John Cuthber

Lots of words. None of them stops me calculating K ln(W). In a way, it even helps. Here's a quote from the wiki page about Liouville's theorem "Physical interpretation The expected total number of particles is the integral over phase space of the distribution: A normalizing factor is conventionally included in the phase space measure but has here been omitted. In the simple case of a nonrelativistic particle moving in Euclidean space under a force field with coordinates and momenta , Liouville's theorem can be written This is similar to the Vlasov equation, or the collisionless Boltzmann equation, in astrophysics. The latter, which has a 6-D phase space, is used to describe the evolution of a large number of collisionless particles moving under the influence of gravity and/or electromagnetic field. In classical statistical mechanics, the number of particles is very large, (typically of order Avogadro's number, for a laboratory-scale system). Setting gives an equation for the stationary states of the system and can be used to find the density of microstates accessible in a given statistical ensemble." The number of microstates is the w that I need to calculate the natural log of and multiply by Boltzmann's constant to get the entropy.

What's the point of this thread? As far as I can see all the issues were already covered here http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/61324-science-proves-twin-towers-were-demolished/ And here http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/24987-911-wtc-molten-metal/ And here http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/17133-is-this-thermite/page__hl__thermate And in each case the science says the same thing.

In what circumstances do you suppose that K ln (W) does not exist? As far as I can tell there are no relevant circumstances, so your suggestion is based on a false premise.

When the last copy of that paper crumbles into dust S will still be K ln (w) , just as it always has been.

No.

The thing that gets me about most conspiracy theories is that they require you to believe that the government is organised enough to do that sort of thing. I live in a country where the government's response to a recession was to decide to put about 700,000 more people on the dole.

Perhaps it's time to sort out the meanings of words first. Here on earth a few metals sometimes occur naturally as elements (albeit, not usually very pure). Gold, mercury, silver and platinum are often found as metals -copper sometimes is. For these metals (on earth) it would be sufficient to bash them between two rocks. The impurities are relatively brittle and will be powdered. The metals will cold- weld together. Once you have lumps of metals you can hammer them into shape. Alternatively, you could melt these metals. They would turn to liquids and the other materials (sand etc) would float to the top and you could skim it off. You could then pour the molten metal into a mould. Most metals (at least here on earth) don't occur as the free metal. They are found as compounds, often oxides (though for some metals the sulphides are common too). These compounds are called ores (the word has some other similar meanings too). Hitting these with a rock, or heating them wouldn't help. The oxides would melt if you got them hot enough (which would often be difficult) but it wouldn't become a metal. If you heat these oxides with some other material like carbon which combines readily with oxygen then the oxygen in the ore swaps partners and reacts with the carbon (forming carbon dioxide which is a gas and dissipates into the atmosphere) and the metal is left behind as the element. You can then cast it or hammer it into shape. The process of converting an ore into a metal (often, but not always, by reaction with hot carbon) is called smelting.

We can only get lots of power in an easy way by exploiting plants which store solar energy. They do it slowly, but on a huge scale. In doing so they "bank" energy as fossil fuel and oxygen. Any life anywhere would have to get the energy from somewhere. Solar power is usually going to look like a good bet. (Geothermal heat would work too) My contention is that, unless you can rely on something else to do a lot of that energy harvesting for you, you won't have enough power to run a brain as powerful as ours. "How do you heat that air with a stone age technology? " The same way you run your muscles- but faster. I can eat plants and harvest the energy slowly or I can burn them and get lots of heat in a hurry. I can't see how intelligent life could get started without some "pre packed" energy like this.

From my point of view, you could merge some of Maths into Physics as well. There's probably a splodge of psychology type things attached to Biology and things like metallurgy that are Chemistry on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; Physics on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and they take Sunday off.

I suspect that it takes quite a lot of energy to be intelligent. I guess that any life form that evolved which was intelligent could capitalise on the same energy source that it fed from to do things like smelt iron. Incidentally, in a hydrogen atmosphere, smelting iron would be easy- heat the oxide in a stream of "air". It would also have the advantage that it wouldn't rust.

It's probably more trouble than it's worth , but I always thought that the ice calorimeter was a neat idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter

As far as I understand it the current evidence is that acupuncture doesn't work. If sticking pointy things into the "nerve clusters" doesn't work then its hard to see how prodding them a bit would do a better job. The good news is that the placebo effect still works just fine, even when you know that's what's doing the job.

Boiling the water will remove al the chlorine. Adding bicarbonate won't do a particularly good job, certainly not at levels where the solution would be drinkable. BTW, Elementcollector, Is drinking water not chlorinated where you live?

That would rule out a lot of spectroscopy- most notably why gold is yellow. Another casualty would be the heavy atom effect in photochemistry. I don't think there is a simple answer.

"I wonder how many tosses do I have to endure before getting Head at the 4th toss, how many ours to get Head at the 5th toss, how many days before getting Head at the 6th toss. Not speaking about getting Head after the 20th toss (or after infinite tosses). " I will try to save you the trouble of all that tossing. I presume that you mean getting a head at the 4th toss, but not before. the odds should be 1 in 2 for the first toss, 1 in 4 for the second, 1 in 8 for the third 1 in 16 for the 4th and so on. The odds on only getting a head at the 20th toss are close to one in a million, but I suspect that MD65536 could tell you the exact odds (or at least for the 16th). None of this makes any difference to the population of the island. Each and every islander had a 50% chance of having been born male so half of them are male, and the other half are female. No maths required. It also doesn't matter if and when (or why) the couples stop having children. Every baby has a 50 % chance of being male (at least in terms of maths problems, actually the numbers born are not exactly 50:50). All the population were once babies. The population is 50% male (on average).

