mississippichem

Must have something to do with our recent budget cuts in the US . The GPS programmer had his salary cut and he said to hell with this.

I'm not arguing that chemistry is the hardest (really I would argue physics is "harder"), but I think chemistry may require a strange skill set. Chemistry is strange because it requires a student to have some of those "physics type skills" as well as some of those "biology type skills". The physics type skills I'm referring to include math competence, problem solving, and abstract visualization. The biology type skills are understanding large and complex systems, statistical fluency, being okay with synergistic effects (more than the sum of parts...), and learning a large set of obscure vocabulary. There is also a lot of variation within chemistry. I'm sure this is true for other fields but I'll not speculate out of my league. For example, a synthetic organic chemist can probably get by without much formal math skill but they must be able to predict or hypothesize multitudes of reaction outcomes, have a mental library of hundreds of reagents, and also have some artisan-like skill with their hands. A physical chemists are prone to be more like one third physicist and two thirds chemist. Advanced mathematics is par for the course, computer skills are highly valued, and experimental design is a must. Usually people don't specialize that much during undergrad (in the USA anyway). But, I've had friends that made C's or D's in organic chemistry while making A's in physical chemistry and the other way around. I never took a college-level biology course but I had friends struggle through genetics which looked quite difficult to me . I did well in my physics courses though.

But electrons are not massless.

But you have no evidence newts. You are distracting from the real issue here. I've not seen one calculation. You admitted that your theory was incalculable. That makes it either a religious belief or rubbish. You've also yet to explain what is wrong with the highly supported theory of quarks. "It's too complicated", is simply not going to cut it. You do realize that you are going up against a plethora of advanced mathematics and experimental data with what is essentially hand waiving right?

Short and probably unsatisfying answer: -all amino acids will have some (though sometimes very little) hydrophobic interaction with other amino acids. -all amino acids with a an -OH, or -NH will display some varying degree hydrogen bonding activity with water and other similar amino acids -any amino acid with an ionizable proton has the ability to have ionic interactions with other species at some pH (though in some cases it may be an extreme pH). The best advice: Draw out the two amino acids in question. See for yourself if there could be any of the above mentioned intermolecular forces between the two. It is surprisingly easy. At the more advanced level (shameless plug for computational chemistry here ) you can use the UFF (universal [Newtonian] force field) to do molecular dynamics simulations and can quantify these interactions with a surprising degree of accuracy.

Physicists: I've always casually thought of energy as the thing that makes stuff go (be it vibration, translation, orbital excitation...). Is this compatible with our current understanding? Enlighten an ignorant chemist please. I'm thinking zero point energy might not be compatible with my "street-definition" of energy.

That experiment is widely accepted to have been the nail in the coffin for aether theories. So how is it that you are using this experiment to give the opposite conclusion? Explain the mechanics, with mathematical justification, of how your aether theory is in line with the MM experiment.

I agree. Pincho Paxton must first establish the existence of the aether before he can say anything about how it affects gravity. Pincho Paxton: Are you familiar with the Michelson-Morley experiment?

I've felt for some time now (I was a devout Christian at one time) that life simply makes much more sense without any supernatural or spiritual processes at work. It seems very fishy to me that everything in life would follow the rules of physics and be predictable, quantifiable etc...except for one thing. Everything in my personal experience has been explainable at least in theory. When one evokes a God or a higher power to explain the "meaning" of things, life becomes incredibly complicated with questions about the motives of the higher power. This logic is invalid in my opinion. When people claim that God did something and are asked why by someone else, they either evoke a guess or admit that "God works in mysterious ways". That just makes certain that any speculation about God will always have a backdoor escape route. Most theists admit that we can know nothing about the intentions or motives of God. I ask then, how can anyone speculate about what God did or didn't do? Can't have it both ways. The only religious belief I see as remotely rational would be deism. Personally, I don't prescribe to it. However, those who are not okay with the "I don't know" answer to big questions should be deists. I'm alright with not knowing why I exist. I enjoy the pursuit of knowledge. If we knew it all life would suck, I promise.

Incorrect. A hydrogen bond is a strong dipole-dipole interaction between an electron deficient hydrogen and some other electronegative element. Nice try, I couldn't make this stuff up myself.

