apathy

are you talking about photosynthesis (carbon fixation) and nitrogen fixation in plants and bacteria, respectively? and the possibilty of artificially duplicating them? these are tough nuts to crack, don't worry, folks are working on them. http://www.honors.sbc.edu/HJSpecial_Iss04/NCrowder.htm reducing CO2 is tough: a typical way to take it to CO is the water-gas-shift, which can go either way depending on the catalyst H20 + CO <-> H2 + CO2 actually, a typical way to start building up organic compounds starts with coal (or nat. gas) that can be converted with air and steam to "syn gas" (synthesis gas) which is pretty much 1:1 CO/H2. This is can be converted to alcohols and even alkanes, etc. by Fischer-Tropsch reactions. Ah! HERE is a nice description. reducing N2 is even tougher both take a lot of energy, N2 taking more (look up- Haber process) ANYWAY, i hope i cleared up ... uh something

sounds like you burned (carbonized) it, but not fully to just black C. I think it sounds like a good idea to let it settle over a few days. I think what you did is similar to slightly burning sauce in a pan. There is no one solute, but most likely a mixture of different sized carbon particles. They could be so small as to stay in solution though (colloid). All just guessing. Run a TLC

That is a tough one. They are so similar. I would go with Science though. Nature has now divided up it's load into various spin-offs, Nature Materials, Biotech, etc. Science tends to accept papers from more disciplines than Nature, and they have Editor's choice, which refers the reader to certain going's on in other, more specific, journals. Science tends to have more astronomy and engineering on average and Nature tends to have more geology and biology. But the differences are very slight. They are both really biology-laden. I actually can't comment on any difference in writing quality. Hmm, now I can't decide. They both make such excellent toilet reading!

Most of this is copied from another thread. Whenever someone brings up the "entropy argument" in the debate over Creation vs. Evolution, they are announcing "I do not understand basic thermodynamics!" and "I am new to the Creation vs. Evolution debate and would like to be schooled!" For the lay folk, some sites about entropy that aim to clear up confusion: http://www.entropysite.com http://www.entropysite.com/students_approach.html This site has nothing to do with c vs. e, but is the result of frustration stemming from people's confusion of entropy and "disorder." This is the result of undergrad textbooks attempts to "simplify" the concept, but are only adding confusion to it.

Oh, the entropy thing is the most tired argument. Whenever someone brings it up they are announcing "I do not understand basic thermodynamics!" and "I am new to the Creation vs. Evolution debate and would like to be schooled!" For the lay folk, some sites about entropy that aim to clear up confusion: http://www.entropysite.com http://www.entropysite.com/students_approach.html This site has nothing to do with c vs. e, but is the result of frustration stemming from people's confusion of entropy and "disorder." This is the result of undergrad textbooks attempts to "simplify" the concept, but only adding confusion to it.

what language is that? czech? hungarian? o wait, russian, but with western letters? belarussian?

radical polymerization just means that the propagation mechanism proceeded through a radical, and radicals are notorious for kicking off chain reactions (like polymerizations) well, if you mean by "what chemicals are used..." what agent initiated the radical chain reaction then that would be anything that could be classified as a "radical initiator" common ones are usually peroxides or nitriles "addition polymerization" is a more general term that can include radical polymerization, but i think the term refers to what we think of when we say the word "polymerization" really, it seems though, that you are trying to teach yourself a course in polymer chemistry and it would be easier to search for info through google or something, or just go check out some books Cheers!

also, during evolution, things don't change by themselves. the whole organism is a sophisticated concert of mechanisms. change one thing by a little, and you might change something else a lot. by breeding foxes for tameness, a few other things started to change, as the foxes got more and more tame, generation by generation, they started to look differently, and act differently besides the tameness, they started barking like dogs! http://www.exn.ca/Templates/Story.cfm?ID=1999033055 http://home.wlu.edu/~blackmerh/jsk/canid.htm eh, just google "fox breeding tameness" You can't just argue, how did this small piece evolve step by step?

The "entropy" in Information Theory has jack squat to do with the "entropy" of Thermodynamics. Maybe in analogy only. If you want to use the 2nd Law as an argument against ToE, then you had better well understand what it says. If you can't pass this elementary test on the 2nd Law you have no place basing any arguments on its violation. http://home.houston.rr.com/bybayouu/Thermo_test.html No one wants to discuss a new theory because we are comfortable with the working one. Where is a viable alternative. Also, we keep forgetting that ToE has jack squat to say about the ORIGINS or life, it merely deals with how it changes over time.

oh, by the way, you must inform your friend that the theory of evolution, at least from a biological perspective does not address the ORIGIN of life, merely the way it changes over time

This quote is pure doo doo. If the conditions were "extremely impossible" how did they create them in the lab. Also, if something is impossible, how can it be "extremely" so? Amino acids are NOT destroyed instantly in water! what the hey? We wouldn't be here if they did. Every free amino acid in every living thing is in intimate contact with water ( the ones on the interior sections of a protein aren't.) I don't know what he is trying to say about left-handed aa's "matching up" with right handed aa's. If he means that there were both enantiomers hanging around and that they had to form a peptide with only aa's of the same handedness, then that is just cookoo. I don't have time or energy to explain it here, but tell him to look up how the handedness in life came about. All amino acids that we use are L (except glycine) and all the sugars we use are D. But these are a direct consequence of each other. (google time). This guy is arguing from the ID perspective. It's tough to get these folks to see straight but maybe go here: http://www.4forums.com there is a whole panel devoted to this very topic you will find many helpful "evolutionists"

so you are trying to make artificial muscle, eh? usually conductive polymers like polythiophenes, polypyrroles or polyanilines are concocted in such a way, layers and whatnot to bring about electrochemical actuation i sci-findered a few references if you have acess: Synthetic Metals, 102(1-3), 1317-1318. Sensors and Actuators, B: Chemical, B99(2-3), 525-531. Sensors and Actuators, B: Chemical, B96(1-2), 152-156. Cheers!

