John Cuthber

"its difficult to decide what an animals brain can do when its completely different from ours. maybe they are communicating on a very high level and we cant tell because they are doing it with a part of their brain that we dont have. they could be more intelligent than we realize since we dont understand how they work." Not really, we can still see if they can count or recognise themself in a mirror or remember where their food was. It doesn't matter how the brain is made.

"One thing that does concern me, though, is octopi; they're clearly capable of advanced learning and problem solving, but their brain is massively different from ours. How would one even make a meaningful comparison between the two?" Well, if they can tell me that then I accept I shouldn't eat them. Actually, I didn't think much of squid when I tried it (a bit like eating rubber bands) so I won't bother with octopus. Seriously, does it matter what their brains are like. It's what they can do with them that matters.

Tater, a quick hint for you, where exactly did you imagine the chlorine atom in the middle of a perchlorate would come from if you electrolysed NaNO3 and KNO4 (whatever the hell that is)? BTW while I'm quite happy to spell, for example, oxidise with a z ie oxidize, I get upset about "electrolyze" and "hydrolyze". It's not "just a matter of opinion". It's plain wrong. The words are derived from lysis meaning to split. To make an oxide is to oxidi(s/z)e. "Electrolyze" only makes sense if you think you are making an "electrol".

OK, fair enough, what's your idea and we will see if we can confirm it.

Just in case anyone takes any of the post above seriously, nickel carbonyl is really rather bad for you.

I'm paranoid enough that I'd include an anti suck back trap. Not least because I suspect this is a homework question. I have neutralised 50% NaOH solution with conc sulphuric but I wouldn't want to do it by accident (and I don't really reccomend it).

"Chimps certainly do have a sense of self; I can't see anyone saying there's room in a cockroach brain for that sort of abstract thinking. Looked at politicians lately?" JohnB I sympathise with you for having to put up with the opportunity to chose which bunch of liars get in next time, but that's no reason to insult the chimps and cockroaches. (BTW, the set with no members is, I understand, very important in mathematics. I think the fact that all null sets are the same means there's only one "empty set" and mathematicians then use that as the definition of "1"; the rest of us know what "1" is; it's half of "2")

Well, I guess you could go with finely powdered tungsten in starch/water. Why do you want to know?

Thanks for the link but you are the third person to point out the problem with that theory.

Er, is it clear that chickens experience emotions? Chickens are pretty near brainless anyway. The problem is that if we created an animal, say a chicken, that was completely brainless it wouldn't know how to feed itself. As soon as we give it enough brains to peck grain, someone will say "It is doing that because it feels hunger- it must be consious". The problem, from my point of view, is that many people anthropomorphise animal behaviour and presume that (here's a nice emotive example) because an injured dog barks and whines, it must feel pain. A long time ago when I was at school someone made a computerised robot that trundled round the floor- it had sensors that detected when it hit something and it backed off and turned. I also had a computer and it had a speech synthesis chip connected to it. We connected the 2 computers together- now, when it hit something it said "Ouch!" and backed away. It said ouch but did it really feel pain? Dogs spend enough time humping their owners' legs to prove that they certainly don't know they are dogs, I question whether they have a sense of self. If a dog doesn't have an understanding that it is an individual then how can it think "I am in pain"- there isn't an "I" to think that. OK, I realise that not everyone will agree about dogs not being self aware. There's room for experiment and debate on that question. Chimps certainly do have a sense of self; I can't see anyone saying there's room in a cockroach brain for that sort of abstract thinking. I have no problem with eating animals that don't know they are alive and cannot understand death. As a matter of principle I think farm animals should be well cared for- not because they are sentient, but because we are, We have a choice in the matter and it demeans us not to look after our prospective dinners.

With the belt moving backwards fast enough there would be more frictional force pulling the plane back (by its wheels) than thrust from the engines. It wouldn't move forwards so it wouldn't generate any lift. However, as I said earlier, with the belt runing that fast it would drag enough air past the wings to generate lift anyway.

