John Cuthber

"What does wiki say about rhetorical questions? " This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question Anyway, Vts's abillity to generate patterns qualifies him as a wallpaper designer, but not as a scientist. He also seems able to generate oddly phrased sentences that don't mean a lot like this one "I think that those who know next to nothing wouldn't be even surprised." However what he doesn't seem able to do is explain what inthe name of all that's holy the periodic table has, has had, or ever will have, to do with the properties of nuclei. Incidentally, if you look at his "new improved" version you will find the inert gas helium listed with the alkaline earth metals (Be- Ra) which shows just how radical (i.e. divorced from reallity) he's prepared to be. Perhaps the best joke is to look at the tetrahederal numbers. 1,4,10, 20, 50 etc and see if any of them actually figure in any of his results. He helpfully posts a link to his version so I had a look at it. I chose to start at the bottom with the magical group that includes the alkaline earths and an inert gas. There's a block that's 8 by 2- OK that's twice the first 2 tetrahederal numbers so that's a start. Then there's a block thats 6 by 6 with 2 stuck on the side- Oh dear- the last time I checked neither 6 nor 18 nor 19 is a tetrahederal number. (and the bit stuck on the side probably looses him his walpaper maker's license.) Things get better with the next block , it's 10 by 4. Now it's not clear to me why you had to double the first set of numbers to get tetrahederal ones- but anyway, it seems you don't need to anymore. The last block dispells the last hope, its 14 by 2. So what we are talking about here is a reworking of the periodic table that may help with finding something you seldom need to know but does this by putting at least one element in a silly place (and including 2 of the elements twice). Then it claims to be based on a tetrahederon- well bit's of it are if you squint at it in the right way. Then it says it's based on the nuclei- which is challenging because it doesn't even distinguish between isotopic nuclei. Certainly entertaining; equally certainly not science

Just a side- note for those of you accross the pond. There were a lot of local elections here on May 1st. The clear result was that Gordon Brown's "new Labour" party (no longer new and never was Labour IMHO) did badly- the worst results in something like 40 years. As a result of this he said he was going to listen more. It seems he didn't mean that he was going to act on what he heard. There's no real popular mandate for reclassifying canabis- it isn't long since they "downgraded" it. There's no scientific argument for doing so either. I can't help wondering if he's just trying to distract attention from something else.

" Believe it or not! $3.80 will renew your precious life forever. " You need to aim higher- under 4 bucks isn't enough to be taken seriously. You need to charge much more than that. OTOH, well done for your choice of bogus product. There's no way someone is going to come back after they have died and demand a refund. I thought that sort of selling scam died out with the falling market for nuclear bomb proof shelters. It seems you can't keep a good ripoff down.

The one with the largest number of non-water species (ions or molecules) present in a given volume. BTW, were you expecting answers to these questions rather than hints and why didn't you post them in the "homework" ssection of this site?

"what is the solubility of oxygen in air at 25 degrees celcius?" This question's meaningless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapeyron-Clausius_Equation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapeyron-Clausius_Equation

OK Zephir, while you are in the mood for patronising comments, perhaps you would like to explain why the addition of something that's mainly water and has no ion in common should precipitate salt from solution.

As has already been pointed out, if the only criterion for the periodic table were atomic number it would just be a string, there would be no periods. If the periods were related to the nuclei then the isotopes of an element wouldn't be in the same place. The periods reflect the filling of the electron shells. This "new" periodic table adds nothing to the old one (except, perhaps in artistic terms). Swansont, re your question "Who are the "we" to whom you refer in that last sentence?" I think the answer may be here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we

"I do not understand what point are you trying to make. " I'm making the point, repeatedly, that the nuclei do not influence the periodic table because that role falls to the electrons. "That is the fact and I can not understand your hostility towards it. If you disagree, just tell me how it is not." I have told you why it is not true and you keep ignoring the fact. That's a good way to encourage hostillity.

"What is periodic about "period" with 2 elements, that is H and He? There is no other row like that." That's a valid criticism of the name "periodic" which remains in use for historical reasons. However the reason there are 2 elements in that period is well known. There's only 1 orbital with that energy and it only has room for 2 electrons because of the exclusion principle. I'm afraid I can't answer the other question i.e. "Why Madelung rule diagram has slanted lines" because it's far from clear what it means. Anyway it cannot possibly matter. All the elements have more than one isotope. Some, like tin, have a hatfull of stable isotopes. They have different nuclei but occupy the same place in the periodic table so the periodic table is demostrably indifferent to the nuclei. Why are you still bothering to try to defend this when it's clearly nonsense?

