[gcanyon]

You are absolutely correct, I've never worked with a truly competent chemist -- my previous instructors are now complaining from the grave, so I'll give them a retroactive pass.

As someone who aced chem but nearly failed the labs, he seems remarkably skilled to me, so you saying "horrible" and "average" really surprises me -- but obviously I have nothing to judge by, never having been exposed to anything near that level of chem work except for his videos.

As you allude to, I wonder how much of the "it didn't work, so I had to try something different" is for YouTube -- if every project worked the first time it would be boring.

[jona-f]

In chemistry only very simple stuff works the first time you try it. Even skilled chemists usually fail to replicate research papers, especially in organic chemistry. It's very frustrating. Lots of work, lots of cleaning up.

Pretty much all the chemistry you see on youtube can be considered simple. Even the cubane synthesis, which Extractions&Fire epically failed at, was undergrad stuff at my university. Chemiolis nailed it, I think.

Other great chemistry channels that come to my mind are Chemical Force (breathtaking slowmo videos), Thy Labs, Thoisoi, Prussian Blue, Chemdelic, not exhaustive.

[gcanyon]

Nice, thanks!

[JKCalhoun]

> my previous instructors are now complaining from the grave

Ha ha, did you mean to give the impression that they were in fact not that competent after all?

[gcanyon]

HA! I didn't think how that might come across, but no: it's just been a long time since I last took a chemistry class, and the instructors were old back then. I'm sure they've all since passed of old age, not from beryllium inhalation or organic mercury exposure or etc. etc.