ah! that sort of thing happens when someone knows a little about a lot sorry if the polymerization reaction was catalyzed then the catalyst will sometimes affect what groups are at the "head" of the growing polymer chain. but there are so many types of polymerization reactions that it would depend on the reaction, is it a polyester? was it a radical polymerization? cationic or anionic? etc i think the most common way to make low-grade polyethylene is by radical polymerization, which needs a radical initiator, this initiator will be sitting at the head of the polymer, then depending on what mechanism brought about the termination of the chain growth, that will determine the end group if the radical was quenched by a combination of two polymer end groups coming together, i guess that would put the initiator at both ends if it was quenched by disproprtionation, there will be some end groups that are single bonded and some that are still double bonded. but that's just for that type of reaction, again, there are many more

a "phenyl" group is a benzene ring bonded to something, but really a phenyl group is C6H5 and benzene is C6H6 the chemical name for polystyrene is polystyrene If you want a more IUPAC-y name, maybe poly(ethenylbenzene) or poly(vinyl benzene), but everyone knows it as good ole polystyrene

well, the brown stuff is burnt (from the roasting) sugars and pigments, etc. in the coffee beans and has nothing to do with caffeine (which is colorless). I'm think the brown stuff is where all the yummy coffee flavor is, so I don't think you want to get rid of it. You may be able to teflon coat your teeth!

that's exactly it the s and p orbitals of carbon are relatively close in energy it isn't so tough for them to hybridize in Si, the 3p orbitals are higher energy and more diffuse than carbons 2p orbitals this (and the 1/2 filled octet) is mainly why carbon can form chains and "nets" as they were called earlier silicon can form chains sometimes, like in polysilanes but the Si-Si bonds (226 kJ/mol) are weaker than the C-C bonds (348 kJ/mol) as a side note on polysilanes, they typically exhibit delocalized sigma bonds alongthe backbone, this is weird because most delocalized orbitals are pi, but the sigma orbitals in Si-Si chains are diffuse enough to overlap and cause some delocalization Edit: Came across this a second time and would like to add that I did not mean to imply that the s and p orbitals of Si are unable to hybridize as, of course, they do.

lithium almuminum hydride sodium borohydride are the two most common metal hydride reagents that I know of when an H group is a ligand on a transition metal, it's called a hydride outright, since it's assumed that the H is usually more electronegative than most metal centers. i've seen H on some periodic tables being put up in the sky, kind of off on it's own, since it's really just a proton and an electron.

whenever you have a question like that go to: http://chemfinder.cambridgesoft.com

ah, i see this a lot. you have confused "dissociate" with "dissolve" ionic compounds will tend to dissociate to some degree or another in water into individual ions. polar covalent compounds will dissolve in water but stay intact as a single neutral molecule. solvation of polar covalent molecules by water involves dipole-dipole interactions between the polar water molecules and polar regions of the covalent molecule.

Forensics would also find the calcium oxalate crystals in the victim's kidneys.

No! don't you get it? I'm not even a physicist but this is so easy to understand. No matter where you are, light is going c. So you may be going 99.999% the speed of light (a stupendous feat) but those phtotons leaving your headlights are going c. That means c with respect to you, someone you just passed, and the folks still sitting at the starting line. All inertial reference frames will see light travelling at c. Never 2c.

OK, so the term "dynamic equilibrium" is as general as it sounds. Take the word "equilibrium" and look it up, then take the word "dynamic" and look it up, then modify the word equilibrium with the word dynamic and you now have the definition. You can apply that definition to whatever context it applies to. If you want to talk about gravity, a chemical reaction, the stock market, global politics, whatever.

salt in a boiling pot of pasta is for taste and that's about it. actually, if you put too much salt in something that is boiling, mostly rice or oatmeal, it will take longer to cook or it will be hard and not yummy, because the salt "held on" to most of the water, not allowing it to diffuse into the carbohydrates in the starchy food

It depends on the reaction. If it is a ROMP or any other type of olefin metathesis polymerization, then the head groups will consist of whatever carbene fragment was on the catalyst (ie. Grubb's Catalyst, etc.) whenever the polymer chain started growing. If the polymer chain was the first to start growing on the catalyst molecule then it's head group will be what was on the catalyst. In the case of the first generation Grubb's catalyst, it is a styrene-like carbene fragment, one of the ligands already there when you bought the catalyst in a bottle. In the case of something like acrylic acid, it will polymerize if you look at it wrong, and if it's not stabilized. It happens most rapidly in the presence of an acid (itself) or a base. Here the ends are most likely still double bonds (don't take my word for it), or could simply be hydrogenated to methyl groups (not sure). Not all polymerizations are exothermic, in the case of acrylic acid (i think), and are usually endothermic (requiring heat input), in the case of polyethylene: I think each double bond is ~600 kcal/mol and each single bond is ~350 kcal/mol but there are twice as many, so ~100 kcal/mol must be "put in." The question as to what's at the ends of the polymer chain is a good one because as most polymers go, the ends could be considered a minor component. If each polymer chain consists of only 100 units (a small polymer), the ends make up 2% of the sample, making it's characterization more difficult. I think with a little literature search, this may be cleared up though.

the carbons in the polymer chain in polystyrene are single bonds the carbons in the phenyl ring are aromatic and have a net 1.5 bond each