OK, my experience is with HPLC of small organic molecules rather than protein purification but I think the idea is the same. If you put clean solvent through the column and you get peaks coming off it then the column isn't clean. I'd try the manufacturer's procedure for washing again and see if the peaks that come off afterwards are smaller. If so then the cleaning is working and you need to do it more. If not then you need a different clean up routine (or a new column). However , there's still the question of where the stuff on the column came from. It might be from the solvent you used to wash the column so I'd make up fresh batches of everything first.

" They gave no safety training to the farm workers because, quite frankly, the new owner doesn't care about them." So why didn't you report then to the relevant legal authority? " Kind of off topic," So why did you mention it? The fact is that it's not just off- topic. You said it in reply to a question I asked and it doesn't actually answer the question. Nicotine is used as a pesticide on some "organic" farms and it's enormously toxic. This isn't a difference between organic and non organic farming- it's just prejudice. " I'd like to point out that the switch from organic to conventional caused a decrease in yields" No, you have shown that a change to bad farming practice reduces yields. "The loan stipulated that he had to cut down half the trees in the finca, because it was thought that would increase yield. " So, he followed obvious bad advice. That's nothing to do with it being non- organic. If he had stuck with organic farming, but still needed a loan, would the stipulation have been different? "But I digress …. There are areas in Central America where planes cover fields with pesticides and herbicides --- and also coat the communities that live within or nearby. Chronic sickness, neurological disorders, mental development delays are the result. " OK, so now imagine that they go back to traditional pesticides based on arsenic, copper or nicotine. Do you actually believe that the death toll would be lower? "According to the crop dusting company, the pilot was experienced and followed regulations." OK, so that wasn't in the UK, but here are the rules they didn't follow. http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/Resources/CRD/Migrated-Resources/Documents/C/Code_of_Practice_for_using_Plant_Protection_Products_-_Complete20Code.pdf If your country has bad regulations that's not because of conventional farming: it's because of bad government. This "Yes, because the areas with highly mechanized /industrialized farming can afford to subsidize the cost of fertilizers, biocides, and hybrid seeds. The places that lack industrialized farming can't afford to subsidize these capital inputs. Hence why many are now turning to agroecological farming techniques, which relyon ecological knowledge and labour moreso than expensive inputs." may well be true, but unless you can assure me that their people are not hungry then it's not relevant. "introduced potatoes, which can grow in substandard soil." "In other words, they didn't change the technology because of increased yields. " But that's exactly what you just said they did. They grew potatoes because, (given the poor soil left to them by a bunch of total shits) that gave them the best yield. "For example, all corn in Mexico used to be grown in Mexico (many were traditional varieties on small plots) until Clinton's Free Trade agreement, when Mexico was flooded with US corn. " OK, so what did the Mexican farmers actually do? Would it have helped if they suddenly went strictly organic or strictly conventional? No of course not- they were undercut anyway. Why was the US able to do this? Because their conventional non-organic farms enabled them to produce a hell of a lot of maize. Their yields were better. Whether that's due to spending money on fertilisers and pesticides isn't the point. Those were never going to be free of charge. Non organic farming burns through cash, oil and chemicals but it does grow a hell of a lot of crops. If it didn't, then nobody would spend the money on the oil would they? "In general, you seem to make the assumption that industrial farming became the dominant farming paradigm because it is superior to other forms of agriculture. I disagree with that assumption. I mean, yes, we can grow more corn per acre in the Mid-West and other breadbaskets of rich countries due to industrial agriculture. But globally, industrial agriculture clearly has not improved malnutrition, " Perhaps not, but at least the Mexicans can now get cheap corn. Since plenty of them are still poor it's hard to see them objecting to cheaper food. (though they may have preferred the farming jobs- but that's a matter of international politics not organic farming) The (un)sustainability of conventional farming is a valid point, but organic farming couldn't cope with the demand. The only way out of this is to eat less, and that means curb the population. That policy doesn't win many votes. And Jeskil re. "Soon, unless you believe that oil and phosphate rock magically appears from the ground, we will not be able to grow using industrial agricultural techniques anyways. " Where do you think petroleum and phosphate rock do come from?

Not it can't, or at least not unless you can show where I have got the maths wrong. The specific activity of 232Th is about 4000 Bq/g It gives about 4Mev per disintegration. So Thorium produces about 16000 MeV per gram per second. That's about 2 nW per gram So, this guy has resurrected a thread to claim that he can get 40 mW from something that only produces about 60nW (that's milli watts from nano watts) Claiming to get about a million times more power than is available isn't a clever thing to do on a science forum.

I don't think that one of the requirements of the first puzzle changes the first puzzle. It defines it. If there are no deaths and no cases of infertility etc then people will (in an idealised way) go on having kids forever until they (and as I read it that means each couple) gets a girl. You don't need to worry about how many children they are actually likely to have. That simplifies the problem enormously.

What's the difference between the formation of the two ions and the formation of a highly excited state of the molecule. The real difference between nuclear reactions and chemical reactions is the energy involved. If you measure a few eV it's chemistry. If you measure KeV or MeV it's physics. (Unless you are talking about the energies of epithermal neutrons: bugger! But I guess they are not reacting- just wandering about)

About 95% or the world's population do not live in the US. We are not deeply concerned about your bars.

Since the original question says "You may assume an absence of any factors that unnecessarily complicate the puzzle, such as multiple births, infertility, deaths etc." The spoiler doesn't apply

It doesn't matter that they stop.

Good point (and I'm sure the pubs would be happy to fill them with beer for you instead if you liked.)

I can. Dutch beer bottles, according to that wiki page. Also there are pubs where they will fill a container with beer for you. you can reuse the container (and I don't mean the glasses).