Finalized Project List

This is the finalized project list. I've written it here as reference for those that would like a bit more information about them. If you already read the old list then you don't need to read this one. 

For those of you that haven't been following my patreon feed for awhile, i've collected the project ideas from my reddit threads and after some editing and review i've put them here for voting by you, my patrons. As the people who directly fund what I do, you can direct what i do. After all, pledging gives you voting rights, use it! :)

Click on the following links and vote for all the projects you like. You can vote as many or as little as you want. Just remember that voting for everything is essentially voting for nothing so also consider what you DON'T want to see and thus don't vote for it. 

If you would like a bit more information about each project, refer to the list below. Also, feel free to ask me questions directly about each project you're interested in. 

Anyway. I'll leave the polls up for a month. 

Poll links:

Major Projects: https://www.patreon.com/posts/voting-on-major-15608266

Short Projects Part 1: https://www.patreon.com/posts/voting-on-short-15685787

Short Projects Part 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/voting-on-short-15686009

(For those that read the old list and want to know the difference in this list: I've combined a couple and moved around a few. I cut down the major projects section to just 20 since 20 is the maximum that fits into a single poll on patreon. While I could have split it into two polls I also cut it down to streamline the selection. Those projects have been moved into short projects being the kinds of projects that i can shorten or lengthen depending on demand.)

Major Projects

Microencapsulation – Putting interesting chemicals inside microcapsules and then breaking them to release them. One possibility is making an ink that appears invisible when applied but is pressure sensitive. Upon application of a rolling pin over the paper the writing becomes visible.

Adhesives – Broad topic on adhesives and how they are made. To focus the project perhaps one particular adhesive would be synthesized. For example two-part epoxy. [1] Very popular

Analytical Chemistry – Broad topic – Long term project into the techniques of analysis. This will heavily go into electronics and instrumentation. Project focus may include testing of water for lead or construction of complex instrumentation. [3] Very popular

Make adrenaline/epinephrine – Possibly as part of a larger project to make an epipen entirely from home chemicals and products.

Electroplating – Broad project to do electroplating at home. Probably start with copper and move up. Maybe electrically form objects as well. [1]

Make Fuels – Complex project to make gasoline, methanol, and possibly diesel from artificial processes.

Make glow sticks from domestically available chemicals – Complex project to make glow sticks without using any laboratory chemicals. Disadvantage of this project is the inevitable huge deluge of comments “Why don't you just BUY a glow stick?”

Make penicillin or other antibiotic – Continues the medicinal chemistry theme. Penicillin in particular is popular.

Make sodium hydroxide and chlorine by electrolysis – basically make a tabletop chloralkali cell. Interesting complex project to build a mini-chemical plant that actually produces useful chemicals in practical quantities. This project also heads strongly into electrical engineering and equipment design so it would be a nice change from purely medicinal chemistry or organic.

Make aerogel – requires high pressure supercritical CO2 drying chamber. Beyond my experience and Ben Krasnow of Applied Science has already done it. But will attempt if very high interest.

Make the photoresists used in the semiconductor industry. - For etching circuits.

Making and exploring the chemistry of L-glucose – Chemistry should be identical to R-Glucose except when interacting with chiral substances and as such not providing nutrition to R-based lifeforms like humans. Possible demonstration experiment would be to feed yeast. The yeast should not grow. Might be interesting. Making it would be difficult.

Make nitric acid by oxidation of ammonia – classic ostwald process. Dangerous and complex to perform in a home lab setting but possible.

Abortion drugs mifepristrone and/or misoprostol – very complex and long term project to make more drugs, will take longer than pyrimethamine. So expect years of work unless I find a collaborator. Very high chance of failure.

Sulfa drugs – historically important before modern drugs replaced them. I'll likely focus on the antibiotic type drugs.

Photography from scratch – Go through the entire process of making all the necessary chemicals for performing basic black and white photography. Includes making the silver bromide photography paper, developing it, p-aminophenol, sodium thiosulfate and making prints.

Make Perovskite solar cells – I already showed dye sensitized solar cells, perovksite are another class of solar cell. Although they no longer seem as viable with the continued rapidly plummeting costs of silicon solar cells, perovskite cells are still interesting.

