RyanJ

Just be careful not to loose any fingers, flash powder is really touchy stuff in my limited experience. I've seen the stuff ignore without contact which is pretty scary to think about if your packing the stuff and it goes off while your holding it... the best advice is don't

I guess you could probably buy the enzyme that converts pectin into pectic acid. Other than that I have no idea sorry. Why would you need to do something that's potentially very complex? (as its not a simple molecule).

Really? I would have guessed the opposite due to the general low bond energy of the I-X bond. Ah, I understand Woelen. The solubility factor vs temperature is a problem for most bromates.

Maybe because lots of the words used in medicine are Latin in origin anyway?

I second that! Mine is so bad I have to use a computer for exam work otherwise its completely illegible.

I've been wondering the same thing, there does seem to be a correlation between increasing intelligence and decreasing penmanship. I wonder if this is actually the case.

What about other bromates? I'm not sure about the reactivity of bromates across the periodic table but something like copper(II) bromate or maybe more exotic bromates? Just a note too anyone reading (probably already know anyway but just to be safe) if you try with strontium bromate be aware that strontium compounds are normally just as toxic as those of barium so be careful Sound like there are a lot of possibilities of things to try here, could be interesting to examine the reactivity of iodates maybe too, my guess is though that they may be too unstable to be used in such a situation.

How about the lower alkali-earth metal bromates? They'll probably be a little more stable in this case and so easier too observe. If this is correct calcium should also produce a nice red-yellow flame.

I thought as much, thanks for the confirmation.

I was doing a little internet research into this and I dig up an interesting web pagehere. It suggests that trapping a molecule inside such ad tritium, nitrogen, carbon monoxide etc. inside a molecule it does not make the more the fullerene more unstable as I would expect from a structure with most of its electrons delocalised inside the compound. Does this mean that maybe the electrons would be evenly disociated over the inner and outer surfaces of the structure rather than taking preference to one or the other? I'm not all too sure about it but it seems to make scene that if the electrons were dissociated over the inner surface then shouldn't the repulsion of the molecule inside the structure try to push it apart or do we need to consider the energy of confinement of the molecule inside verses the energy to break the bonds allowing it to escape?

@YT2095: That doesn't sound like a very wise thing to try (the phosphorus reaction) but the reaction with glucose sounds interesting!

@Glider: Isn't it related to the fact that when the fight or flight response kicks in blood is diverted from the unnecessary organs including the stomach. This reduced blood flow leads to the feeling of "Butterflies in the stomach" due to the reduced blood flow and this oxygen and glucose availability to the cells in the stomach?

Hmm interesting but it still reacts? How about phosphorus? That would probably be a little violent of a reaction due to the reactivity of phosphorus though.

Well technically an object is inside space time anyway - the 2D sheet representation sucks for explaining stuff like this. If your referring too how an object actually distorts spacetime there are ideas that involve the wave-particle duality. Light can be a photon or an EM wave, in the same way gravity can be a gravity "wave" or a graviton which is the theoretical transmission particle for gravitational attraction. For a better explanation one of the physics guys will probably be able to give more details. Although the graviton has not been observed yet (or has it?) they believe it may exist as a particle with 0 mass that travels at light speed like a photon (its also in the same category, Gauge bosons). My English is very poor at the moment because I'm really tired

Interesting experiment Woelen. Would Carbon work in place of Sulphur in this case (possible making the reaction slower and less vigorous?)

What do you mean by " if gravity is just the result of an object attempting to squeeze itself into "spacetime""? If you are using an analogy like that the closest you could have would be it pushes spacetime away (even though I don't think it happens like that) creating a curve. If you believe relativity its the distortion in space time its self. Anything within the influence of the distortion can feel its gravitational effects. If we are above and object and fall towards it we can be described as "sliding down the gravitational distortion in spacetime". Sorry, I'mnot very good at explaining things.

Well anyone that has a cannon ball made out of depleted uranium would probably have more interesting stories anyway ;-) I should probably have said "iron" cannon ball though

From an organic textbook in school, it is discussing similar aspects of benzene, fullerenes and other carbon-type compounds including graphite and diamond. If I understand it the book was referring to the way electrons can delocalise over the separate hexagonal segments. I'm reading another book and hopefully it will give a little more insight into how the electrons act That would be really interesting, studies have been done but a yet little in-depth work... could be interesting!

Here are three more for you guys 1. Mercury is so dense that a cannon ball can float on it! 2. Thiols are the strongest smelling substances in existence (apparently). The human nose can detect them in as little as one part in 50 billion! These are used as an additive in natural gas. An example of their potency was shown in two experiments carried out at Esso research. They were attempting to crack trithioacetone south of Oxford in 1967. A stopper was accidentally removed from a bottle containing the resulting residue and within seconds people in a building 200 feet away were feeling nausious and sick! Too this day we do not know the compound responsible, it was either dithiol or 4-methyl-4-sulfanylpentan-2-one but nobody has been brave enough to find out which. 3. Humans, for some reason, are extremely sensitive too the taste of the main flavouring in grapefruit, able to detect it in concentrations as around 2*10-5 parts per billion! This is almost equal too 10-4 milligrams in a tonne of water or one drop in a good-sized lake! Amazing!

As I recall the steps for extracting various metals from PCB's is quite complex, they extract the copper, gold, silver etc. You could probably do it but it would be more expensive than the worth of the gold in them.

There are people who say it's acting god and that we have no right to attempt such things but I say that's a load of nonsense is animal cloning is permitted. The main reason its probably banned because it is somewhat immoral. Due to the high failure rate of cloning experiments in larger organisms, various problems are caused and people would argue that we have no right to expose humans to this king of treatment.

well gold is far less reactive than copper for one thing so you could use a reaction to test. This is a destructive method though and not really what you want.

I guessed as much, after PTFE being a great example of the stability of alkylfluride stability (or rather polymers off). Thanks for the information Woelen!

No problem, let me know if it works ok. The book suggests this as the best reaction too use even though it does warn the reaction is exothermic to some degree (but isn't more specific). Interesting, thanks! Then fluorine will be the least powerful methylating agent.

Actually I'm pretty sure that surface area will directly affect the frictional force. If you have a rough surface (the rough surface in effect increasing the area on which the resistive force can act) even with the same mass we have more friction on the rough surface so does that indicate a link with surface area? Is that idea is correct it would mean that the larger the affecting surface area the larger the frictional force, this does not actually depend on the mass that is pushing down on it which is assumed to be constant in this case (we would need to use the same mass only changing the surface area). Maybe one the the physics guys can answer this more correctly, just me idea Looking at a relationship between friction and pressure here would also be interesting.