No, science can't be used to detect or determine the existence of a God. By definition, a hypothetical God would not be bound to the laws of nature. I agree here. I disagree here. We are self aware yes. How does the existence of a god follow from that? Could we not have naturally evolved to be self aware? I'm not just playing devil's advocate here. I've always been confused when people make this claim "We are aware therefore God exists". I can't follow the logic, please explain further.

How does God give you a better answer though? "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth" is hardly intellectually satisfying. Yes spirituality goes beyond science and into eternity, but with how much certainty? None. You are comparing apples to oranges here. Science tests mathematical models of reality against quantitative data. Any valid hypothesis can be confirmed or denied based on that sole criterion "is it in line with observation?". God offers no falsifiability. You may posit that God was here before the universe but that is just based on your opinion or faith. There is no experiment that can confirm or deny this so it is really pointless in a scientific discussion. You have the right to believe what you want. But that doesn't make what you believe intellectually useful or even germane with reality.

Strawman. What part of the big bang theory states what you said depicted in bold? How do you jump from, "We don't know what came before the beginning of the universe" to "A creator must have done it"? Order can come from confusion, look at how natural crystals form. A diamond is a highly ordered structure of carbon atoms that forms naturally. Did someone intervene there as well?

In the event of another crash like in 2008, I wonder if they will disallow put options again. If they don't, many stand to make a fortune on a crash.

You've already contradicted observation. Gravity is no where near strong enough to hold together electron-positron pairs to form neutrons. How do you account for the half-life of a free neutron which is around 15 minutes?

Is this "sloppiness" observed in EPR hyperfine transitions?

Oh, you mean back from the time when elements were fire, earth, air, water... and the universe was geocentric. That sounds credible.

Where does that come from!? Thats an incredibly bold assertion from nowhere, supported by nothing so far. No, many calculations in physics are done this way. What I mean by first principles is to derive your equations from some established physics we can agree on and show how your theory is a result of that. Don't skip any steps, show every step as if you would on an exam. If you can't so this, then your theory is utter nonsense. No more excuses, show the calculations or admit that you don't know.

There are many moderators to appeal to. However, I doubt you will get anywhere as swansont has not violated a rule and is not currently acting as a moderator in this thread as he is posting as a "poster". He is simply calling you on it every time you misrepresent the established science of relativity. No rule violation there, just good debate.

Cap'n. Do you know if there is any legitimacy to the claims that Paul later traveled to places in Southern Asia like India? Evidently there are churches in western India that date back to before the alleged "first" Christian missionaries came to the region. I'll try to find a cite for it. It was something I read a few years ago and always wondered about whether or not it was legit.

I've noticed this in some "infection-type" zombie movies. The hero usually gets covered in zombie blood and guts yet somehow never seems to catch the virus.

Many threads here stay at dick levels 0-2 for a long time only to blow up to dickfinity in a short period of time once the speculator original poster gets tired of being called on nonsense. I often have to repress the urge to bring the intensity up to dick=3. Dicks are like tensors though, no one likes to see anything above rank 2.

I agree. I think humans tend to project their own fears, ambitions, and hopes onto an anthropomorphic deity. If they feel insecure about wars, then god becomes a valiant, always victorious warrior god. When a tornado happens, he becomes the jealous and vengeful smiter. It is interesting how there are so many names for the Judeo/Christian god in the old testament.

Phase changes [melting] have a very strict thermodynamic meaning. It has to do with the change in energy at the phase transitions. Science definitions are not like dictionary definitions. Most have some mathematical definition hiding behind the words.

I'm not sure I understand this bottom part here. Did you mean [math] \hat{J}_{ii} = \langle ii | ii \rangle [/math] ? and the same for [math] \hat{K}_{ii} [/math]? I don't really follow here. Explain further, Why don't you try to show these operators acting on some simple [math] \phi [/math] function and see if they give the same eigenvalues? Show how the exchange operator makes [math] \phi_{i} [/math] exchange with [math] \phi_{j} [/math]. I think this will give you a hint. Or if you try to write them down in full Dirac notation like: [math] \langle \phi_{i} \phi_{j} | \hat{O} | \phi_{i} \phi_{j} \rangle [/math], then I think you will be able to see how they are the same by mere inspection or by their matrix forms. I tend to be comfortable with the matrix formulations of Hartree-Fock stuff, I've told I'm strange for that though so... Also, I know you can write down the antisymmetrization operator, [math] \hat{A} [/math], in terms of the exchange operator acting on the Hartree product. See if you can do the same for the Coloumb operator.