John Cuthber

But some puppies might get out more.

Well, I voted; now how do you confirm that I'm a scientist?

Second missing poll option: I know what it is, and it's unmitigated nonsense. The wiki page about it shows the image of a couple of coins. What diagnosis would you make about them?

It would certainly be possible to get a "chlorine lamp" in the same way you can get a neon lamp. This trick might help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodeless_lamp There are tables in the literature of emission spectra and they include chlorine so someone must have made the measurements once. It's not easy to tell from those tables what colour the light would be.

He's right; those links provide relevant information. The information being that the idea is total eyewash. Marton, Re. "the trick is how you handle the whole process, " There is no "trick" that lets you get round the conservation laws. Anyone who says otherwise is mistaken or lying (or both).

Could we run the planet on energy wasted by people who think burning hydrogen is an energy source?

A block of glass doesn't have holes in it to let the light through. The electron density is never zero in the solid. How can the light get through "travelling" at c through the spaces between the atoms when there are no spaces? The reflection of sound depends directly on the acoustic impedance which is, IIRC, the product of the density and the speed of sound in a material.

From that point of view the only medium in which they ever travel is a vacuum in which case the point is moot. Incidentally, how far from, say a hydrogen atom, does the photon have to be in order not to be slowed down by it? The reason I ask is that as far as I understand it, the electron probability density falls rapidly but it never quite reaches zero. In that case there's no such thing as "between two particles". the idea that I am here so I slow down every photon in the universe (slightly) seems odd but I can't see why I don't.

Sure about that?

I'd use CaCl2 to see if it worked as a desiccant. NaOH would probably increase the loss of HCl. The little bags are generally full of silica gel, but the gel is usually pretty near saturated with water by the time you actually buy the stuff unless the packaging was unusually well sealed.

Maggie was a chemist but it didn't stop her government knackering science; for example the closure of the Warren Spring laboratory; and education. I realise the Mr Brown and Mr Blair were to some extent victims of external circumstances. The economy didn't fail because of anything our PM did and the war in Iraq was inevitable, given Mr Bush's determination to start one. Blair's decision to make sure he was on what he expected to be the winning side might have been the least bad option in the circumstances. My problem with the Blair/ Brown government is that they were elected on false pretences. They claimed to be Left wing.

NASA funding will not influence, and is not influenced by the UK election so it is off topic. Their started policy is to cut taxation and expenditure. Since they have said that they will (to some extent) protect expenditure on education and health, all other projects are at risk. Cutting back on science was also their policy before, and they are great supporters of "tradition".

Iron tends to oxidise to Fe(III) in air and FeCl3 solutions lose some HCl on evaporating.

What many people seem not to have noticed is that we have had a Conservative government for some time now (since 1979). Since 1997 the Conservative government has been called "New Labour". The future is very important; among other things it includes education - which needs to be paid for centrally; rich people don't have a monopoly on bright kids. For me there are a couple of other things that might be important in the future- health care and pension provisions. The last 20 or 30 years have seen the government row back from the provision of social health care, but they have maintained the idea of giving money to their (rich) friends. More money is now spent on management consultants than clinical consultants. Frankly I don't trust the Conservatives to ensure that the pension providers actually look to the future. They permitted, for many years, investment funds to pay out large bonuses in the good times without making any provision for the bad times. Ask anyone with an endowment mortgage.

Interesting point. If I didn't bother to vote and some jackass got in I would feel guilty. At least if I vote I will be able to say one of 2 things. That's the jackass I chose or At least I tried to stop that jackass getting in. Oddly this seems to work no matter who wins. Incidentally, I found this amusing There's an old Irish word meaning "thief" Quite charmingly handy and brief. With no word of a lie, it's spelt T O R Y Now doesn't that beggar belief? BTW, 30 % of the vote is about as good as any of the parties have at the moment. Depending on which poll you look at it's almost certainly more support than the current Govt's party. It's perfectly possible that they are in the lead http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7102006.ece

Did you look at the date of that before you posted a reply?

Many of them are branches that know you can't solve the 3 body problem. The nuclear physics part of a chemistry course is very much the trivial bits. The maths (and physics) involved in real nuclear physics is much harder. (BTW, I'm a chemist)

There are a stupidly large number of liquids. Listing them isn't a sensible option. The number of possible isomers of just the saturated hydrocarbons gets pretty big in a hurry. It gets much worse once the unsaturated compounds are added. IIRC there are about 2 dozen hydrocarbons containing 4 carbons. Then there are all the possible alcohols, aldehydes and ketones. The list isn't endless, but it's big.

I'd not use an oven for a couple of reasons- if the stuff gets hot it will spit, and CuCl2 is rather corrosive (as well as a bit toxic) Also, the reaction CuCl2 + H2O --> Cu(OH)Cl +H2O will tend to take place if you heat the stuff. You lose some of your product that way and what's left is less pure. The Cu(OH)Cl is a representation of a so called basic salt.

If (OK, that's a big if) the people vote for it can it be immoral? Isn't morality pretty much defined by the will of the community?

Richard (and I have heard the jokes already). Could be worse, my surname could be Head. Just in case you wondered, my name on this forum isn't real. Cuthbert is a character from a comic and John is just about the commonest male name for men about my age. John Cuthbert wouldn't fit in the box when I signed up so it lost a letter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bash_Street_Kids

For those with an even worse grasp of history than mine; we already did vote in the third party. They were called labour. Incidentally here are a couple of questions I keep wondering about. Re. "New labour" When were they last really "new" and were they ever really Labour? And, related to the second bit of that. Apart from the minimum wage (which I accept is important) and the abolition of VAT on tampons and sanitary towels (VAT is roughly the equivalent of sales tax for our friends across the pond), what left wing policies have the current "New Labour" government actually enacted? I did think that part-nationalising a couple of dodgy banks might count, but I figure if we really had a left wing government then we would have controlled them better in the first place. It's hard to call a policy Left wing if it is also followed by the US govt. I'm voting for the Lib Dems because, as the Tories keep saying, "It's time for a change".

Copper chloride is rather hygroscopic. Try leaving the green goo in a shallow dish (not a metal one) in a warm place and see if it dries out.

I'm not sure if you will be pleased to hear this but the reason you are having problems is that the question is impossible. Tyrosine is quite complicated so I will try to illustrate the point with something simple. Alcohol has 2 carbons, an oxygen and 6 hydrogens in it. If you connect two of the carbons together then hang the oxygen on one of them and fill up all the leftover bonds with hydrogens you will get the structure of alcohol. But if you start with the oxygen atom and put a carbon on each side of it, then (as before) fill up the rest of the molecule with hydrogens you get dimethyl ether CH3 CH2 O H vs CH3 O CH3 Since there are two perfectly reasonable compounds made from the same collection of atoms it would be impossible for your program to "know" which one to generate. In general these molecules with the same molecular formula, but different structures are called isomers. There are often a lot of them for any given formula. Incidentally, you have completely the wrong formula for tyrosine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosine

To be honest, I don't really understand the questions in the OP but I think I can answer part of one of them. "how do you regulate your own moral compass?" Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Now, I realise that's also part of lots of religions (except where they ignore it) but it also seems to me to be simple self interest. If I'm not nice to others, they probably won't be nice to me.