Tag Archives: Chemistry

D’oro

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Right before I woke up this morning I was enjoying a rather exciting dream in the mode of spectator and this dream was about a very interesting chemical called D’oro. D’oro is a colorless, tasteless, water-like liquid that served as a kind of industrial fuel in the dreamworld I was in. One of the actors in the dream mixed a few drops of this chemical into a glass of water and handed it to a villain in the dream. I instantly knew what was going to happen as it played out before me, that D’oro, when ingested causes a person to become more and more thirsty, and as they drink more water they expand with the mass, unable to stop. Eventually the thirst wanes and the D’oro and the water combine in the body, the ignition point of the fuel drops beneath body temperature and the victim spontaneously combusts leaving a patch of muddy water-soaked ash in a little heap on the floor. The villain drank the mixture and instantly started to puff up, then he looked surprised and after a few moments there was a fantastic blaze of light and all that was left was a little patch of muddy ash on the floor.

I woke up soon afterwards and decided to write it down so I could share this with all of you. It might make a great plot point in any RPG’s if people want… 🙂

My Clever Laundrette

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This weeks theme is “Clean or Die” and as a wonderful spot of serendipity I ran over this blog post by a fellow I’ve been following for quite some time. I went to my local Meijers market and while there to stock up on some needful food items I thought I would walk down to the laundry aisle and see if Meijers carried any of the items listed in the post. The items specifically are:

  • Borax (sodium tetraborate)
  • Washing Soda (sodium carbonate)
  • Ivory Soap

As it turns out, I only have a very faint and foggy understanding of what Borax is and not a single clue as to what Washing Soda might be, at least I know what Ivory Soap is, oddly enough, that was the most common and most annoying item to buy. The Borax and the Washing Soda were the first big surprises, they were nestled up against each other at the end of the laundry aisle, far away from the big expensive detergents, hanging out in the “laundry additives ghetto”. At the other end of the ghetto were the bar soaps. Meijers doesn’t sell Ivory in single or even double-packs, instead, you have to buy a 10-pack. The price, $4, of course is insanely cheap, but the fact that I couldn’t acquire just a few bars at once irked me. My snark would have been fully realized if Meijers had put all three next to each other, but alas, that was not to be.

I had the earlier referenced blog page printed out and after I had whipped together dinner I got out some non-food-use implements and started to assemble the recipe for the laundry soap. With three ingredients, it was embarrassingly easy to assemble. Pour this, pour that, but when it came to the Ivory soap, I was blown away. The instructions say to microwave the ivory soap in a container. Huh? You don’t cook soap! Well, yes, that’s actually the entire point! I got a plastic tub, put the Ivory in it, and closed the door and turned on my Microwave. At first I was full-o-doubt, but then the damn thing started to foam and extrude big white fluffy cloud-shapes out of the side. I realized that I needed at least 2 minutes, not 90 seconds, but that may be due to a difference in microwave wattage. Once I was done decimating the Ivory soap, I grabbed the giant puffy white mass and knocked it down and then mixed everything together with my handy-dandy potato masher. I suppose I could have used my KitchenAid Mixer, but on something this exploratory, I didn’t want to make a mess of my entire kitchen.

The end product is quite plain. It’s a white powder with very teeny puffy bits interspersed throughout. It has a very feeble scent of Ivory soap and it made me sneeze a few times. Once I was done and ready to process a extra-large load of laundry I went downstairs with my powder in hand and utterly geeked at the novelty of it all. As I stood stooping over my plain-jane Whirlpool washing machine (not HE, of course) it struck me. I have no idea what an appropriate load measurement might be for this powder. The blog post goes on about two tablespoons of powder in an HE machine, which does me no good with my old-skool standard washing machine. I thought about the powder, what each one does and pulled a 1/4 cup per XL load out of thin air. I started my machine, waited for a inch-deep puddle in the bottom of the basin to collect and tossed in my powder. Once it was in, I added the clothes.

When the cycle was done I pulled out a shirt and gave it a sniff. Absolutely nothing. No fragrance, no scent at all. It was honestly clean, nothing left behind. I sampled other items and they all were the same way, no scent at all. Everything being equal, I still have a 64-load jug of Tide Liquid Detergent to use up but this powder is really quite good.

How about the economics? By my calculations, buying everything either in a market or off of Amazon (I used Amazon because they display prices) the per-ounce price of this laundry cleanser is 43 cents. I guess a quarter cup per XL load, so that’s two ounces so my per-load cost is 87 cents! If I had a HE machine, it’d be half that price!

So if this home-crafted laundry detergent costs 87 cents for a XL load, leaves no perfumes behind, cleans soiled clothing adequately and is non-toxic to the environment how can you go wrong?