"I think I made my point clear:" Uniquely. "Tetrahedral sphere packing explains, electron configuration, Madelung rule, Aufbau Prinzip and the nuclear Magic numbers. " No it doesn't, whereas boring old quantum mechanics does. Isoptopes hold the same position in the periodic table but have different nuclei.

"more advantages, like correct length and natural limits of the periods, for example." Last time I looked they were already the right lengths. There's already an explanation of the rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aufbau_principle The rule isn't always followed. Last time I looked, the lengths of the periods were correct anyway.

The periodic table has served well for many years. There is no clear advantage to rearanging it. It's not possible that the shape of the nuclei makes any meaningful difference to the electronic energy levels that dictate the periodic table. Telling me I have an old mind set doesn't help anyone.

My printer doesn't cope with 3d shapes like tetrahedera. That's one of the reasons I think the tetrahederal version is impractical.

"The nuclei represent the interface with chemistry" No, they still don't. The chemistry is all about the electrons. The stuff about nuclei is called "nuclear physics"; onec again, the hint is in the name.

All this speculation about the shapes of nuclei (in the face of the observed facts) is amusing enough as a pass-time- much like sudoku. On the other hand, the periodic table is related to the electrons rather than the nuclei. The periodic table is about chemistry and the chemistry of an element is related to the electrons rather than the nuclei. The classification into S,P,D, and F comes froms spectroscopic observation of the spectea (the letters, IIRC, are the initials of sharp, principle, diffuse and fine). This is plainly nothing to do with the nuclei because electronic spectroscopy deals with electrons (the clue is in the name). Accordingly; "It was recently realized that Periodic Law follows rules of the tetrahedral sphere packing and points to double tetrahedron nucleus:" now needs to be replaced buy "It was recently realized that Periodic Law follows the rules of quantium mecahnics and points to no evidence of anything to do with the nucleus:" Your version of the periodic table is pretty, but impractical. A bit like this one http://www.periodicspiral.com/

I see acid has established an early lead due to someone realising that yeasts grow well in fruit juices, but not generally in milk.

"No one has seen an atomic nucleus yet to say with confidence what it is like. " I have never seen America but I have a fair idea what it's like. Nobody has seen a single glucose molecule but it's shape is well documented. Being able to see something has very little to do with scientific knowlege. http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0034-4885/40/7/001

About the simplest nanoscale object you could get would be a grating with a spacing of about 100nm ie 0.1micron. Try putting that into this calculator with sensible values for the distance to the screen and the wavelength. http://www.ee.byu.edu/cleanroom/diffraction.phtml On the other hand, you might be able to see something of the structure with a microscope.

"It certainly would never be used for something as trivial as fueling a car. " Oh yes it was. South africa had lots of coal but they thought the people with oil were the wrong colour to do business with so they had to make their own oil. They have been doing this successfully for deacdes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasol

Argument from popularity might be a logical flaw, but it doesn't mean it's wrong. If Martell's work carried much weight in the scientific community it would be easy to show it. Since a lot of work has been done on cancer and smoking you would need to explain why this theory keeps getting ignored. Personally I think it's because Po stuck on ordinary dust (as most of it will be) would work just as well as that from smoke. Martell's paper requires it to be something like 100 tiomes more effective. "Also I don't think rads and rems are equivalent for alpha radiation." Did anyone say they were? What I pointed out was that by choosing to look at very local events you exagerate the apprent dose received. Thats' bad science - another problem with that paper. "Not exactly the most credible thing to put up against a paper that got published in Nature." A paper published in Nature generally sparks a whole lot of similar research. If it's right why isn't it mainstream? The website you cited gives a relatively much higher effect of smoking than I calculated earlier. I guess we can wait for the EPA to give a casting vote. On the other hand it says "When the tobacco is inhaled, the smoker receives a dose from the inhaled lead-210 as well as polonium-210, the decay product of lead-210. Lead-210 is deposited on the surfaces of bones and polonium-210 is deposited in the liver, kidney and spleen. ". No mention of the lungs. Even then, if the effect of smoking is to nearly double (280 vs 361 mRem) the radiation dose you receive, but the effect on lung cancer is enormously greater than that (and it is; estimates vary from about 8 to about 20) what you have is evidence that something else in smoke is responsible for most of the cancers in smokers. As I have said, it will be interesting to see what the EPA say about it.

"It was recently realized that Periodic Law follows rules of the tetrahedral sphere packing and points to double tetrahedron nucleus:" It certainly has not been recognized generally. The shapes of nuclei are known (as are the shapes of some of their excited states). Sphere's are common. Sausage shapes and pumpkin shapes happen too. They are not tetrahederal or double tetrahedra.

Very neat, but that image is produced by microscale, rather than nanoscale, printing/

It's not the weight of water that matters, it's the weight of the air, and there's a lot of that.