Wow...an actual laundry conference.  Amazing.
Can anyone reccomend me a way to make permanent marker stop being so
permanent?  I got some on a shirt, and it won't go away...

36 responses total.

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 Glad you like the conf, dan. It really is remmers idea, but I copied it from
m-net.

It's a white t-shirt, with black permanent marker.  Unpleasant, isn't it...

Well, you could draw a nice design on it with black permanent marker,
taking advantage of what is already there. Get an artists friend to
exercise some creativity.

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  I don't think anything can be done, but there might be a solution. Have you
talked to the dry cleaners? Maybe a little perq can get it out.

  (Perc or perq is the chemical used in the dry cleaning process. It is a
carcinogen, and very toxic. You have to be licensed to handle it, that is,
removing spent chemical from the machine's system and installing new).

  That info was courtesy of evil1 who is a dry cleaner par excellance.

  You might want to call Armen's main plant and speak with Joyce. If she can't
help you, no one can.

"perc" is perchloroethylene, but the contraction comes from the trade
name Perclene. It is not as toxic as carbon tetrachloride, but is now
controlled. (I hate to think of how much carbton"tet" and "perc" I
have dealt with and breathed in my career.....I conducted a year long
research project with a mixture of carbon tet" and octane, with no
special ventilation. Those were the old - and more dangerous - days...)

  So what exatly is Octane. I have always defined it as a factor or number
that gasoline, when burnt in an engine ceases to knock. 

  I'm thinking about starting a chemistry conf. What say, Rane?

Octane is C H   (though i think they actually use 2,2,4 tri-methyl pentane
           8 18 
or some such these days).  The idea is that you compare the combustion-
related properties of a batch of gasoline (which is a messy mixture of
all sorts of hydrocarbons even before they add the additives (detergents,
etc.)) to octane.  Depending on the well the oil came from, the refinery
it went to, the way it was treated in extracting the gasoline, etc. you
might get all sorts of variation from one tank of gas to another.  The
octane number reference (amoung others) is used by refineries to mix,
treat, etc. their gasoline so as to deliver a consistent product. 

 I related your problem to evil1, and she suggest alcohol. Put an absorbent
piece of cloth behind the stain and dab it with alcohol. It should work, if
not, then you have a rag. She also said that perc won't do a thing for it,
and if you have washed it since you got the stain on it, it's probably set
for life. 
  She also said that 100% alcohol will work the best, so go get a bottle of
Everclear.

Which alcohol?

Octane is what i said it is, and "octane number" compares the "knocking"
properties of a fuel against a standard mixture (iso-octane and heptane
with or without anti-knocking agent) in a standard engine under standard
operating conditions. There are actually about six different "standard"
procedures (which give different results!). "Octane number", incidentally,
is *only* concerned with knocking, has has nothing to do with efficiency,
miles-per-gallon obtained, cleanliness, etc. Knocking is premature
detonation of the fuel-air mixture, and it drastically reduces engine
power.

A chemistry cf? I'd probably participate, but that's my profession, and
you know what they say about "all work and no play....".

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Is that really you, Valerie? Usually electrical engineers shun chemistry
like the plague. :). 

All of the above is correct - except that "Everclear" is a trade name,
and does not identify what alcohol is being suggested. The alcohol names
are based upon the names of the hydrocarbons from which they are derived
by the substitution of an -OH group for a -H. Thus

methane     -->   methanol
ethane      -->   methanol
propane     -->   propanol
etc

So, which alcohol was being suggested for this cleaning application?

  Marlene was saying that Isopropyl would probably work best, although
I know you cannot drink it. Everclear is 200 proof alcohol, I would guess
methyl alcohol is the kind we can drink.

  Valerie, that chemistry explanation was very interesting, and enlightening.

  I'll still call Joyce to see what she has to say about the stain.

Wow.  I've forgotten so much since high school.
<lee goes to track down a chemistry text... any chemistry text>

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  Valerie, you never cease to amaze me at what you know.

ethane  ----> ethanol in #13 for those who didn't catch it right away.

Methanol is "wood alcohol", and poisonous 'fer sure.  Ethanol is "grain
alcohol" like you find in beer.  (My impression is that Everclear is
only about 190 proof.  I know it's excellent for some cleaning applications,
there are museums that go though it by the case.  Dunno whether they
denature it on receipt to prevent evaporation in the presence of staff...)
Whoops!  New word - denature.  Broadly, it means to render unfit for human
consumption.  Here, it means to spike (very popular beverage) ethanol with
(XXX POISON) methanol to (hopefully) prevent human consumption. 

Isopropanol aka isopropyl alcohol is the stuff you'll find lots of 70%
strength (diluted with water) being sold as Rubbing Alcohol.  Decent
drug stores will have 90% & higher strengths.  (Beware - the more potent
stuff is MUCH more of a fire hazard than the 70%.)

To continue in valerie's tradition for isopropyl alcohol:  
   H   H   H
   |   |   |
H--C---C---C--H
   |   |   |
   H   O   H
       | 
       H  

Propanol aka propyl alcohol (wo/the "iso") would differ in the placement
of the oxygen atom (the "O").  In propanol, the O would be between one
of the end carbon atoms and a hydrogen atom.  

