listening to a ton of it, Dad was a professional science writer for a large metropolitan newspaper.
Hands down, the coolest science gag of my childhood? Being on the upper floors at the Frankling Institute for science classes on a Saturday morning and watching the instructor hold a pinkie ball in a flask of liquid nitrogen. Then dropping it on the ground, where of course it shattered like glass.
Second coolest? A moment later, when he did the same thing with a huge red rose. 
Oh, and that whole walking on the surface of our Moon? That was neato too.
Cartooniverse
You can always tell the science types, because they refer to it as “our Moon” rather than “the Moon.” Wouldn’t want to confuse people about which moon you’re talking about!
“We were walking on Io? Did I miss something?”
I saw this once in ST: TNG. But it wasn’t acid, it was a transporter. And it wasn’t gold, it was Scotty…
I get:
Goodbye Yeast Infections
The More Effective Candida Cure. A Treatment that Works from Day One
Goodbye indeed :eek:
Presidential Hat Company
2008 Hats, Bush, Reagan & Kennedy As seen in Washington, D.C.
www.presidentialhatcompany.com
…well don’t that just beat all.
Oh man. Yay for science! I had some of the coolest demos in my high school chemistry class. There was the one where the teacher took one of those water cooler drums, empty, and coated the inside with some hydrocarbon or other, and set it upright. Then he taped a candle to a double yardstick, lit the candle, and put the flame near the opening of the container. The resulting fire geyser knocked loose ceiling tiles.
And then, my favorite was when he took methane out of the gas nozzle and turned it to a liquid. We went out into the hallway, where he set it on FIRE and sent flaming balls of liquid methane scooting down the hall. Holy BLAP that was awesome.
Yes.
It was probably methanol, since it becomes a vapor so easily. I’ve actually done that demo before, and it’s really cool. The huge WHOOSH when it first catches always makes me jump, and I already know what’s going to happen.
There’s just something fascinating about a good science demo. My favorite that I’ve ever done is a pressure demo involving lying down on a bed of nails (1000, to be precise), getting covered with a “blanket” of 1000 nails, and then getting a concrete cinder block placed on top. (And then subsequently broken.) The smashee gets up unharmed, of course. (Kids, don’t try this at home!)
Damn, all we ever did was burn hydrogen in test tubes. I always wanted make up for this by synthesising some nitrogen triiodide, but I keep getting scared I’ll drop a decimal somewhere and blow up the house. Calculations were always my weakest point in chemistry.
My chemistry teacher did a demo of the violent reaction between a chunk of sodium and a flask of water. He set up a clear plastic shield between the flask and the students and dropped the sodium in with a long pair of tongs. There was a loud bang and little sodium bits flying everywhere, it was cool.
My two favourites from my childhood are pouring concentrated sulfuric acid on sugar (nifty black carbon sort of foams out of the container), and dissolving phosphorus in (I think) carbon disulphide, soaking a piece of filter paper in it, setting it on top of a tall graduated cylinder and waiting - nifty “whump!” when the carbon disulphide evaporates and the phosphorus ignites.
We are all just passengers on this glorious starship Earth…
It’s amazing the stuff you can do with table sugar. If you can get a hold of a good oxidizer (I’m thinking potassium perchlorate, but any strong oxidizer should work) mix some oxidizer in with the sugar, and touch it off with that sulfuric acid. Makes a nice purple flame. If you feel really adventurous, drop a gummy bear in molten potassium perchlorate in a test tube- flames will shoot a foot or so out of the tube.
As opposed to a bad one.
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/13706380.htm
Only provided this because it was on my front page a few weeks/months ago.