John Cuthber

Lead acetate is a lot more soluble in water than lead chloride is. If you are cleaning the tarnish off copper then adding salt seems to help- I guess it's some sort of complex formation. I don't think it would help with lead.

Here's the details of what I think is one of the biggest ever built. http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/21/65/94/PDF/ajp-jphyscol197637C514.pdf

I predict that a group of people who, in the circumstances ought to say "Oh Shucks! I was wrong" will say "The scriptures have been misunderstood ; the world is meant to end on..." and will set a date at some point between, say, 2012 and 2030. I predict that I will be well and trully pissed off with the olympics because, while I understand that some people like to prove that they are, for example, the fastest runner in the world, I don't understand why they think I should care.

Thanks for letting us know. I'm sure most of have not tried either.

Just a thought. Do you plan to make the terphthalic acid into benzene by heating it with a strong alkali to decarboxylate it? If so, how do you plan to ask it not to decarboxylate the first time you heat it with molten NaOH? (I think that's what UC meant) I know that there's Kolbe's method for turning acids into hydrocarbons but unless it does some clever trick, the expected product from terphthalic acid would be some biphenyl derivative. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolbe_electrolysis

The film has been made and I guess that the cost of showing it isn't great. But if the cinema manager has 2 choices- "Creation" (which will get a few punters in) and "some crap action movie" which will get lots of punters in then he'd be a fool to screen "Creation".

I know it's not quite the same thing, but I once saw a TV show that said that they use biological washing powder to clean skeletal remains for forensic examination. Bleach will certainly kill bacteria and it may help soften up the tissue (not to mention helping get rid of any smell).

If you use a streetlamp you don't have to pay for the electricity (and a lot of streetlighting uses sodium lights - the orangy yellow ones- which show the effect very well. A handkerchief might be easier to get than pantyhose depending on your circumstances. This page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment shows roughly how it can be done with a torch bulb, some bits of cardboard and a magnifying glass. A relatively easy way to make the double slit is to get a piece of thin wire, stick it to a piece of clear glass or plastic and put two bits of black tape on either side of it so there's tape, a gap, the wire, another gap then more tape.

I'm just waiting for the dyed-in-the-wool right wingers to explain why this is a good thing.

Can anyone remember the name of the mathematician who studied number theory because he was sure the military couldn't use it? He was rather put out when they started using it to encrypt signals. As with a lot of things in science (and I don't know or care if maths is a science) today's obscure academic stuff is tomorrows everyday aplication. (This image may well be brought to you using fractal compression- 20 years ago fractals were just pretty pictures that math's geeks played with).

"Triathlon Sex." What are the 3 events? Anyway, overvigorous exercise can damp down the immune sysyem.

I take it that you can provide evidence for that assertion. In particular, I'd like to see how it applies to healthcare where the US system is much more expensive but doesn't provide a better outcome (by some measures) as other "social" systems elsewhere.

The microwave background radiation corresponds to a temperature of about 2.8K. If the sun and stars were not there that's how cold the world would end up. Many of us consider that to be quite cold.

Now I have watched the vid. I wish I hadn't bothered. With the right casting and costume "someone carrying a bucket of water up a hill" would have been much more fun to watch.

You forgot the army- never a wise move.

Well, since they oppose the things I posted earlier perhaps we shouldn't call them anything rude- just accept that they are, indeed, anti social. They should be happy enough with that.

The rules about who can do what vary from one country to another. Here in the UK I could open a lab and do clinical analysis even though I am not (by any definition) a doctor. I am an analytical chemist but, strictly speaking I don't think that matters. Anyone could set up the lab if they could do the work (if they could not do the work not then it would be fraud). I would have a very difficult time setting up a lab because people wouldn't want to trust a lab that has not got a reputation from years of work.

I can't be bothered to look at the vids. Is the bloke taking a bucket of water up a hill?

Incidentally, do those who opose "social" housing and "social" healthcare describe themselves as anti social?

In zero gravity there's no convection; if you use a gas with a poor conductivity radiation might win out. Incidentally, monatomic gases do a really bad job of radiating energy unless they are hot enough to be electronicly excited- say 10000 degrees or so. If you wait for a cloudless night and go out to look at the stars you will observe the effect of radiant cooling- it gets cold. Nothing "magical" I'm afraid. (space is very cold and the stars don't add a lot of heat, so radiant cooling is a major contributor in this case.)

If the pH is -25 then the solution contains 10^25 moles of H+ ions in a litre. That's 10^25grams or 10000000000000000000 tons of H+ in a litre. Do you think that's reasonable? I think you might be talking about a Hammet function http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammett_acidity_function

"This substance is caustic".

After 4 years research it would be better to realise that there's an upper bound to flammabillity too. "Any concentration higher than that and it can explode" OK, so lets see you make 100% methane explode.

If you are using it as a paint stripper/ cleaner it doesn't matter much if it's KOH or NaOH

The stuff has 6 exchangeable protons so it has 6 different pKa values. My guess is the pKas for this are similar to those for EDTA which are all in wiki.