Sofosbuvir – Very expensive drug for Hepatitis C. Synthesis is complicated but just within my ability. Even using lab chemicals this will take as much work as pyrimethamine. To do it from domestic chemicals may take a decade of work. I'll likely need to collaborate with others on this. Extremely high chance of failure.

Make plastics – short project to get a monomer and converting it into a polymer. I'll probably target styrene which is among the easiest of the polymers to make. Possibly move on into making exotic polymers like conductive plastics. Other avenues include making 3D printer filaments. [3] very popular

Make a transistor – extremely complex project to purify silicon up to semiconductor grade, doping it, and then making a transistor. Extremely high chance of failure. 

SHORT PROJECTS

Make batteries – Long term project to make lots of batteries. I've already made many (zinc-air, aluminum, copper-zinc, conventional alkaline, etc). This is just a commitment to have more.

Make dyes – broad topic on making dyes like indigo and Tyrian purple [1]

Alternative thermites – While thermites are interesting i'm reluctant to keep trying them. Nonetheless alternatives include such mixtures as magnesium-PTFE.

Extract metals from ore – Cody's lab is already doing this so i'm reluctant to be branded a copycat.

Make hydrogen peroxide – easy to buy but high demand for a video on how to make it

Make Vanillin from Eugenol – Simple organic chemistry project maybe one or two videos.

Make potassium metal – Instead of making sodium, make potassium without electrolysis.

Isolation of spicy chemicals – Capsacin, piperine, possibly allyl isothiocyanate if the yield is acceptable.

Redo quantum dot experiment under UV light – I still have most chemicals, but i'm not sure if it's worth it.

Ferrofluid – I actually failed several times doing this. I don't want to do it again. But i'll give it another a go if popular enough.

Concentration of hydrogen peroxide by vacuum distillation – first need to demonstrate an analytical method of testing it, but afterward this should be an easy video.

Bluing solution – chemical solution for case hardening of metals, mostly used for treating firearms. I'm not going to actually treat a firearm, maybe a bar of steel or iron.

Hypergolic rocket fuels – Not actually going to make a rocket, but demonstrate the reactivity of some hypergolics.

N-phenylanthralic acid – a redox indicator. Basically it measures redox potential like a pH indicator measures acidity.

Dimethylglyoxime synthesis – used for metal refining since it selectively binds palladium and nickel, precipitating them out. Great for separating palladium and platinum.

Advanced chlorate cell – Larger scale chlorate cell built for higher efficiency and production rate

Make rocket fuel on mars – Demonstrate sabatier reaction to make methane from the martian atmosphere

Make a hotplate stirrer – I keep complaining about it, why don't I make one.

Make and demonstrate ionic liquids – Ionic salts that are liquid at mild temperatures (less than 100 celsius). Advanced electrochemistry can be performed in them. [1]

Make Nickel Iron battery – short project. Very popular with the alternative energy crowd.

More chemistry like crystal growing under the microscope – Microscopy and chemistry should be an interesting topic to explore. A good quality microscope that I can film in 4k is going to be expensive though.

Make laughing gas – just borderline on abuse potential. But interesting chemistry nonetheless

Restoring yellowed plastics – bleach out the yellow degradation products in plastics so they look brighter.

Integrated circuit decapping – see the inside of ICs

Through-hole plating of PCBs – major obstacle to home PCB manufacture is making connections through vias on double sided circuit boards. For now it's a manual process of soldering wires through it. There is high demand for a process that do them all at once with less labor.

Hydride hydrogen storage – Storing hydrogen in metal hydrides.

Column chromatography – A major purification technique used in lots of chemistry. Every chemist has to know this even if they never use it.

Extract nepetalactone from catnip – Become Walter White for cats.

Crystal growing – long term project to make giant crystals of various colors.

REJECTED PILE

Make Cubane – Rejected because it's a major project but has low public interest outside of chemists. All major projects should have at least a little public interest. 

Desert island chemistry - “Primitive Technology” youtube channel does a better job than I ever will.

Chemistry involving plants – Far too broad a topic definition.

PTFE Synthesis – Requires HF and/or fluorine. Far too dangerous for a home lab. [1]

Synthesis of quinine – complexity on the same order as pyrimethamine, but the product is not anywhere close in popularity or public interest.