"And there have been fusion reactors for decades." There is at least some evidence that one particular fusion reactor has been running for at least something like 4.5 billion years. It's about 93 million miles away. BTW, the site linked in the original post now gives a reasonable idea of fusion.

Dividing a line segment into any number of parts is simple enough. Trisecting an angle isn't.

If this experiment had worked and produced fusion as they said it did then the neutron flux released by the reaction would have killed them. They are still alive therefore they didn't do cold fusion. Is there anything more to say on this once we have established that it simply never worked?

Interesting idea. I think thatif you maded SiCl bonds they would hydrolyse as soon as you took the stuff into suspension in water. It would be interesting to reduce a gold salt in the presence of some nanoparticulate silica and see if the Au "plated" out onto the surface. I think that converting the "SiOH" to "SiSH" might help. Not sure about that but peopele seem to use thiols for putting monolayers onto gold electrodes (and I'm not sure how you would do it anyway).

Well, the man made ones are horribly expensive and they are radioactive (but so are some natural elements).

"Actually Honey contains no sugar (may be a little, i am not sure)" That's a matter of definition. Honey contains about 1% sucrose (ordinary cane or beet sugar) but, if you accept that glucose and fructose are sugars (and I think most people would), then it's about 75% "sugar". I don't think grain crops atract bees, but the other flowering crops are often sprayed and the chemicals get into the honey. Since the quantities of these residues are low in the fruits etc that are being grown it's not unreasonable to hope that the levels of residual pesticides in the honey are also low.

It's probably worth adding that the carbon rods are still there in perfect working order after the battery is flat so if you know someone who uses these batteries the carbons are free. BTW, my point was not that pure water is particularly useful as a conductor but that what was put forward as a "fact" simply wasn't true. I doubt that he was using ultrapure water and ensuring that the air didn't add CO2 to it so I don't think talking about 50MV is relevant. It also fails to account for the area of the electrodes as well as their separation. Even then there would still be the fact the the insulation of the water would break down at that sort of voltage (or anything close to it).

That's not absorbtion or emision. That's internal transfer and happens later.

There are many different definitions of spam. At least in this case it is well written and properly targeted- we are a group who might want to hear about the GM debate. Also, to be strictly fair, just because he's paid by monsanto doesn't mean that it's advertising- very few of us are going to go out and by GM tomato seeds as a result of his posting. To me it seems patronising to ignore the opinions of the farmers concerned just because we heard of them from a (possibly) biassed source.

The simple answer is that you could probably get away with it. Most people commit crimes for a reason and that fact makes things much easier for the police. They just start by working out who wanted the victim dead. If you killed an unknown stranger for no real reason then, unless they were lucky (and, BTW, has anyone noticed that on CSI they are always lucky and the perpetrator always leaves a single hair behind? He's never shedding like a mangy cat) the police wouldn't know where to start. This idea was used as the basis for a murder story "strangers on a train" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_on_a_Train where 2 people agree to commit murder for the other one. neither has a motive for the killing he undertakes. It turns out not to be that simple. On the other hand, in my experience, it's much easier to get away with murder if it looks like an accident or a suicide. If the police don't think there's a murder they don't look too hard at who might have committed it. (And I was joking about "in my experience")

I did that experiment when I was at school. We used rock wool, the stuff used for insulating roofs and such. Alumina would probably work too. This page might help you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_wool

Initially, NaOH at the cathode and chlorine at the anode. the NaOH diffuses across and then reacts with the Cl2 to give NaClO. This can also get oxidised to NaClO3 etc. Of course, all this presumes that your electrodes are inert. Overall you get quite a mixture, but no sodium. You can make sodium by electrolysisng molten NaOH but I don't recommend doing that at home and the yield isn't very impressive because the stuff tends to catch fire as soon as you make it.

I'd rather not go to KFC if you don't mind.

In the case of Mg(ClO4)2 it might lead to the destruction of the H2Se, the equipment and significant bits of the lab and experimenter. Silica gel or CaSO4 might work, but there would probably be some absorbtion which would be more than a little troublesome when you came to reuse the drying agent.