raivo

In my humble opinion such reaction to the methanol spill was surely an overkill. Not that this kind of spill does not need attention - it surely does - but funny thing is that university with all its educated minds is not able do deal with it and so much help from other institutions is needed. This of course is not specific to your university but is more likely modern fashion.

I do not think that some of future great discoveries can not be made by single individual without expensive lab. There is another problem though. Discoveries are very rare. Its something like winning in lottery (and you must be genius to be able to play). There is no big discovery for everyone but something like 1 for 100 000 who might be able to make one. This is if we are talking about discoveries which make you famous. If fame is not required then there is lot to be discovered. Modern science does not study everything. It tries to fill gaps in theory or to improve modern industrial processes. If one just wants to discover new methods of making something in home lab then its not that hard to discover some efficient preparations that are not known anywhere in the literature. Chances are high just because all those billion dollar labs explore completely different things.

For photographing there are special CCD modules. Even professional astronomers use them now. Good telescopes take some time to set up, they also need good weather conditions. IMO its better to buy two instruments: one relatively cheap and small which is fast and convenvenient to set up (for example 12x binoculars with wide input aperture and sturdy stand) and another - decent telescope, for photographing and precision monitoring.

Maybe network card or drivers? Years ago i had similar problem with Windows 98. All worked fine but windows crahsed always after i used internet for some time. Maybe it even rebooted itself. I can not recall what exactly i did to overcome this but it was something with network drivers or ADSL software.

As far as i know phosphoric acid will work for all common volatile acid synths but as you said, it will ruin glassware. I read from old book that oxalic acid can be used instead of sulfuric acid for such reactions. It is nonvolatile and reacts very slowly (if at all) with boiling HCL or HNO3. Yields will probably be low as oxalic acid is rather weak acid. I have not tested this myself so maybe it does not work at all.

As far as i know microscopic explorations in metallurgy are not just using microscope but mostly of preparing metal surface. If i recall correctly, metal piece is cut and polished, then etched with special reagents (some of which contain notorious HF). This makes crystal structure of metal to stand out. Processed piece of metal is studied with microscope which, indeed must be of highest quality. I think that unprocessed metal surface is not worth of viewing at more than 100x magnification because there are not that fine details. In fact 40x or even 20x should be enough to see everything that there is. Still, i am not sure, maybe someone can write more about how metallurgical microscopes are used and what magnifications are actually useful. One link for stereo microscopes (not cheapest but rather good): http://scientificsonline.com/category.asp_Q_c_E_422940_A_Stereomicroscopes You should also search for "stereo microscope" in e-bay. It just got 614 hits.

My humble opinion is that stereo microscope is best for your hobby. I do not recommend to buy video microscope if you can not test it first. Its nice to see picture in screen but it may actally show less detail than you expect. Video microscopes are very usefull only if group of people must work together with one specimen. Stereo microscopes are not only used in biology but also in field of microelectronics to inspect fine parts of printed circuit boards and also in geology. Stereo microscopes are less tiresome to use than common types and images are better to understand because of stereoscopic view. I know nothing about metallurgical microscopes.

Impact and friction make mechanical connections (batteries with rest of circuit) conduct better as oxide and dirt layers in contact surfaces will get damaged.

I'd rather agree wiht Bettina here. There is lot of insulting not because idiocy of those who ask questions but because of prejudices (or even strawmaning) of those who give answers. For example if someone tells that in his opinion particular scientific term makes false assotiations he/she may get lot of insulting because others interpret his statement as proof of not knowing science. It would not be hard to collect long list of examples of insults where victim surely is not idiot, just his statement was interpreted so that he/she can be shown as idiot. In my opinion not "idiots" should be insulted but those who maliciously behave like idiots. In perfect world one should feel very safe to ask anything that he/she does not know. Path from "not knowing" to "knowing" is much more valuable than "knowing allready". In my opinion those who always want to know more and every day learn something new are worth more than those who once, ten years ago learnt something and now still are proud with that. I have noticed this problem in other forums as well. For example good old Sciencemadness has somewhat changed in last year or so and anything that can be interpreted as idiocy will surely be thought to be. In older times this was not so. I do not want to blame moderators. I suppose they just get tired when the same simple questions are asked tens of times again and again. Still, if this problem could be solved many forums would live longer and would give more answers to the questions that people really think of.

Similar system can be designed with any microcontroller which has multicannel AD converter built in and serial port to communicate with PC. You need small program in microcontroller flash memory and another in PC to get beatiful and easily readable output (otherwise you can only save raw data with some general terminal program). Some opamp circuits are needed if output of sensors is not directly compatible with 0..5V AD converter input. It's quite common to build similar system (for example for collecting weather data) by single individual at home. Nothing complex here just long line of small things that must be done correctly to get everything working.

Encrypted passwords can not be decrypted but one can write program that takes random words and encrypts them with same one-way algorithm. If certain word gives identical result then password is not secret any more. This is only minor risk if passwords are too complex for random guessing. In my humble opinion this case is not worth very much attention especially if no other attacks will follow.

Formulas that are used to calculate exact positions of planets and moon are very long. You could also write equations for the 10 simple particles that can collide and change directions and speeds by simple laws . Suppose they are in the box and each of them has different initial speed and direction. If you want to know what are exact positions of particles after some time when, say, 1000 collisions have occured then you will get very long formula.

I, too, like Woelen's idea, especially with Martin's correction. Whois.net tells that religionsforum.net is available: