Cap'n Refsmmat

Chuck Norris can oxidize fluorine.

I'm not sure "easy" would be the best way to describe it. It's the hardest AP exam I've taken, and I've taken quite a few.

I think the easiest answer to this question is that nothing isn't.

The trouble isn't in competition. The problem with this scheme is that it leaves out how exactly one could make schools good. They don't automagically improve themselves when competition arises. What about a school or a teacher makes it good? You can't say "pay them more money" or "give them competition so they have to improve". You have to explain how they can improve. What can teachers do differently? That's what I try to figure out.

There are loads of AP review books. I've got the Barron's one here, although which you choose is just a matter of personal preference. (I didn't use mine much, so I don't really know how good it is.) Go down to the local bookstore and wander around the exam prep section. There are usually some AP review books there. You can look through them and see which one looks the best.

Pretty much any measure of academic achievement you can think of. Texas was ranked 48th in the states in education recently, I believe.

Texas has no teacher unions, and it is no better than any other US state.

You're not helping much.

Education. The rise of standardized testing, and testing in general, means the focus of school has gone from learning to getting grades. School is done for the sake of doing school, not for the sake of future benefit or improvement. And I don't just mean the big assessment tests: every class I've taken seems to throw in extra tests and quizzes and assignments that have no purpose but to be another grade, not to make the students learn and benefit. If we could get out of our "let's test them until their brains melt into their torso and cause a hernia" mindset, and more into a "let's get students to learn and think" mindset, we might get somewhere.

The ideal gas law only works on gases. That means you can't use it on a bottle of water or a flask full of water. But you can use it on steam -- vaporised water. Steam is a gas, so the ideal gas law applies.

Indeed. Mind explaining your reasoning, bamdavis?

All you have to do to get something to burn is supply oxygen and heat it past the activation energy for the combustion reaction. That should be easy enough: apply a blowtorch to one corner of the block and it'll eventually melt that bit and let it catch. Ideally, the part you melted would produce enough energy to melt even more and light it, which would melt yet more, etc... although there's a chance it wouldn't produce enough energy to melt more fuel and would instead just fizzle out.

[math]\frac{x^2y^3}{3z^{-4}} = \frac{x^2y^3z^4}{3}[/math] So yes, you're right. Only the [imath]z^{-4}[/imath] moves up. Remember that [imath]3z^{-4}[/imath] is the same as [imath]3 \times z^{-4}[/imath] -- the negative exponent only applies to [imath]z[/imath], not the 3.

If you look at quantum mechanics, which explains the behavior of things at a subatomic level, there are lots of very random things that go on. (And lots of very confusing things that happen.) However, even if it's random, is it truly free will or just randomness?

Poll fixed.

I don't really care if it serves a purpose. It's just intellectual curiosity. If Coulombs are equivalent to kilograms, how would I convert from one to the other?

An even better question: How would I go about finding my mass in Coulombs?

But if you compare IQ scores across generations, you'll find that newer generations are smarter... (or, at least, they do better on IQ tests)

Because NASA faked the ISS and all the satellites. Of course.

It's set to 2. It's designed to prevent me from giving, say, Phi 42,324 reputation points in one evening to make him have the most reputation on the forum. And yeah, the first post is a bit outdated -- reputations are now totally public. We're also considering allowing negative reputation points so reputation can be used as a sort of shame system. I'd also like to make the Add Reputation button more obvious. I'll work on that.

Speaking as a current high school student, I'd like to reassure you that a significant percentage of our student population is not like what you have described. It's just that the saggy-pants people are the most plainly visible people. Oh, and people here make fun of gansta talk. Maybe it's just a regional thing. And we even have a guy who's into ska, not the modern crap. The moral of the story? You're picking on the most visible part of this generation, not the most numerous part.

I'd guess the first one would be "living." You'll find DNA in every living organism that we know of on Earth.