Potassiumcyanide from darkroom chemicals?

name would be ferric hexacyanoferrate.

 

What am I missing in your claiming you never used this completely incorrect name? Here it is in black and white in your post.

 

BTW, it still goes back to the point that potassium ferricyanide is a ubiquitous enough name that the compound is listed as such in chemical catalogs and on bottles as the primary name.

 

 

BTW, just a little while ago I was talking to a tenured inorganic chemist who has been at this for 40 years. His exact words were "I never publish the IUPAC name of a compound, and no one else does either." That may be a bit of hyperbole, but none the less in my research I've found the use of IUPAC names to be the exception in literature rather than the rule. Trust me also that as someone who recently earned an advanced degree in chemistry, I've read a LOT of recent literature. That's true even in top journals like JACS and Angewante Chemie.

 

You can preach from the rooftops all you want that classical and common names should be abolished, but you are fighting a losing battle among the chemistry community at large.

I assume you are all referring to the essential oil of bitter almonds?

What am I missing in your claiming you never used this completely incorrect name? Here it is in black and white in your post.

I NEVER claimed that to be the IUPAC name - you brought that up. Since you seem to be unable to find it, here is what I wrote: a more appropriate (but still not totally proper) name".

 

I know I am tilting at windmills when people who should know better still insist on using an archaic nomenclature that is actually quite a hindrance in understanding the true nature of the compounds. It is one thing if people treat potassium ferricyanide the same way as potassium cyanide because they can't tell the difference. It is quite another if they treat potassium cyanide the same was a potassium ferricyanide. I am sorry if you can't see that. And I am done with this discussion; this is not the place to have it anyway.

Edited May 22, 2017 by Dieter Schaefer

I NEVER claimed that to be the IUPAC name - you brought that up. Since you seem to be unable to find it, here is what I wrote: a more appropriate (but still not totally proper) name".

 

I know I am tilting at windmills when people who should know better still insist on using an archaic nomenclature that is actually quite a hindrance in understanding the true nature of the compounds. It is one thing if people treat potassium ferricyanide the same way as potassium cyanide because they can't tell the difference. It is quite another if they treat potassium cyanide the same was a potassium ferricyanide. I am sorry if you can't see that. And I am done with this discussion; this is not the place to have it anyway.

 

How is "Ferric Hexaferocyanate" in any way CLOSE to a proper name for the compound? You don't even specify the correct cation. If you can't see why this is a problem, I can't help you.

 

Sorry, I'm done also but it doesn't change the fact that you are chastising incorrect naming and in doing so referred to a TOTALLY different compound.

 

And I'm speaking as a real world, working chemist who reads literature on a daily basis. Again, you're fighting a losing battle if you're trying to change this.

Edited May 22, 2017 by ben_hutcherson

I NEVER claimed that to be the IUPAC name - you brought that up. Since you seem to be unable to find it, here is what I wrote: a more appropriate (but still not totally proper) name".

 

I know I am tilting at windmills when people who should know better still insist on using an archaic nomenclature that is actually quite a hindrance in understanding the true nature of the compounds. It is one thing if people treat potassium ferricyanide the same way as potassium cyanide because they can't tell the difference. It is quite another if they treat potassium cyanide the same was a potassium ferricyanide. I am sorry if you can't see that. And I am done with this discussion; this is not the place to have it anyway.

 

And, while we're at it, what is your field?

Thank you all very much!

 

I know some basics of chemistry myself, but that possibility to make KCN using darkroom chemicals was really odd for me. That author was familiar with some tales, maybe. - In that story the photographer was only suspected, she was not guilty :)

Is that the one where the photographer's gay lover is the real murderess, and frames the photographer in revenge for taking a slightly unflattering portrait of her favourite aunt 15 years previously? The murderess scratches the letters "f-e-r-r-i" off a bottle of potassium ferricyanide and the bottle is used in court as damning evidence. After which the photographer writes a false confession and commits suicide to protect her lover, whom she suspects of being the guilty party. The murderess then moves to France with one of the investigating officers who has unexplainedly been imported from the French branch of Interpol. In France a whole series of murders mysteriously occur connected with fish products that have had a letter "s" scratched from their label. The serial poissoner is never found..... until the whole story is told in flashback by an amateur forensic cold-case investigator and art dealer, ironically working with the now retired Interpol officer. The two of them gradually uncover the truth over twelve tedious episodes, and the story ends inconclusively with the Interpol officer on the horns of a dilemma and with a loaded pistol in his hand.

 

Yeah, I saw that. Yawwwn!

Edited May 23, 2017 by rodeo_joe|1

Common names are hard to eliminate.

