08:19 – With three weeks left until the election, both campaigns are starting the final push. I don’t know how it is in other, non-swing states, but here we’re being subjected to a barrage of campaign phone calls and fliers. I’ve been averaging a couple phone calls a day from the presidential campaigns, and that doesn’t count the ones from the campaigns for state and local offices. I can’t wait for this to be over.
09:36 – I need to make up two liters of Benedict’s qualitative solution. I have the 34.6 grams of copper(II) sulfate and 346 grams of sodium citrate I need, but I just realized that I’m fresh out of sodium carbonate. So I just put a kilo or so of sodium bicarbonate in a glass baking dish and stuck it in the oven at 450F. At that temperature, two molecules of sodium bicarbonate quickly decompose into one molecule each of sodium carbonate, carbon dioxide, and water. In half an hour or so, I’ll have a baking dish full of pure anhydrous sodium carbonate.