CaptainPanic

Nice. Can you also use your method to balance: [ce]x C6H12O6 -> a C13H24O4 + b H2O + c CO2[/ce] Personally, I generally use Gaussian elimination to solve the stoichiometry of an equation... that always works (although depending on how you solve it, you may find some nasty fractions, rather than integers).

You cannot break a line. You can only redirect it. Placing a ferromagnetic thingy will only move the line somewhere else, but it won't break it.

ROFL!!! The 1st reponse to the new updated anti-spam rules is a spam message. Classic. Can we keep it (of course without the 4 commercial links)? [edit] Maybe an on-topic remark is good for the thread: I totally agree with the new hazardous materials rule - in this time and age, it is the right thing to do. I hope that the entire world will relax over the coming years, so it is once again possible to just openly talk about dangerous things without being suspected of criminal or terrorist activities. But this is 2011 and that rule is necessary.

A magnet has two ends, north and south... and the field lines will curve, and some of them will certainly be pointing up as well. by the time you enter the area with the field lines pointing down, you will certainly have crossed some lines pointing in the wrong direction already. Do yourself a favor, and make a drawing first. I get the idea that you don't get the field lines of the magnets right, so make sure to show that to someone who can point out your error. It might save you some time. On the other hand, building something is always good... and whether it works or not, will be a nice lesson, and probably good fun. Good luck!

There's a difference between a bucket of water, and a running tap. One is a limited amount of water, the other is a flow (continuous, and indefinite). Are you sure it's like a running tap? Maybe you care to explain your analogy of the magnet being like a running tap? Where does a magnet get continuously fresh energy, or fresh something else from? A running tap gets new water all the time, and that water is being pushed into the water system by pumps at the treatment facility. Where does the magnet get something new from? As far as I see it, a magnet is a static object, and unless something else acts in its surroundings, it will not do anything. It's not 'running'... but maybe you care to explain, so that we can figure out what you don't understand. Yep, I'm inviting you to make a mistake - all with the purpose of learning, so don't worry, we won't bite (hard).

If you need to climb to the top of a mountain, then you can do this the long way using a long and scenic winding road, or in a ski lift, or if you like, but helicopter or catapult... but in the end, you still end up on the top of the mountain, and your potential energy will have increased by exactly the same amount (of course, we're assuming you started in the same place). It is true that the methods to get to the top might waste more or less energy (that's the 'friction'). But the thermodynamic result is exactly the same. So, you might use a ferromagnetic shield... but as soon as the moving magnet gets into the field of the other magnet, it will still need to overcome the same repulsion (although, along a shorter path). What you're suggesting is that it would take less increase in potential energy if you climb a mountain from the steep side, and more if you take the easy side, but in fact it is the same.

You've fallen for the trap of making your contraption complicated enough that you don't understand why it doesn't work I've done the same many times (that's just another way of saying that there's no shame in doing that). See if you can make an energy balance. What has how much energy during 1 revolution of that wheel? (Choose several logical positions of the wheel where stuff is about to happen, and right after it happened). Make sure to describe everything... If more energy comes into your system, make sure to describe where it came from. And what got you the energy to first push the magnets into that unfavorable position? If the force of the field is strong enough to move the whole contraption, then there is a chance that the arms wouldn't fall into that field at all... but instead, the static and moving magnets would be repelled so strongly to make them hover somewhere halfway. Well, you need to put in an equal amount of work to push those magnets into that field as you will get out when they push themselves out. Likewise, you put in an equal amount of work to move something up against gravity as you get out when it comes back down. To make the geometry more complicated only moves the problem around, but won't change the fundamental issue that you need to spend energy to push similar poles of magnets towards each other, so you can get out the same (or actually a little bit less). There is no input of energy. You lose a little to all kinds of frictions, and that's it. There is a way around this problem... you can use electromagnets, which you can turn on and off when you like. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called the electromotor

Water in a water wheel falls down, loses potential energy, and some of that potential energy becomes kinetic energy in the wheel. The kinetic energy can then for example turn a generator making electric energy. In a magnet, it costs energy to make something move towards a magnet, or to remove it from it. To move a magnet in a magnetic field takes energy... this is similar to the potential energy. For the time being, I'll just call it 'potential energy' as well. But the crucial difference between magnets and water is that you have a continuous supply of water, which is always falling down. Mother nature provides rain (through evaporation powered by the sun's nuclear fusion reactions). If you have a continuous supply of fresh magnets which always "fall down" towards the opposite poles in the right orientation, then you can extract that 'potential energy'. But if you have only a couple of magnets, then this will stop as soon as they are in their lowest energy position. Similarly, if you have a limited amount of water, then a water wheel is rather pointless. Once all the water is down, it stops.

