Converting Aspirin to Tylenol

Great content, I enjoyed watching it. Im surprised the ortho- and para-nitrophenol behave that different in the steam distillation. It looks like the para is not coming over at all...

Well Red Nile even if it fails (Lots of projects even big Thesis in Photonics) making a Nitrogen laser UV type spectrometer failed a bit. Yes we had a 2 W Nitrogen laser and i did that during Photonics years ago while building a 250-500 mW 337 nm Nitrogen laser as well. I manged to build both in 6 months! Time was NOT on my side. We had a teacher strike, etc. Even if it fails and you show WHY, that just as important!

Daniel Blake Shoemaker

I totally understand. It is rare for me to do like 6 step preps though, so almost all of the time ill still do more detailed versions.

Nile Red

I dont think ill be trying it again. Many more cool projects to work on!

Nile Red

I love your videos and I particularly enjoyed your Aspirin to Tylenol series in its full length when it first came out. Although your edited summary is very enjoyable and compact, I would gladly choose the long version because its plethora of information. I guess you are right that for some viewers a compact version is more enjoyable, but for the sake of those who want to enjoy your work in its full glory please also keep your long video format. It might be a lot of extra work to edit your files into a long and a short version, but it would really be a shame to miss out on all the details, small mishaps and bits of information (and trivia) that come with the extended format.

Dominik Wondrousch

Well you only got a yield of 0.26 percent or so. All that recrystalization must have been an issue. Are you going to do this again to get a bigger yield Red Nile? Less water used and cooling it in the fridge may help with recovering more Tylenol.

Daniel Blake Shoemaker

All of mine are "Flavor Apprentice" brand. When I look them up online, they say, "Natural and Artificial Flavors, Propylene Glycol, Water.

Michael Aichlmayr

I really need to start on that caffeine project!

Nile Red

Most of what I have tried is Ethyl alcohol / organic alcohol + water + "natural flavor". One of them has glycerin listed in additon. I tried to get mostly water based ones, but I don't really know if that's better or worse just guessing.

Stephen Smith

The whole artificial flavor industry is an interesting one. I am going to try to mess around with it soon. How pure are the flavors you got? Could they be dissolve in some sort of carrier solvent that might affect the flavor?

Nile Red

Haha yeah exact same problem - if my whole purpose wasn't to have independent control of the sweetener, I would just use those mio flavoring drops.

Stephen Smith

My best luck had been with real juice (lemon, lime, blueberry, etc.). Unfortunately, that has sugar in it which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. I wonder how feasable it would be to remove the sugar without disturbing the flavor. Edible chem video series? 😁

Michael Aichlmayr

Caffeine hype! Enjoyed this concise version but the series was cool too, much more detailed. I do think people more "outside" to this stuff would be easier to interest by this version.

Fortunately, I only ordered a couple different small vials from different brands for orange and blueberry extracts to experiment. My current theory is that most extracts are more for baking and don't really produce a pleasant taste when added to sugar water or just plain water. My fear is that actually building a complete flavor profile requires too much expertise like a perfumer in the perfume industry and might be infeasible for the average person. I wonder if it would be psosible to reverse engineer it though by taking gatorade powder mix and running it through a machine to help figure out what's actually in it. Or maybe the concentrations would be too low.

Stephen Smith

ha, oh man. I appreciate the commitment!

Nile Red

Great work! It's ironic that I just last night rewatched all six source videos. Because of that I can really see the huge improvement you have made here!

Michael Aichlmayr

I've had that same perfume in water experience. In my case I'm trying to make my own La Croix like sparkling water with a restaurant carbonated water machine. My big mistake was buying more than thirty flavors in one big $$ order and then discovering that they all have that perfume taste. 😦

Michael Aichlmayr

I'm currently working off of "thirst quencher" orange and glacier freeze. I'm not necessarily aiming to recreate the *exact* same flavor, but something that could believably be a gatorade / powerade / other sports drink flavor. The main failure I have is that all my attempts at flavoring so far have been using extracts, which all end up tasting like perfume in water. The 2 flavors I mentioned are listed as just "natural flavors", so I don't really have much information to go off of. My hope is that you might have some insight about how these types of things are made - natural or artificial I'm not picky :P

Stephen Smith

It took me a couple months because i had to wait for chemicals to arrive. If i had everything on hand, it would probably take a week. The biggest slow down is actually the filming process. For example, if i didnt need to film, i could get all the way to phenol in a day. Filming though, makes it take like 2 or 3 days.

Nile Red

It all depends on the flavorant, because the process is pretty unique for each one. Which gatorade flavors are you trying to recreate?

Nile Red

ha, if that was how much work it too, id just live with the pain :p

Nile Red

ha yeah. It should slowly go back to normal in a few months though.

Nile Red

How long did the whole process take? It seemed like it took weeks to perform.

Austen Walsworth

At the end you mentioned that flavorants are made using similar processes? It would be really cool (and useful to me) if you explored making artificial flavorings or processing natural flavors. I've been trying to reverse engineer a homemade gatorade / sports drink recipe. Most of it is easy to guess based on the nutrition facts (just look at ingrediants that have unique nutritional properties not shared by any other ingrediant), and I now have something nutritionally equivalent to gatorade, that even looks the same since I bought some yellow 6 and blue 1, but since I have no idea how to flavor it, I'm stuck with a recpie for essentially sugar water with electrolytes. My end goal is to be able to have a recipe so I can swap out the sugar for other sweeteners depending on preference, since I like to prioritize dental health (using xylitol) over caloric intake and I'm not aware of any sports drinks that use exclusively xylitol as a sweetener. Flavorings are always pretty vague on nutrition labels (always just artificial / natural flavoring), so it might be really interesting to see how they are made.

Stephen Smith

You polished this series up well! It’s a good summary of the six videos. Now that you mentioned the voice change from surgery I noticed it a little but not enough to notice had you not said anything. Don’t worry about having a more nasal voice you will fit in just fine with most of the chemistry youtubers ;)

The Gayest Person on Patreon

I love your video, and I have satisfied some of my chemistry cravings (that you have helped rebuild)! ;) But I feel sorry for you, that you have to go through so much pain and loss, for a litttle bit of pain releaf. ;)

Alf-Marius Dahl Bysveen