paulsutton

I was thinking this, as we can pour liquids and also pour a container of Sodium Chloride into a beaker, despite the latter being made of small (granular) particles. With landslides, I usually think of these as being mostly caused by rain fall for example causing the ground to I guess to lose cohesion and move down a hillside or cliff face. We have had this in Dorset, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-68332305 However, I think these are caused by the area being very dry and collapsing (maybe weight related), the ground also cracks in very dry weather, ( probably the correct term is fissure ) Avalanches (IIRC) are moving snow but are these on top of a pocket of air or is there a sort of air pocket in front of the moving snow. Does the shape of the particles also play a part, I think Salt (NaCl) is cuboid (or at least looking at the structure diagrams it is) graphite is layers so they slide, compared to diamond which is more ridged), Sand appears to be trangular or perhaps pyramid shaped https://chem.libretexts.org/Courses/Honolulu_Community_College/CHEM_100%3A_Chemistry_and_Society/14%3A_Earth/14.02%3A_Silicates_and_the_Shapes_of_Things So maybe this is also a factor in how easy something will move around (even if sold). Paul

This is really important as you said with climate change and changes to agricultural methods we know that insect and bee populations has been seriously reduced hopefully this can be rolled out to reverse some of the damage. Important as we need bees to help grow crops etc. It will be interesting if this can be turned in to an off the shelf product, people could buy at garden centres for example, we know the importance of allowing parts of a garden to grow wild, or plant specific flowers etc to help bees etc, This could give that a boost. Paul

Thanks and good point re article or how it is written. I have undertaken some more digging and found some better links to the research firstly from the Dressel university news page https://drexel.edu/news/archive/2026/March/liquid-breaking-point Secondly to the published paper https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/t2vy-32wr On Physical review letters Hope fully these help a little more, Paul Would monomolecular layers. refer to Graphene,? which if I understand it is a single layer of carbon atoms, even though this is also an allotropic form of carbon.

Interesting article from 'Interesting Engineering' https://interestingengineering.com/science/scientists-discover-liquids-can-fracture So a simple question on this, what makes a liquid, a liquid in terms of viscosity, given that water is free flowing (if put on a tray and the tray is moved around the water will move around freely). However, if I put cooking oil on the tray and move the surrounding tray requires more tilt to move the oil, (it also depends on friction from the tray I guess (smooth vs rough surface). So do we think about solids and liquids differently ? By fracturing are they suggesting that the bonds in the molecules break or are they referring to the forces that hold the molecules in state where the state would be classed as a liquid. I think oils have long chain, so is it the chain that is pulled for forced apart. Paul

With chemicals such as PFAs is the impact on health based on long term exposure or short term exposure, I think with Asbestos the impact can be felt decades after exposure, but science has known the long term effects for decades (I think) but with newer chemicals surely the long term studies are not there.

You can use Sodium Thiosulfate to clean Silver. Paul What happens if you dilute acetic acid ? So 100ml measuring cylinder, put 10ml of acetic acid and 90ml of water (probably distilled) you then get a 10% solution. Would that make a difference, same would go for Citric acid, which as that can be bought in powder solution you could perhaps make known molar concentrations. Paul

Thanks, this makes more sense now, so the antibiotics in this case would kill any, I guess, dormant virus cells, before they can either move elsewhere or be transmitted to others.

There is current an outbreak of Meningitis B in Kent, United Kingdom, According to the BBC the students are being given vaccines and also preventitive anti biotics. I may be wrong here, but I thought anti biotics are used to treat infections, and not as a preventitive measure (which it what vaccines are for), Am I right here or just not understanding something. Thanks Paul

Thanks for this, if nothing else it confirms there is no right or wrong way as there are multiple conventions, I know things change over time, some are agreed changes, simple things like spelling Sulphur as Sulfur for example Does all the different group conventions make study more challenging or would a university / exam board use one convention.?

I have asked this on Mastodon, as it was related to another post I made there, but I thought I would ask here too Group 4 elements on the @compoundchem@mstdn.social infographic Carbon, Silicon etc, https://www.compoundchem.com/2013/12/29/group-4/ Whereas Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_4_element Suggests group 4 is Titanium, Zirconium, Most periodic tables are group 1,2 on the left, then there is a jump over the transition to group 3, Boron, Aluminum, Transition element groups are numbered IIIB, IVB (which wikipedia lists as group 4) 2nd group of the transition elements. So which is correct here, or does it depend on the periodic table you are looking at? Paul

This lecture is scheduled for the 28th Feb, but looks interesting s I am sharing here. I have also asked on Mastodon if a recording will be available. AllEventsAstronomy vs The billionaire space race

ScienceDailySchrödinger’s color theory finally completed after 100 yearsA century after Erwin Schrödinger sketched out a bold vision for how we perceive color, scientists have finally filled in the missing pieces. A Los Alamos team used advanced geometry to show that hue,So if we have software that recognizes colour, does this mean that software would need updating to allow for any changes to ideas on how we perceive colour?

I read about this on Mastodon, (I think) sounds pretty cool. Hopefully extend the life of the mission.

I agree with not using AI for study, a while back I found two posts on Mastodon regarding this. So from what I remember from these: 1 A teacher / professor provided access to AI, students were given a question then asked to explain what was wrong with the AI answer 2. A teacher / professor, required students to, of course fully cite their document including if they used AI, I got the impression from the post that the students found this created far more work than needed so just handed in their essay having undertaken the reqiired work / study / reading to produce it. Asking AI for an answer to a question is fine, getting access to all sources of information is probably a lot harder, as each source then needs to be checked, cross referenced etc. On the other side of this the Overleaf LaTeX editor now has integrated AI to help find and fix errors in your code. As this deals with the actual formatting of the document, and not the document content, would this be a different use case?

Thanks, I will take a look.