Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2020 May 24

= May 24 =

Electroplating bare copper soldering iron tips with nickel and then maybe with iron?
There are some special soldering iron tips with a little groove in the end which helps improve contact area with the workpiece but they're only available for certain models of soldering iron. I've seen bare copper soldering iron tips (compatible with my own iron) for sale which I think I could cut my own groove into but they aren't good for soldering because copper dissolves in solder so the lifetime of bare copper tips is very limited (I'm not even sure why they're sold). However, I've seen online that you can electroplate nickel onto copper at home using vinegar to make a solution of nickel acetate. Someone uploaded a YouTube video doing this for soldering iron tips. I was just wondering, with regard to maximising life-time and functionality, would it be worth plating with iron after the nickel? Any idea what thickness the platings should be? Could sodium dodecyl sulfate be added as a wetting agent or is that only suitable in the conventional industrial nickel plating solutions? --88.111.17.83 (talk) 06:42, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * In my experience to work with bare copper is more agreable because copper is more easily wetted by tin than nickel or iron (Well it depends, for Tiffany glass work it is maybe even better so, but when soldering on electronic parts it is in my opinion better if the tip is wet with tin). I had some iron plated tips but even if they last forever they are not easily wetted by tin. Bare copper tips have a shorter lifetime but they don't really dissolve away in three minutes but rather in hours, secondly you can adjust them several times with hammer and file before you have to throw them away and lastly they are not so expensive that you have to renounce to the advantage of easy wetting.
 * But if you'd like and try, you can directly plate copper with iron without the nickel step. They say it is not so easy for hobbyists to do at home though, but here you will find some guidance: [] 2003:F5:6F08:8200:B9A3:5B4F:C199:54F1 (talk) 11:38, 24 May 2020 (UTC) Marco PB

What does it mean when N,N- comes before a chemical's name, such as in N,N-Dimethyltryptamine?
And what page on Wikipedia should I add to the top of N,N (N,n) in an about template? Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) 15:08, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * It's dimethyl tryptamine, meaning that it's tryptamine wherein two of the hydrogen atoms are substituted by methyl groups. The N,N bit means that both substitutions are on a nitrogen atom.  I don't believe we should have a page specifically on this notation.  Probably we can live without a hatnote in the article you mention. --Trovatore (talk) 16:13, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, but a hatnote to where? Thanks for your help by the way, it makes a lot of sense that N means nitrogen and not n in the typical math sense, that's why I was confused. Psiĥedelisto (talk • contribs) 16:57, 24 May 2020 (UTC)


 * It's a locant for a substituent, but our locant article only mentions numbered positions of a chain, not heteroatoms. And the parent IUPAC nomenclature of organic chemistry article also does not have any examples of it. The other common (but not nearly as common s N) are O (for oxygen) and S (for sulfur), and those two are only usually as infixes not prefixes. DMacks (talk) 17:38, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Prefixes for sulfur and oxygen substitution do exist: eg S-Methylmethionine, O-Ethyl methylphosphonothioic acid. If the o is lower case it will mean ortho, and if you see lower case n- (eg n-Butylamine) it will mean normal or straight. You will only get one of those n's though. Yet another variant is N,N'- eg N,N'-Dicyclohexylcarbodiimide meaning two different nitrogen atoms are substituted. And another: N,N,N- N,N,N-trimethyl-4-phosphoryloxytryptamine meaning three things substituted on a nitrogen. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:35, 24 May 2020 (UTC)


 * If these prefixes are chemical symbols, why are they presented in italics? --Lambiam 06:12, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * IUPAC/CAS says so and we all have to agree with some standardized system if we are to communicate clearly. I have no idea how to trace back the history of that:( DMacks (talk) 23:25, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I would guess as a sort of reminder that they do not apply to primary alphabetization. S-Methylmethionine is sorted under "M", not "S".--Khajidha (talk) 18:26, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a clever thought! DMacks (talk) 22:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * And it looks correct. IUPAC Blue Book 1993 edition says as a general convention "R-0.1.6 Italicization. Italicizing mainly serves to mark letters which are not involved in the primary stage of alphabetical ordering." DMacks (talk) 23:03, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Shouldn't capitalization then follow suit, as seen here (although not fully consistently): "S-M..." when sentence-initial, otherwise "S-m..."? --Lambiam 06:50, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes. DMacks (talk) 09:20, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * An uneducated guess: possibly an upright letter could be confused as a structural symbol, denoting a presence of the element at a specific position in the molecule. An italic letter doesn't say 'here is a nitrogen atom' but rather 'look for nitrogen to attach that group'. --CiaPan (talk) 21:10, 27 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Italicized element symbols are also used to indicate "here is this element". The name "2H-isoindole" means that specific hydrogen atom is attached to position 2 of the structure, not that there is something else to say about hydrogen #2 itself. DMacks (talk) 22:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC)