Hydrogenation using palladium on carbon and ammonium formate is my favorite reaction to perform, because:

It typically doesn’t take more than 10 minutes to get the reaction going, from weighing out the starting materials until the first promising bubbles appear. Almost any solvent is good. I prefer low-boiling alcohols; methanol or ethanol. […]

We were watching Goldfinger (1964) the other day. Again. You gotta love the real Bond movies. Anyways, in the opening scene, about 1 minute and 47 seconds into the movie, I was able to snap a frame with quite a lot of (medicinal) chemistry in it. The whole shot lasts for about two seconds and […]