mississippichem

I suspect your electrolysis might come to a grinding halt whenever enough water has evaporated and you are just left with a lot of heavy, non-conductive oil. Sodium ions will not want to migrate to the oil layer either. Any sodium ion that is reduced to Na metal in the aqueous layer probably won't live long enough to migrate to the oil layer. Sorry to be a "parade-rainer".

Silica gel or the calcium chloride that is present in some swimming pool "chlorine tabs".

Why would you want to chat with anyone but us!? I'm truly hurt Anura

Glad to know that you've reduced all of relativistic physics to a set of linear equations. Contact the Nobel prize commission.

Apparently with an illogical response Read your own post. Does this look like a convincing mathematical argument? Somehow you managed to do it all without one single equation. You've yet to give a testable prediction or any thing that remotely resembles a convincing argument. Yes, by all means show us a post full of [math] \oint [/math] and [math] \partial x [/math].

Protons and electrons are members of a class of particles called fermions. All fermions have half integer spins. So both protons and electrons can each have spins of either +1/2 or -1/2. There is a set of rules that electrons must obey with respect to how they are "stacked" in atoms. Each orbital can hold 0, 1, or 2 electrons. Electrons spin pair with each other in these orbitals; two electrons of opposite spin. In some elements and compounds, one or a few of these electrons don't have a spin pair partner. So there is a net magnetic field coming from the atom or molecule. In for example, a bulk piece of iron there is no net charge, in theory. The total number of protons in an iron bar magnet would equal the total number of electrons. In practice every iron atom behaves a little "electron deficient" because transition metals share electrons so easily.

Yep, you can treat a molecule as a classical body as long you are only worried about molecular dynamics/statistical mechanics. If you want to look at things like individual bond movements or energy level stuff, you are back to QM for obvious reasons.

I just can't see what advantage a linguistic/descriptive approach can offer. It has already been established, over the course of this thread and a plethora of others, that a linguistic approach to understanding counter-intuitive science concepts is inferior in terms of accuracy, reproducibility, verifiability, as well as internal consistency. The only advantage I see to a descriptive approach is that it opens up a certain degree of flawed understanding to the lay person. Sure, it may provoke the interest of some guy on an internet forum; but it really offers no additional scientific insight. I think you may have the goal of science backwards. The goal of science is not for Lemur and Mississippichem to understand with our imperfect human minds the workings of the universe. We are not trying to achieve a god-like cognitive state. The goal of science is to produce a working model of nature that brings with it a large degree of predictive power. Mathematics is the only avenue that has thus far been able to deliver on that tall order. Even if you were to descriptively understand the most complex workings of QM, what good would it do? How do I know that your mental picture is the same as mine? What happens when we need to convey these ideas to someone in China who doesn't speak English? Upon quick examination you should find that there would be no objective standard by which to judge the consistency and integrity of ideas. Mathematics is not some cryptic language that requires logical leaps and memorization of facts. The fact that 1+1=2, and 1+0=1 is all that is required to derive even the most complex of maths, at least in theory.

Checklist to tell if politicians are lying: -Do they claim to fix a budget without cuts or without rampant tax hikes? -Do they redirect a serious question with a patriotic rant? -Is their mouth moving? I've yet to find a politician in the US that didn't fail this test miserably.

I agree. Acknowledging that there is much Islamo-terrorism is not the same as denying the existence of non-Islamic-terrorists. The Islamic terrorism that worries me is not so much the rare acts of terror against the western world. Its the terrible things they do to themselves, to their own people. Being a staunch atheist, I find all religions oppressive and silly. However, I'm not very ashamed to admit that I find Islam to be an order of magnitude more violent than other modern religions. Christianity had its terrible days as well, (see the Crusades). But now days, which religion is the one that actively tramples womens' rights? Which religion sets itself up in theocracies and exploits the ignorance of the people? I don't feel as though I'm being Islamophobic by saying this; I truly hate all religions equally If anyone wants an anti-Christianity rant in the name of fairness I will gladly contribute.