If valerie can produce a good ASCII structural formula (limit 80 columns)
of a buckyball (C  ), i'll buy her (or her designate) a 1-year membership.
:)               60  

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{cackle, chortle, chuckle.  i should have put horns & pitchfork on that
smiley face.  Obviously, valerie does not suspect that C   is a spherical
molecule.}                                              60  

Yep, i only addressed one definition of the word denature.  I'm familiar
with the "shove a complex molecule out of its normal folding pattern" use,
but i wouldn't call it denaturing when there's a chemical change in the
molecule (not just folding, H bonds, & the like). 

Buckyballs (aka Buckminsterfullerine) are so named due to their geodesic
dome structure.  They're a hot area of current research in chemistry,   
but rcurl probably knows half a dozen ways you can make 'em at home
('long as you don't expect a very pure product).  

Sure. Buckyballs occur in ordinary soot. People had been "playing" with
them for millenia - even dissolving them in solvents (but thinking
they just had "junk"). 

Sorry about that typo in #13. There are, incidentally, hundreds of
formulas for denaturing ethanol. Ethanol has many industrial and product
uses, but what is used for denaturing it should not be deleterious in
those applications. For example, the denaturing agent for ethanol used
in cosmetics should not contain methanol (too toxic), so perhaps ethyl
acetate will be used. 

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Hint:  look over a soccer ball.  Seams are carbon-carbon bonds, points 
where 3 seams meet are carbon atoms.  Have fun, but don't expect the 
problem to be solvable.  

The story goes that the discovers of the structure of C60 asked their
math department what that shape is called - and were told to look at
a soccer ball. (I recently saw the Nova program on Buckyballs, which
described the history of their discovery, as told by the discoverers.
The signatures of C60 was first observed in nubular (astronomical)
clouds. They are the "third form of carbon" - diamond, graphite, and
fullerenes.)

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Soccer balls are covered by a mix of hexagons & pentagons.  From a math
point of view, fullerenes are just graphite with enough defects in the
2-dimensional crystalline latice to curve them back on themselves to
closure.  That "4th" carbon bond does about the same thing in fullerines
as it does in graphite sheets.  (i think it's more likely to point toward
the outside for bond-bond angle reasons.)  

i've no soccer ball on hand either.  My recollection is that the 12
pentagonal faces of a soccer ball are regularly arranged on it's surface
(the rest of the faces are hexagons).  Another way to visualize it is 
as a solid (regular) 20-hedron with the 12 "points" sanded down until
they're pentagonal faces.  60 vertices, 90 edges, 32 sides according to
the old v+s=e+2 formula.

I do belive that the 'soccer-ball' shape is the result of lopping a little
bit off all the corners of an icosahedron.  The new faces that are made where
the corners were are pentagons, and the triangles that got their corners
lopped off turn into hexagons.  There's a fancy geometric name for this beast,
but I don't know it.

As for the bet, can I play?

(And now, off to find some rubbing alcohol)

Carbon has four "bonds", but bonds can be "double", so each carbon in
C60 is bonded to only three other carbons and there are no free bonds. 
In fact, however, the extra electrons of the "double" bonds are delocalized.
This leads to considerable stability of the structure, in the way benzene
is stabilized.

I do belive I've solved it....here goes...
X-----------------------X   The X's are vertices of the 'soccer ball', or  
|\                     /|   in this case carbon atoms.  Consider a soccer
| X-----X-------X-----X |   ball, turned so that one of the pentagonal
| |     |       |     | |   faces is on top - in this diagram, the face
| X-X---X-X---X-X---X-X |   with an asterisk in the middle.  Another 
| | |     |   |     | | |   pentagonal face will be on the bottom - in
| | X---X-X-X-X-X---X | |   this diagram, the five connected vertices at
| | |   |   |   |   | | |   the far outside edge.  In between are hexagons
| | X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X | |   and pentagons which have been deformed to
| | | |   | * |   | | | |   'fit' the rows and columns of text.  60
| X-X X-X-X---X-X-X X-X |   vertices, 90 edges, 32 sides; 12 pentagons,
| | | | |       | | | | |   20 hexagons - I do belive this is it.
| | | | X-------X | | | |
| | | | |       | | | | |
| | X-X-X-X---X-X-X-X | |
| | |     |   |     | | |
| X-X-----X   X-----X-X |
|/         \ /         \| 
X-----------X-----------X           

Amazing....I do believe you've done it, too. Now, kick that around a while...

<Tricia shakes her  head at orin's geekyness, and goes off to wash some
socks.>

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That's the problem - I kicked it around for too long, and it went flat.

<As far as the eye can see, hundreds of little soccer balls shrinking, yelling
"help me! I'm melting! Melting!">

You know, that's a really strange mental image...

Say, what's the melting point of C60 crystals? I know it can be recrystallized
from benzene, and the melting point is above room temperature, though I
would expect it to be rather low (due to the relative lack of polarity
of the molecule).

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