insane_alien

joshuam, what type of vehicle was the saturn V? i know the proper answer is spaceship byt what would a 4 year old call it?

I've never really thought much about this till this morning but have you ever noticed how if you've been drinking vodka(or some other vodka based drink) the night before, that in the morning, every liquid you drink seems to taste like it has vodka in it? is there anything to explain this? i have a feeling it's psychological but maybe i'm wrong. oh and, 10 points and a cookie if you can guess what i was drinking last night.

teach tag? now, correct me if i'm wrong and this is a culture clash but, isn't tag a game where you just run around and chase people when you were kids(or grown up and drunk with some more interesting rules). must be a strange school.

we do absorb light. just not all of it. if we reflected all light we would make albinos look as if they had a very very good tan.

right, this is a pretty good tutorial http://www.jeffhove.com/robots/coilgunhowto.html i used a similar one a while ago. since you are apparently new to high voltage i'll describe some of the risks. explosions, burns, cardiac arrest and death. lots of nastiness. BUT these only have a chance if you are not careful. if you are careful high voltage is a laugh and you won't get anything more than a mild shock(like touching an electric fence, go touch one so you see what it's like. good for encouraging safety. i tried climbing over one when i didn't know it was electric and, well it wasn't fun). basically, the rules are, treat everything as if it is charged and ready to shock you at any moment. electrical insulation works, rubber soled shoes, rubber gloves, plastic handled screwdrivers, these are very useful. don't lick anything. if firing a projectile, don't aim at face, friends face, cat , whatever. don't try and get THEM to lick anything. don't do it next to a computer or TV. they don't like EM pulses.

Well, the reaction requires more than one chemical. not only does it require an oxidiser(oxygen in this case) but it also requires a fuel(butane in this case) now, since the fuel is only in the lighter and released slowly opposed to being spread evenly throughout the atmosphere, the atmosphere will not blow up.

to correct sisyphus, it is a plasma, not a gas. they are similar but distinct phases. there are also photons emitted by the molecules themselves as they react and not just due to blackbody radiation

it's pretty simple. just don't touch any metal parts when your charging. the caps will probably hold enough energy to kill you.

well, seeing as we haven't created a human/rabbit hybrid before. and are not likely to do so any time soon, we can't really say. i don't know what book you read but it could well have been scifi.

nope. because if you read up on it, nothing actually goes faster than light. it only appears to. you can't do anything useful with it.

what you are describing does sound like an EHD thruster (electrohydrodymaic thruster) commonly called a lifter. very cool things.

huh? where did you get that idea? you can get human milk with much less effort than that. think 'breast feeding'.

yeah well, railguns tend to be chunkier. http://www.powerlabs.org/railgun.htm by the time you get to the really interesting energies the projectile starts getting welded to the track or vapourised. thats why i suggested steel bars over copper wire.

thats a gauss gun. not the same principles. railguns require a very high current to be run through the rails and projectile. a gauss gun doesn't.

a slow burning rocket fuel? good luck with that, the point is they burn fast. forget the pyromania for a second. use a compressed gas, it'll work.

never underestimate compressed air. a fire extinguisher will do. explosives are a really really bad idea in this case. explosives act to fast and you'd burst the tubing rather than inflate it no i don't know a teacher by that name.

yeah, and why did you think explosives would in any way be a good idea in that case?

umm stable and explosive are sort of diametrically opposed. if its stable it won't explode and if it explodes it's not stable. can you not just use a compressed gas cylinder? much safer and probably more suited to your needs. a CO2 fire extinguisher should work. P.S. just a guess but is this 15 foot of surgical tubing going to be incorporated as a giant dong?

i don't think there are any oncologists here but if this had any merit whatsoever it would have been posted to peerreviewed journals and would be undergoing trials outwith the organisation.

really? i can't smell anything coming off of dry ice. all the sources i've seen also say it is an odourless gas.

cola, sugar. it'll release the dissolved carbon dioxide. although, cola forms bubbles. just use carbonated (fizzy) water. it'll sit there and buble for a bit. carbon dioxide displaces oxygen and can itself be poisonous if in high enough concentrations for long enough. the first will be the bigger problem here but it it's only 100ml or so it'll be fine. the sugar water you're left with can also be used as an energy drink although you will experience a sugar crash if you drink it all in one go. on a side note, the smell you get from above cola is not actually the escaping gas but small droplets of cola that have been thrown into the air when a bubble popped. they dry out and drift into your nose. the sensation is a mixture of smell and irritation as the flecks of dried cola absorb water in your nose.

had a quick glance at the slides, looks good. hope it goes well.

i know that governments have a certain skill at 'accidents' but i thought they would be a tiny bit more careful about some nukes. especially with they're FUD about terrorists being EVERYWHERE.

i think the fact is assuming the 'proper' typing method and a en_US or en_UK qwerty keyboard(not sure about other localisations). can't do it on my keyboard, i switched to dvorak. keys are all over the place now.

oh ffs have you still not grown up yet.