John Cuthber

The ammonium ion forms salts; no metals required. Under some circumstances the hydronium ion does too, H3O+ ClO4- (perchloric acid monohydrate) for example, but (unlike perchlorate) the hydroxide ion is too strong a base to co-exist with the hydronium ion. Water isn't ionic- if it were it would conduct electriciyy a whole lot better.

Are you talking about a persistence of vision effect?

"what possible reason is there for our brains juicing themselves with hormones when we realize someones lower back is dented?" One possibillity that you would need to rule out as a confounding effect is that the sight of these means you are looking at someone who isn't wearing a lot.

If you burn the "literature" they send, that will be as close as you get to "free energy" from these people.

Well, it could be straigtforward fraud but I think it's because they have made a motor that is so inefficient that practically all the voltage fed to it is being wasted as heat in the windings. By comparison the back emf (whic is never going to be big with such a slow motor) just doesn't show up. If you make a bad enough motor you can repeat this experiment. Incidentally their youtube video includes the observation that their "toroidal" windings give an external field- they shoudn't, so all they have done is prove that they cannot even wind a coil properly.

I'd try sugar or, if that turns into a sticky mess, lactose.

Actually, you can't.

There might be a difference. Some complex nitrates are explosive. The nitrate can oxidise the complexing agent. Just something to be aware of. Also, making some complexes is easier if you do it in the absense of water. I would rather try to get anhydrous TmCl3 than "Tm(NO3)3 " as an anhydrous salt.

If you add lots of HCl and boil it then you will slowly get rid of the nitrate as a mixture of things like nitrosyl chloride and chlorine. It would take a while and be messy. If you add a base like sodium hydroxide you will precipitate the Tm as Tm(OH)3. You can filter that off, wash it with water, and dissolve it in HCl to get a solution of TmCl3.

You may have noticed that CD roms used to run at the same speed as audio players but they gradually worked out ways to get them faster and faster. However, once they got to about 50 times, the stopped trying to speed them up. The limiting factor hese is that a CD will tear itself apart if you spin it much faster than that. CDs are made from polycarbonate which is fairly light and very strong. If you made them smaller you could spin them faster. I don't know what they spun up to 23 million RPM but I bet it was small. Of course, the smaller it is the lower the tangential velocity for a given rotational speed so the urther from the speed of light you get.

"uncertainty principle wouldn't come into play in this case," Oh yes it would. "Ye cannae change the laws of physics Captain"

Labeling it "synthetic" doesn't clear things up for me. I still don't understand why the fact that it was synthesised in a plant is materially different from it being synthesised in a factory. It may be horribly bad; it may be the best thing since sliced bread I don't know. But I do know that you can't pre-judge anything about that from its origins. Incidentally, plenty of things that are natural convert to methanol, then formaldehyde in the body. My favorite is whiskey though I'm also quite partial to marmalade. For what it's worth the whiskey isn't a suspect carcinogen; it's a known one. It's not the only food in that category. This is an indication of the sensitivity of our tests for carcinogenicity, rather than an indication of any real hazard. It makes sense to educate yourself of the pros and cons, not only of the food you eat, but of other things you do like exercise and smoking. For a lot of people the non nutritive sweetners are a boon. What doesn't make any sense is to discriminate on the basis of something's suposed "natural" origin.

I have an anti-gravity device (in the sense used here). It's called a table. Even though there's a whole planet's worth of gravity trying to pull stuff down, the table holds it up.

Another possibility is that you missed the humour in mine.

Not my field, but I thought part of the reason for spinning bullets was to stop them tumbling. Tumbling would mess up a curved trajectory.

Jocelyn Bell Burnell is president of the IOP, but not of physics. "...then it probably is a duck. But ducks don't recognize their own reflections." Is that why people think that ducks's quacks don't echo?

I have always wanted a half decent excuse to ask this. How long is a piece of string? Actually I tend to agree with emcellhannon I blame the skewer. Are you in a position to repeat this with, for example, a pencil?

I just love the idea that there's a "President of physics". Anyway, might it be better to just refer those people to whom it applies to this thread? You know, a nice helpful post saying "An idea like yours has been discussed here." and a link. Now all I need to do is work out a suitable term, a bit like "Rickrolling", for it.

Which of Emlsley's books are you on about and what, exactly, does it say about the isotopes? It seems odd to me that a respected author can't count isotopes properly so my guess is that he has provided a list of the majotr ones or some such.

The diamagnetism of Bi is pretty small. Some rust mixed into it might give a product that was paramagnetic overall. It is possible to make non-crystaline metals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal but it usually takes some serious deliberate effort.

How did you get it amorphous? That's usually a real pig of a problem with metals.

I'm particularly amused by the one which says "videos are not available in your country".

Soda glass isn't ideal but it will do the job. The stuff in chemistry sets is probably soda glass.

Still blocked I'm afraid, but thanks for trying

OK, so you didn't say it was natural; you just said it wasn't like the artificial ones. I still wonder why you make the distinction.