All I am saying is that we cannot model the entire universe in all its details, because we (and our theoretical model) live within the system boundaries... and building the model would change the model. That leaves only 2 choices: either change the system boundaries, or change the level of detail.

At the 1st iteration, you have the universe, and you model it. But then you must add the model to your model, so you have the universe + 1 model in the model. But then you must add the model again, because that wasn't in the model yet, so you get the universe + 2 models in the model. But then you must add the model again, because that wasn't in the model yet, so you get the universe + 3 models in the model. But then you must add the model again, because that wasn't in the model yet, so you get the universe + 4 models in the model. But then you must add the model again, because that wasn't in the model yet, so you get the universe + 5 models in the model. etc. Usually, at this point an IT expert steps in to tell me that my model is unnecessarily clumsy and slow, and that I can model the same thing with 100x less processor time. Whatever

As ewmon wrote (post #8) In the past, the rights of people went up and down. In times of crisis, people gladly give up their rights for a sense of security. Terrorism will always exist (it always has existed), and our leaders have found a way to scare us with it. Again. And that's the core of the problem. It's brilliant, actually: we're scared of a rather insignificant threat (terrorism really doesn't kill as many people as many diseases, or as traffic, both of which also kill at random). But this idea is also as old as Rome. I see only 1 way out of this problem: we must understand the significance of the threats that are facing us. We may hope for an objective leader after the next elections, but we cannot reasonably expect that each and every leader is objective and wants the best for the country. We must expect that at some point, an idiot will take power, and will want to "whip the citizenry into a patriotic fever" (to quote old Julius Caesar). I fear that education is the only weapon against such crazy leaders... and we're a long way off from a citizenry that is (on average) sufficiently educated to think for itself individually.

In any solid material, the atoms of the material are still bonded to each other, and if you want to cut through this, you need to separate those bonds. The only advantage of a very sharp edge is that you don't need to physically move atoms right under the edge. You still need to sever countless ionic or covalent bonds. And it would be a competition between the bond strength of the carbon atoms at the edge of the sword, or the silicon, oxygen, iron, carbon or whatever atoms of the material you try to cut through. And as I said, I expect the atoms of a diamond sword at the 1-atom wide edge to be bonded weaker than those in the middle of the lattice. But perhaps someone else would like to comment on that? The theoretical minimum energy required to cut something is the enthalpy of reaction of the breakage of all those bonds in the lattice. But I don't know exactly what happens at the atomic scale of a fraacture when you break a rock...

Reminds me of a Discworld novel where death himself sharpens his scythe with ever increasingly soft materials to get the edge that much sharper. First a stone, then with a cloth, and finally it sharpens it with the air itself. lol. What I'm wondering is how the bonds of the atoms at an edge of a diamond lattice would look. Normally, atoms in the middle of the structure are surrounded by 4 other atoms in a tetraeder. But at the edge, there are only 2 or 3, as you can see in any picture of a diamond lattice. So, where do the excess electrons go? Surely, it's not a radical with free electrons, is it? I think it's more likely that a single atom thick edge is possible with a metal, which shares its electrons regardless of the position of the atom in the lattice. Regarding all other practical problems: Humans are able to make 45 nm large features in computer-chip technology. Manufacturers are even looking (or already working with) 22 nm or even 11 nm technology. 11 nm is only about 100 atoms wide. Scaling it to 1 atom would, I believe, be in the realm of possibilities... if it is chemically stable, then I guess we'll eventually be able to make it. But you surely won't achieve that with sharpening it. And I am not sure diamond is the right material.

