Re: impurities in CDCl3

In article <LrkZg.12025$TV3.9792@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, lucasea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

:> I'm not sure in what sense he made a reasonable statement.

: In the sense that it was true, and didn't aim to insult anybody or try to
: make them look bad. More than I can say for your posts, by the way. Jerk.

Actually, what he said was *not* true. While ethanol is added to CHCl3 as
a stabilizer, it is *not* added to CDCl3 intended for use as an NMR solvent.
It doesn't make any sense that they would deliberately add something
containing protons to an NMR solvent, and deuterated ethanol is far too
expensive. I didn't post that immediately because I wanted to double check
with the head of our NMR lab that my understanding was correct.

:> The OP said that
:> he had an NMR spectrum that consisted of a quartet at 6.0 and a doublet at
:> 2.0. Uncle Al told him that ethanol was added to CDCl3

: Yes, in response to an earlier post in this very thread, suggesting other
: stabilizers are used that *could* explain the NMR (but actually don't).

No, his post was a direct response to the OP, as I have already shown.

: You're so quick to try to find something to criticize about Al, that you
: didn't even bother to read what he was responding to.

His post was a direct response to the OP.

:> (which lacks H atoms)
:
: So what?

That can't possibly explain the reported NMR spectrum.

:> and HCl (which does not match the reported> NMR spectrum).
:
: Again, so what, nobody said it does.

Since the question was "what substance gives this NMR spectrum," HCl is
not the correct answer.

:> His comment may have been "reasonable," but it was completely
:> useless as an answer to the OP.

: Actually, no, it was a very useful answer. It provided the following
: information:
:
: 1) The stabilizer in the CDCl3 is not the cause of the observed peaks (as
: suggested by another poster in the same thread)

That would be me.

: 2) The HCl that exists in CDCl3 may well be related to the actual cause of
: the observed peaks.

Since the question was "what is the substance giving the extra peaks,"
the information that HCl may be (but probably is not) related to the
formation of the substance is not particularly useful.

: Just because it took a Savior like you to come along and grace us with The
: Complete and Final Answer doesn't mean that no other pieces of information
: are useful.

When those pieces of information are wrong, then they are hardly useful.

: Pompous ass.

That is, I assume, a reference to the part of Uncle Al's anatomy that you
are most fond of kissing.

:> In what sense was Uncle Al "right" given that he singularly failed to
:> identify the compound in question?
:
: What information did Al give that was factually incorrect?

That ethanol is added to CDCl3 as a stabilizer.

:> Only Uncle Al's groupies consider his
:> propensity to make statements that are untrue
:
: What did he say that was untrue in this thread?

It doesn't actually matter. Since he has a known propensity to say things
that are untrue, either because he does not understand the topic or because
he is telling a deliberate lie, any statement that he makes is necessarily
automatically suspect.

:> a "minimally annoying quirk"
:> and consider him "helpful" when he makes a statement that is completely
:> irrelevant to the question posed.
:
: No, I would put it another way. Only people with a pathological need to
: make Al look bad would see his inaccuracies as anything more than minimally
: annoying. Get over yourself, will you already? Your constant carping at Al
: is far, far more annoying than he has *ever* been, and whether you choose to
: acknowledge it or not, he has provided far, far more informative, creative
: and helpful content that you likely ever will.

Which of the three of us managed to give the OP an answer to his question?

:> : So what? You want some sort of medal? The question asked was "how is
:> : CDCl3 stabilized". He answered it, accurately.

:> The question asked was
:>
:> ### When I do overnight measurements on my compounds, I'm seeing extra
:> ### peaks at 6.0 (quartet) and 2.0 ppm (doublet), and now I'm wondering
:> ### what compound this might be.

:> Nowhere in there do I see the OP asking how CDCl3 stabilized. I do know
:> that in the CDCl3 that our NMR lab uses, the solvent is stabilized
:> with silver (metal), and that the head of our NMR lab (who has more than
:> 30 years of experience) was quite insistent that it was unlikely in
:> the extreme that the DCE came from the solvent itself.

: Yes, I agree. So what.

You completely mischaracterized the content of the discussion, and all
you can think to say is "so what"?

: Did Al say that it did? I would speculate that it
: could come from oxyhydrochlorination of the ethanol, in the presence of air,
: light and O2. However, Al didn't even do that--he just said they were
: present.

As I said above, the dichloroethane (assuming that that was the impurity)
almost certainly did *not* come from the solvent, but rather from something
added with the sample, or possibly from decomposition of the sample.

:> His answer strongly implied that the unknown was either HCl or ethanol.
:
: No, it didn't. I sure didn't read it that way. Your hard-on to make him
: look bad led you to infer that.

Yes, you read it as an answer to the question "what is used to stabilize
chloroform." We know that.

:> : and pointing out that *you* had to swoop in as the White Knight and
:> : Savior of All From Al's Ignorance, is nothing more than a symptom of
:> : your own insecurity.

:> Why is it that when Uncle Al gives a totally irrelevant answer to a
:> question, he is "trying to be helpful," but when I give an answer that
:> *may* be correct and is at least consistent with the data that is
:> presented, I am revealing a "symptom of my own insecurity"?

: The symptoms of your own insecurity had nothing to do with your (also
: helpful) reply to the question. If you had left it go at that, I would have
: found your post informative and helpful. Instead, all the pompous baggage
: that you insisted on foisting on us as well badly overweighed any
: helpfulness you might have given.

I believe that the large number of misstatements and deliberate lies
told by Uncle Al overweigh any usefulness that his correct posts may contain.
I also believe that as a scientist, one ought to see being truthful as a
moral imperative. Since many people who read sci.chem do not have enough
technical knowledge to recognize Uncle Al's errors, I feel a duty to
correct them when I see them. And since many people such as yourself see
nothing wrong with Uncle Al's lack of interest in telling the truth, I
feel that it is a moral obligation to point out that he is a proven liar.

:> Remind me again -- why is it that I'm
:> not supposed to consider you one of Uncle Al's groupies (I could use a
:> more accurate if less polite term)?

: Because I am an nothing more than an objective observer. I find many of
: Al's posts to be pompous and occasionally inaccurate...but many of them do
: contain nuggets of creativity and wisdom that you are perhaps too full of
: yourself to even see or understand. You, however, have lost all ability to
: think objectively about this, and have such a hard-on to make Al look bad,
: that you go around calling neutral, casual observers "Al's groupies" because
: they don't fall down and worship the ground you walk on, and join you in
: your pointless crusade against Al. You're worse than AP.

I think that anyone who looked at the language in my posts and compared it
with the language that you use would have little difficulty in recognizing
which of the two of us has problems with objectivity.

-----
Richard Schultz schultr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"You don't even have a clue about which clue you're missing."
.