I don't see which part of that video, or any video for that matter, would lead you to believe that Islam was the "real deal". The evidence provided by the video is anecdotal at best. Everyone acknowledges that the golden ratio is pleasurable to the human eye. Why then is it so surprising that it shows up so often in historic human art, architecture, etc. !? The golden ratio itself is an irrational number. If you take any of these examples out to enough decimal places, you'll find that they will deviate from the golden ratio significantly. So then you are forced to admit that said deity (who apparently likes the golden ratio very much) either has a calculator that inappropriately terminates irrational numbers at some point, or is imperfect. I blame television for people being so willing to swallow this nonsense. If you watch the History Channel (in the USA), you'll find that crap like this is shown all day. All this spooky, historical, coincidental nonsense is polluting peoples' heads. Real history is dry, boring, semi-empirical, and admits when there is uncertainty. If you base your worldview on one lousy [though might a say well produced] video on the internet, then I've got some beachfront property in Mongolia that I want to sell you. I apologize for my slight degree of harshness but it makes me sad that so many young people, people my age, are so willing to accept pure fiction at the click of a mouse.

You can find solutions for a particle in a finite 1-dimensional potential well that satisfy the Shroedinger Equation. This is often one of the first QM lessons taught in undergraduate classes, and though very simple it is quite instructive. You can see how the Hamiltonian works at the basic level and see how eigenfunctions fit into the picture. This scenario is sometimes called the "particle in a box" case.

Your question is ill-defined. Many ions are molecules and many molecules are ions.

Didn't Google claim to have changed it's name to "Kansas" one year?

I often use this site: Paul's Online Math Notes: Differential Equations whenever I get over my head with some nasty DE's. I've also been known to whip out the TI-89 as well though. If you do a significant amount of work with non-homogeneous, higher order, or partial DE's the TI-89 "partials" package is worth it's weight in gold.

I once had a product that I couldn't make crystalize. NMR and mass spec showed it to be the pure target compound. We ran a molecular dynamics simulation and it turned out that this compound was an oil! It's frustrating because we wanted a neutron diffraction structure, but these things happen in chemistry.

He changed the avatar at the top right of my screen to a pink pony. To hell with you Cap'n! Don't make me drive to Texas boy.

Remember the trusty titration equation: [math] M_{1}V_{1} = M_{2}V_{2} [/math] Where V is volume and M is moles. Also remember the sodium carbonate is a diprotic base so adjust the above expression accordingly to account for stoichiometry.

Topic Title changed. That's a $5 surcharge. I take all major credit cards

The symmetry about the secondary axis is [math] i [/math] because there is no symmetrical rotation about that axis if I remember correctly. If that's not the correct notation forgive me.

Ah! A group theory question! Rare indeed The [math] C_{2} [/math] axis for water has [math] i [/math] symmetry. If you apply the identity operator,[math] E [/math], then it works out. I used to wonder similar things, but usually the identity operator fixes these problems. Not too sure of the details behind how the identity operator fixes this. It usually just best to memorize the the Mulliken notation and practice applying all the symmetry operators. If you find a point group flow chart, water fits into [math] C_{2v} [/math] just fine.

And I am his high priest. All future SFN rules violations must be pennanced by bowing down and saying ten hail ydoaPs's. Lest ye experience the wrath of his mighty pogo-stick. Amen

If you look at the periodic table, all the elements to the left have greater metallic properties, i.e. require a lower energy to be ionized. Elements to the far right (noble gases) require a lot more energy to be ionized. This can be used to explain why, for example, alkali metals like sodium so easily tend to form 1+ charged ions. Take the familiar sodium chloride: [ce] NaCl -> Na^{+} + Cl^{-} [/ce] All I've done here is show you its constituent ions. Sodium is so willing to give up an electron that sodium metal, [ce] Na^{0} [/ce], when put in water will react vigorously to give up an electron and form a [ce] Na^{+} [/ce] ion. [ce] 2Na + 2H_{2}O -> 2NaOH + H_{2} [/ce] I've really barely scratched the surface here but hopefully I'm pointing you in the right direction. *These trends are all well defined and easily understandable for the s and p blocks of the periodic table. When you move into the d and f blocks though, the whole game gets quite counter-intuitive and spooky quantum effects become more significant. For the really heavy elements, electrons are moving so fast that even relativistic effects have a role to play.

Who said atoms are round?

Oh yeah, if you dare you can look into faster than diffusion enzyme kinetics. Currently a hot topic in both biochemistry and physical chemistry. Let us know your findings if you do this. I'm very interested in such things.