SSDS, Did it occur to you that you do not get any response because we all still don't understand what you are talking about? You need to order your texts better. It's possible that you have a good message, but we cannot follow it. I urge you to focus more on the text. It is very important that you spend a lot of time thinking about the science, but there comes a point where you have to think: "what message do I want to tell the other people". You cannot tell us everything. We simply don't have the time. You should think about the core of the message, and tell us that first. Then explain the rest, piece by piece. Right now you remind me of one of my teachers at uni, who would teach us for 1 semester, who never get any questions, and who was then surprised we all failed the exam. We never had any questions because we understood so little about what he was talking about that we were not able to ask a good question. I hope you are not offended by this. I try to help.

For all of us non-US-citizens, could you please provide some links so that we can read up on this shocking news?

But hitting the funny bone has an element of humor in it, and you're more attractive when you smile, thus more likely to attract a mate. Hurting your funny bone is probably evolution being sarcastic. (Ok, this wasn't a serious reply - just an attempt at being funny).

I've also invented a gravity engine. I sat down under a tree, and waited for an apple to fall onto my head. I did not put in any energy to get the apple up in the tree, yet it somehow managed to gain enough kinetic energy to cause me a serious bump on the head when it came back down again. This is an attempt at a joke, and deliberately contains mistakes.

And I guess you mean the bone (Patella), and not the plastic padded protection that skaters and other extreme sports people use... According to wikipedia (unfortunately, the English wiki is rather short, the Dutch one has better explanations), the patella functions to: 1. Optimize the leverage of the tendons. Because the patella keeps the tendons further away from the actual joint, you get a larger leverage. 2. Slowing down forward motion. (I admit I don't understand this one myself). 3. Protection of the knee joint. And why not in the elbow? I guess all these things are more important in the hind legs of mammals. Hind legs are in almost all mammals far stronger, so the leverage is a major advantage especially in the hind legs.

No.

Simplest diet? I'm guessing: Bread and water? Bread contains quite a few components, but even the simplest form of bread (using only grain and water) can sustain you for quite a while.

I suggest we don't respond anymore, while we await the response to hypervalent_iodine's question. Some derivative of a drug is not something you make as a hobby... and if you're in research of organic chemistry or working at a pharmaceuticals company (both valid reasons to work on this), then you shouldn't have to ask these kinds of questions on a forum on the internet. But there may be another valid reason that I hadn't thought of.

You have opened another thread on steering already. The advice everybody gave you is to seek professional help (ok, that sounds wrong... I mean professional mechanics, lol). Cars already have quite perfect steering - just copy that, or better: have someone else built something standard for you. Much safer, and probably much better. If you want to have a racing team (you said that in the other thread), step 1 is to get a good mechanic into the team! Anyway, if you insist to build it yourself (I really hope you're working with Lego and not on a real car), here's something that took me only 1 minute to Google. And here's some more. It's a picture of Davis steering and Ackermann steering, complete with angles and formulas. Should be sufficient to work out the rest yourself.

I am not sure I understand what you're talking about... so if the 2 questions below sound silly, please correct me. But the way I understand your post above, I have to ask this: 1. Why would refraction be different from reflection, apart from the fact that the angle of the outgoing photons is different? 2. And are you seriously claiming here that you can somehow gain more than 100% energy from a light source by using refraction at a tiny scale?

What you mean to say is that you can make a simulation of everything. True. And if you would simulate everything in huge detail, this particular simulation would be indistinguishable from reality. But that's not possible, because you would need to simulate the simulation too, opening a loop that will not converge.

I am not familiar with the "catch me if you can" model... but it sounds to me that it is ultimately just another way to describe exactly the same balance of forces (gravity and the centrifugal force). I'm a chemical engineer, so not exactly the expert when it comes to orbital mechanics, but I always thought this picture (answers.com) to be correct. The centrifugal force makes the satellite want to leave orbit (and go higher), while the gravity acts as a centripetal force and balances the centrifugal force. Anyway, I think that the catch me if you can model describes the orbit from a point of view of acceleration, while the other one takes the approach of forces. But since F=m*a, and m is a constant, you can describe it using the F or the a, and it shouldn't matter much.