John Cuthber

Close the suitcase, take it to the police and hope to claim a reward as well as the satisfaction of helping reduce crime in the area. Of course, that might be bollocks, but it's what I would say I would do.

"I put the applesauce on top of the basketball and just dropped it onto a hard wood floor from about 5'. " Why?

Is that a homework question?

I still don't see how the twinkling makes a lot of odds. In the absence of an atmosphere the photons will all hit the same receptor cell. They will, therefore trigger it. You will see a bright spot. On a clear night the stars don't twinkle much- occasionally you get clear spots of air. The stars don't "go out" when this happens

To get things to supercool they need to be free from dust etc. Filtering hot liquids can be a pain in the neck but these two should be OK. Heat them to well over their melting points and filter the liquids, then leave them undisturbed (with a thermometer in them) and see if they supercool.

It may be just me but can you explain this "This is not the case on the moon, where the photons arrive effectively one at a time in a very narrow stream and hence only excite a small number of receptors. Each receptor only registers the signal for a short time so you only get a faint and largely incomplete image." As far as my eyes are concerned the stars are point sources. The light from them arrives at my eyes along a very narrow line. The moon has no atmosphere to scatter photons. A slightly larger number of photons would reach my eyes on the Moon than on Earth. The " we never went to the Moon" nutters say that the lack of stars in the background of pictures taken on the Moon proves that we weren't there. Cleverer people point out that it's just the same as on earth- you don't normally see stars in a picture where the exposure is set for daylight. If you face away from the sun and look up at the stars while on the Moon they should be just as visible as here on a dark night. The stars are just as bright (actually slightly brighter) and the background just as black (actually slightly blacker). Just as many photons (strictly, slightly more) hit the retina and, I suspect that they pretty much all hit the same receptor cell- much as they do on earth. What's the difference?

Since obesity is not a problem for dead people I think the answer to the original question is yes. On a slightly less silly note, if the gut didn't absorb the sugars in the diet then they may well get fermented by wild yeast. That would complicate matters- the alcohol would be absorbed and might even provide enough calories to keep someone alive. It wouldn't be a very healthy lifestyle- but they probably wouldn't care.

I see that this thread contains a white elephant.

Testosterone.

I think Mr Skeptic may have meant tetrodotoxin. It has side effects.

Most sugar is probably more nearly pure than the KNO3. A lot of the KNO3 will also decompose to NOx (which will oxidise more sugar, making CO2 nitrogen and water) and K2O which will react with CO2 to give K2CO3. There's a good chance of getting CO as well. Flames etc. are messy- they don't react cleanly.

Why don't you think it's right? (I'm not saying it is right, I just wonder what you are worried about.)

Some people really don't realise when they are lucky. Having said that, if there's a tsunami warning for where I live, I plan to ignore it. Roughly 300 feet above sea level and 70 miles from the coast, if the warning is real then you are not going to be able to do a lot about it.

OSHA and similar things like air crash investigation etc.

"The "stuck" orientation/motion you say you find weird and cannot understand, is actually quite common. A number of the larger moons in the solar system exhibit similar gravitational binding to our moon." Gravitational locking is perfectly commonplace and I'm familiar enough with it. What would be odd would be if the moon were "locked" to the rest of the universe, rather than rotating in it. Incidentally, because there's no atmosphere the view of the stars from the moon should be excellent. It's silly to say "Because stars are so distant, each is just a pinprick of light " they are practically as far away from Earth and they are practically pinpoints from here too. In most cases they are so small that all the light from a given star falls onto just one retinal cell; it wouldn't matter if the Earth's atmosphere were removed- they would still be points as far as the human eye is concerned. If you are on the moon you should be able to see them rise and set - albeit very slowly. Of course it would be easier on the dark side of the moon (and I mean dark, not Earth-facing)

Looks like it might be this

With that other information it looks very much like it's a typo.

I think that cobalt might be in a negative oxidation state (-1 as it happens). It would be odd with NH3 as a ligand. If the question had been about the rather better known NaCo(CO)4 what would you have said about it? Is there any more information about it in the question?

"I think the phenylalanine obtained from soda pop is dangerous." How does the body know that the stuff from soda is dangerous, but that the stuff from protein digestion isn't. Unless there's a plausible answer to that, then I think we can ignore the suggestion the phenylalanine is a significant problem (other than for those with phenylketonuria)

Mr Gosling may very well turn up in court and say "I made that story up to illustrate the moral issues". He might get done for wasting police time but, as far as I can see, there is no legal case against him. It would be different if there were any corroboration like the young man's cause of death.

The other merit of bubbling the air through water is that you can see that the gas is flowing.

We has people on the moon for a while; did they notice any stars rise and set? (come to think of it, did they leave a telescope and transmitter of some sort behind?) If not then it seems to me to be really weird that the moon is "stuck" in one orientation whereas everything else we see seems to have a spin.

"However, this isn't terribly interesting. The water-soluble salts have more or less a monopoly on all the lovely colors." I think the organic dyestuffs makers would have something to say about that. You can, if you are careful, crystallise naphthalene from methylated spirits. It's white and dull, but it does crystallise well and it's not soluble in water. Aspirin and paracetamol are other options (a bit water soluble- but not very) and easier to get than naphthalene. If you do try crystallising things from alcohol do remember that it's flammable.

So, apparently, could Lisa Simpson.

"I even see water machines that are supposed to add more oxygen to your drinking water." Actually, these machines are designed to add money to the sellers' bank accounts.