Extract tartaric acid from grapes – Tartaric acid can already be bought online by the boatload. Tartaric acid itself doesn't have sufficient synthetic utility or public interest to be a worthwhile project.

Make Artemisinin – Incredibly complicated, I'm not that good a chemist.

Make nitric acid by microbial action – concentrations are way too low and slow to be viable.

Make plastic from crude oil – actually more complex than it sounds and more work than i'm willing to do.

Recycling – By definition we chemists recycle every atom that we have ever used.

Make ammonia by haber process – Too dangerous as it requires high pressure apparatus. Boring since everything occurs inside opaque reactors

Fluoroantimonic acid – too dangerous, will eat through everything included chemists named Dr. N. Butyl Lithium.

Synthesis of sugar alcohols – Not quite cool enough or interesting enough.

Vitamins – most of them are difficult for the amateur because they are chiral

Electrochemical synthesis of organic compounds – Not actually rejected, if there comes an interesting step that could be done electrochemically, I'll try the electrochemical method instead. But I won't make a standalone video for it. [2]

Artificial sweeteners – I want to stay away from food chemistry

Thin layer chromatography – already part of the analytical chemistry series if its approved.

Touring named reactions – already doing them when they are part of other projects, but I won't do it by itself [1]

Pesticides – Nile red is already doing them.

Make Barium tetracyanoplatinate – too specific

Make minerals – High temperatures and pressures are required for most of them. Geochemistry is beyond my abilities.

Selenium chemistry – I depend on the good graces of my neighbors, I don't want to disturb them with horrendous odors from my lab.

Make heavy water by girdler sulfide extraction – Too much work and danger for a product that doesn't actually do anything interesting unless you're doing isotope labelling chemistry (which I'll probably never do on my channel)

Miller-Urey experiment – Very interesting but cost of analysis is high.

Battery recycling – huge amount of work for very little payoff. I'd need extra machinery to process the battery parts.

Anthracene – not interesting by itself, i'll need to find a use for it.

Narcotic Drugs including cannabinoids– No.

tris(acetylacetonato) iron(III) catalyzing the formation of a ring from isoprene – very cool to a chemist, very boring for a non-chemist.

Bombs – Go to fucking hell.

Separation of enantiomers – not interesting enough by itself but can be incorporated into other experiments. Making epinephrine will require this step anyway if approved.

Cyclic peptides – beyond the ability of an amateur chemist

Why does water make things crinkly, why/how does boiling baking soda water clean pans? - More of an explanation type video rather than experiments. Plenty of youtube channels like Scishow, Asapscience and vertisium that explain things better than I ever will.

Isolate all elements from the periodic table – Not all of them are available in household materials.

Formose reaction – Making sugars from formaldehyde. Interesting but requires too much analysis to be worth it.

2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile – Tear gas. No. Just No.

Cross coupling reactions – a bit too high level for my channel, but i'll do them anyway if part of a greater objective.

Refining uranium – Not too hard, but i'd have to work with many kilograms of rock. Too much physical labor and expense. Already done by Cody's lab, i'd be a copycat if I tried.

HHO generator – Chemists do NOT call it “HHO”. It's simple water electrolysis to make hydrogen and oxygen. Calling it HHO goes into the realm of pseudoscience quackery.

Make cyanide from formamide – not doing that again.

Bicylic organic compounds – need to find an interesting target

deoxynojirimycin – anti-diabetic found in mulberry leaves. too specific with insufficient public interest.

octahedrane and icosahedrane – too esoteric

Chlorine trifluoride – I like life.

Arecoline or Guvacoline from nicotinic acid – too close to controlled substances for my liking.

N,N-diisopropylaminoethanol – too specific, no application unless it's for making nerve gas.

Make LSD – Hell no. Talking rabbit still owes me $5

make a crystal battery – not going to engage in pseudoscience

Make aluminum hydride – too reactive, will spontaneously catch fire on air.

Synthetic Setae – Very clingy surface that does not use glue. Pros: Become spider man. Cons: Hot girlfriend not included. Also requires lithographic techniques and equipment that are far outside my experience and budget.

make vantablack – extremely black substance. I'd love to do it but requires nanochemistry techniques beyond my ability.