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mississippichem

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Everything posted by mississippichem

  1. Ah. I love the good ole curl of the curl identity. All the dels brighten my day. It has a nice ring to it. "the curl of the curl is the gradient of the divergence less the laplacian" Nice derivation ydoaps. Well said.
  2. mississippichem...I'm a chemist and I live in Mississippi (a state in the United states for those that don't have the entire globe memorized). Regardless of what mooeypoo tells you...I am male and the appearance of the suffix miss- in my name is purely coincidental. I use this username anywhere on the internet that involves science, including a few forums and several blogs as a frequent commenter.
  3. A bit more abstractly one can consider the commutation relation. Things that can be observed in quantum mechanics, "observables", correspond to operators which can be represented as matrices. When A and B are matrices it is often the case that [math] AB \neq BA[/math] Anyone who knows anything about matrix multiplication can then see that "order matters" when you play with these observables. If you follow the wikipedia link (hurry before SOPA shuts it down ) you'll see something like this: [math] [\hat{x},\hat{p}_x]= \hat{x}\hat{p}_{x}-\hat{p}_{x}\hat{x} = i\hbar [/math] Which is really just a more formal statement of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. A bit of extra work up front to get some of the abstraction of quantum mechanics (or science in general) can pay huge dividends in understanding further down the road. That's been my experience to date anyway though I'm not a physicist.
  4. A constant function is a horizontal line in the cartesian plane (the graph). The derivative is a generalization of the concept of the slope of a line to curves. What is the slope of a horizontal line?
  5. No. Air is a mixture of gases. Water is a highly polar liquid. The two could hardly be more different with respect to physical properties. You're referring to water's properties, those of a polar liquid with a lot of surface tension, and incorrectly projecting them onto air which for the most part behaves as a collection of particles bouncing around in random thermal motion and adhering to the virial equation of state. There was once a smart German engineer who invented something called a rocket. Unless you can be propelled [even in a vacuum] by the brute force of a chemical combustion reaction under you...like in a rocket. The conclusion generally comes after a viable argument has been presented.
  6. As Suxamethonium stated, oxidation/reduction processes result in the transfer of an electron(s) from one distinct chemical species to another where as a Lewis acid/base reaction will yield an adduct containing either a quite polar covalent bond or coordination bond. It's also worth noting that the electron's shared in the Lewis acid/base adduct will be spin paired [there will be a HOMO-LUMO interaction for those that care] where as a redox process will occur electron by electron from reductant to oxidant. It's interesting to note that there is some grey area here. For example, some bi-metallic coordination complexes can undergo an oxidation/reduction process where one metal center can oxidize the other through an intermediate excited state involving their common bridging ligand, an intramolecular redox process. This is actually a pretty trendy research topic in the inorganic chemistry world right now. These processes are well documented but the theory behind them is still a bit hazy. How does one define the oxidation state of the metal in such a complex? No one knows...fractional oxidation states have been proposed but are also criticized for implying unphysical "pieces" of electrons, i.e. they really just represent the statistical average of the oxidation states but this generates problems as well. Sorry for the tangentially related rant. Many chemists live and die without ever seeing a bi-metallic complex. Correct. I suppose you could draw a loose correlation between oxidation number and Lewis acidity/basicity. I'm sure that radial distance of the highest occupied molecular orbital from the nucleus [of the Lewis coordinating atom] and therefore polarizability of the molecule play just as much of an important role. I'm sure one might even be able to consider ligand field effects in more "ionic like" adduct cases. It's actually an interesting topic as well. I don't think that actual redox potentials will provide much insight as they must be taken with respect to a reference electrode.
  7. Tequila can be liquid entropy sometimes.
  8. By definition, the heat of formation of an element in its standard state is zero. The definition of the standard enthalpy of reaction is: [math] \sum H^{o}_{rxn}=\sum H^{o}_{prod}-\sum H^{o}_{react} [/math]
  9. I am a hard atheist which describes the criteria you just laid down. I actively deny the existence of a god or deity.
  10. So what keeps rocks held down on planets and moons with no atmosphere? You really don't believe in gravity? May I have a sample of that which you are smoking?
  11. Oh yeah. Prophecy fulfilled. Gotta love it.
  12. This guy will soon be banned as a sockpuppet. I remember him from an old thread.
  13. Explain the image to me, though I am not that intelligent. I'll save the ridicule for after the explanation once you've given me some ammo. My gun is currently empty
  14. Prove that unicorns don't exist. Until you do, you must respect my belief in unicorns and seriously consider the possibility that I'm right. My belief that unicorns created the earth is just as valid as your silly big bang and stellar accretion disks until you can prove me wrong. Appolinaria, From past correspondence with you on the forum I know that you are better than this type of argument. Relativity and QM deniers in the speculations section use that tactic too. Don't make fun of my unicorn worship until you can prove me wrong. Until then my beliefs are just as valid as your belief in your sky fairy. Mine just happens to walk on four legs.
  15. I should add to what Klaynos said about the MM experiment. It has since been repeated at least twice that I'm aware of, and at different scales. Feel free to point these flaws and false assumptions out. Those "jumps" are a result of the fact that the only allowed states are eigenvalues of an operator that corresponds to an observable, but that is quantum mechanics and would require you to think mathematically. If you don't understand the math how can you critique it? Are you suggesting that electrons are classical objects? Why then do the charged electrons not radiate? Charges accelerating in an electric field should radiate...where is the radiation? Tunneling electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy are both technologies that require the existence of tunneling currents to operate. How did engineers get them to work with flawed theory? Look, pony up and present your theory in a scientifically appropriate and mathematical fashion or just admit that you're in over your head. This isn't intended to be insulting. It is just blatantly obvious that your are trying to overturn the whole of modern physics when you have yet to even understand the physics that has been around since the 1920's and earlier [your confusion about rotational kinetic energy earlier was a Newtonian matter really].
  16. What about the semiconductor band gap? It's most definitely a quantum mechanical phenomenon and is absolutely crucial to the functionality of computers.
  17. You've not been an idiot. You had a silly idea, I recommended you go read some. You graciously accepted. That is the attitude of someone who wants to learn and that puts you light years ahead of the average man in my book. We've all had silly ideas. No reason for shame. You learned from it and that's what matters. Happy studies to you sir
  18. I'm pretty certain it does, according to Housecroft's Inorganic Chemistry. "Iron(II) halides combine with gaseous [ce] NH_{3} [/ce] to give salts of [ce] [Fe(NH_{3})_{6}]^2+ [/ce] that decompose in aqueous media precipitating [ce] Fe(OH)_{2} [/ce]" So they do. But not in water.
  19. I'm sure that many metals do. I know at least platinum and ruthenium from my personal work experience. Surely almost all d-metals will in some form or fashion though.
  20. Alright I give. WTF are you guys taking about!? Seeing how long before someone calls BS ?
  21. -Three tadpole tails -One pinch of sea salt -17.36 grams of U-238 -one eggplant That's the procedure cited in JACS anyway.
  22. Bah. [ce]\mathrm{nice} \ \mathrm{person} <=>\mathrm{bad} \ \mathrm{person} [/ce] You are being mostly product favored right now. , [math] K_{c} >>> 1 [/math].
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