# 404 Not Found

nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu)
Scholastic is the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books, connecting educators and families through accessibility, engagement, and expertise. Generally these reagents aren’t hard to get, although benzoquinone purchases may be reported by some sellers. As an exercise for students, try synthesizing PdCl2 from palladium metal with aqua regia. After throwing in a magnetic stir bar, they stirred this mixture for at least an hour (preferably longer) to dissolve the benzoquinone. At this point, the flask would be fitted with a reflux condenser and the 40 ml safrole slowly added over the course of an hour. The addition funnel might be rinsed down with methanol to ensure he got all the safrole out. Once all the safrole was added, the solution was kept heated to a gentle reflux with stirring for at least 8 hours. After cooling, the solids were filtered off (and are a waste product). The ketone produced by the reaction was extracted with DCM or another organic solvent and purified through vacuum distillation, giving perhaps 25 ml of a light yellow colored oil. It’s been reported that the ketone will distill over at about 25 C higher than safrole at the same vacuum. 3. Assuming everything worked so far, the foolish, reckless chemist now has some precious ‘PMK’ ketone. All that’s needed is to reductively aminate it. After mixing the ketone with some methylamine freebase, a responsible (and well equipped) chemist would likely just use a hydride to reduce it to MDMA. But for historical curiousity, let’s talk about Shulgin’s amalgam reduction, as interpreted by several generations of bees. First, they would need to prepare a solution of methylamine freebase. Since the amalgam reduction isn’t water sensitive, this can be done simply by dissolving 35 g methylamine hydrochloride crystals in 35 ml (or more) of distilled water, then slowly pouring in an ice-cold solution of 20 g NaOH in 60 ml of water. This reaction is very exothermic and must be done slowly with an ice water bath to cool the solution. Some methylamine will escape the solution, which smells very bad (a bit like rotten fish) and isn’t healthy to breath in. The colder the solution is, the less offgassing.