Patreon Preview - Make formic acid

Just watched the final version. The overview at the beginning really helped me to understand why you were preforming each of the steps within the overall context, thank you!

hmm.. how about i insert this introduction: "The overall idea is that oxalic acid is essentially formic acid with carbon dioxide in it. So we're going to break that off by heating. But we can't do this with pure oxalic acid because it will mostly sublime and decompose. So to stabilize it against unwanted reactions we're going to esterify with glycerol. Then we're going to heat it up and convert it formic acid. Afterward we'll hydrolyze it again to separate the formic acid from glycerol and collect it."

NurdRage

Distilling my statements out into actionable constructive criticism: 1) There was no generic overview "we're going for Z today, and in order to do that we'll be doing A, B and C. Here's how that is going to work and result in Z" before diving into the procedures. You seemed to just jump right into procedure and I had no touchstone to understand what the procedures were about or why they mattered. 2) You talked so fast in this video that while I was absorbing what you just said, you had already moved on to talking about the next thing. It was definitely faster paced than previous videos which is fine for someone familiar with the material, but difficult to follow for anyone who needs to go "oh, hmm, ok I get that" before jumping into the next procedure. Again, just trying to provide constructive feedback. Perhaps I am not your target audience, or exceptionally dumb or something, but 90% of your videos completely make sense and enable me to learn something new.

You were very detailed about what was going on at each step, but what I think I was missing (for me) was the overall bigger picture. At each step I had to try to figure out the context and connections within the greater whole. a+b=c and c+d=e but I lost the plot on the overall a->e. I am an amateur who has a lot of interest in your videos because I tend to learn something each time, but here I was kind of lost. It seemed to go too fast for me to follow what what you were doing and why, even if I could kind of follow each step in isolation. Does that make sense?

hmmmm... I thought i was going far too slowly and in too much detail with my explanation! I think this is one of those rare times where being thorough actually makes things more complicated. Do you think a total rewrite is required? what sort of explanations would be better?

NurdRage

You seemed to jump right in without an overview of what you'd be doing / trying to achieve. I was left trying to learn things as you went, and you were a lot more "machine gun" with the explanation than normal. Usually I'm able to follow but in this case you left my eyes glazed over. Perhaps slow it down a bit and provide an initial overview? Edit: the gary thing was funny though :)