 

Even the IUPAC has listed "water" as an acceptable name in addition there preferred name of "oxidane".

 

Do any of you hardline chemists actually write or say "oxidane"?

I prefer hydrogen hydroxide, it hydrates me much better than oxidane.

 

(Aaaargh! I fear I've just invented more hyperbole for advertisers to use and print on the ingredients list of near-useless products.)

hydrogen hydroxide

or hydroxyl acid. Or DHMO - dihydrogen monoxide: Dihydrogen monoxide hoax - Wikipedia

Common names are hard to eliminate.

 

Even the IUPAC has listed "water" as an acceptable name in addition there preferred name of "oxidane".

 

Do any of you hardline chemists actually write or say "oxidane"?

 

I wonder how the hard line IUPAC "chemist"(who, if I've found the right person in Scifinder is actually a Chemical Engineer, not a chemist) in this thread would feel about using the IUPAC name for Vitamin B-12...

Why are we even giving this any brain time?

TV shows are fiction!

They're made up by airhead writers with little to no knowledge of science, technology, or anything much else they write about.

 

Exactly! My wife and grandson love the program 'Scorpion.' Coming from a solid STEM upbringing--10 minutes of it makes my head want to explode... :eek:

 

Over the years, I have seen the most inane, incorrect, and outright 'science' fiction on the majority of everything in TV. Things involving electronics or amateur radio make me realize that it's time to go get snacks. Chances are the stupidity will be past when I return... :rolleyes:

The original post asks a legitimate question. Many factual things are shown on TV shows so this is perhaps separating the wheat from the chaff. I'm sure many people see a TV character use a camera with a zoom lens to get a frame filling head and shoulders shot of a person two blocks away. They might wonder if that is possible and they may come here and ask.

I recall, in an early Batman movie, the villain was using potassium hydrochlorothiazide to poison people. It was purported to cause instant death, and be nearly undetectable. The compound is, of course, a common diuretic, with a very low toxicity. One learns to take television "facts" lightly. Haven't we seen surveillance videos which could be enlarged to render individual eyelashes? Can film be developed under a red safelight?

 

KCN could be used as a bleach or fixer, but only under alkaline conditions. Potassium ferricyanide has relatively low toxicity, and is used as a mild oxidant (or bleach). It is the oxidizing potential which results in a HAZMAT designation, and only in solution form. The solid is unclassified. The CN alleles are bound very tightly to the ferric ion, which is the basic reason free CN- is so toxic to oxygen-breathing organisms.

 

Disclaimer: I am a chemist, but I don't play one on television.

Yes potassium cyanide was once used in photographic darkrooms, back in the C19th, along with mercury vapour, carbide lamps, gun-cotton, black lead, lead paint, and a whole host of other stuff we wouldn't go near these days.

Yes potassium cyanide was once used in photographic darkrooms, back in the C19th, along with mercury vapour, carbide lamps, gun-cotton, black lead, lead paint, and a whole host of other stuff we wouldn't go near these days.

You left off asbestos.

 

Actually a substantial amount of long-term damage in the 9/11 attack was the asbestos insulating the steel columns and several pounds of mercury in tens of thousands of fluorescent light bulbs. Mercury vapor is also used for street and commercial lighting. Guncotton is the main ingredient in smokeless powder, used to this day and for the foreseeable future. My grandfather used acetylene lamps to mine coal. I used one to blacken gunsights for competition.

TV shows are fiction!

They're made up by airhead writers with little to no knowledge of science, technology, or anything much else they write about.

 

I was a forensic chemist for 15 years - try watching CSI when you know what the reality is.

Ferricyanide and ferrocyanide used to be common in chemistry sets for kids.

 

The reason cyanide is poisonous is that it binds to the iron in our blood.

In the above ions, it is already bound to iron, and so doesn't need to find yours.

 

However, NaCN isn't completely unknown in darkroom work.

 

I have Kodak's "Processing Chemicals and Formulas" which tells how

to make many darkroom chemicals, including Intensifier IN-!.

 

For IN-1 there are two steps. First, soak in a solution of KBr and

mercuric chloride, until the image is white.

 

Then in a mix of NaCN and silver nitrate (I suspect it goes to AgCN)

for redevelopment.

 

I suspect that I would be more worried about Hg than CN, at least

in a well ventilated darkroom.

 

Or use an intensifier that doesn't have Hg or CN.

I think Scorpion is getting worse. They weren't always as far off as the later episodes.

 

Still, if you look between the lines, they are sometimes fun.

 

I like it better than Big Bang, though I am not sure which one gets the science

right more often.