horsebox

I had a confirmed out of body experience when I was a teenager, I recommend exploring lucid dreaming because the phenomena seem to go hand in hand (I thought I was just lucid dreaming until the next morning I stumbled upon evidence that it was actually an OBE). Its not proof of an afterlife, but it is proof that consciousness can exist independent of the body, or at least that our perception can work indepedently of our 5 sensory organs.

Humans aren't the only species on this planet. Whats more confusing is how humans can be so cruel to other species. How people can be alright with enslaving and slaughtering animals when we've evolved beyond the need to eat them is a mystery to me. Its deeply wrong on so many levels. Its a mystery, but at the same time I have some understanding of the root of all evil (the ego) and its mechanisms. Its somewhat like a parasite that has infected humanity. The vast majority of people seem to be like hosts infected by this parasite, but a small minority (sociopaths/psychopaths) seem to be like empty shells controlled entirely by this parasite.

Because our knowledge is limited. Real scientists know that they don't know. However, this concept is equally extended to the bible, so without any evidence to give credibility to the bible, theres no good reason to think its a source of knowledge. My personal theory is that its a steganographic representation of something. Maybe it was written by a network of alchemists to encode knowledge deemed heretical or otherwise posed a threat to the powers that were at the time.

I've stored 40% HBr in HDPE containers for a couple of months and didn't notice any signs of reaction so HDPE has pretty good acid resistance. Teflon is better. They're just common plastics though, anyone know of specially designed plastics geared towards chemical resistance?

Nice. Do you know of any web apps that let you see one of these 3D periodic tables?

As an example, I'll use the rs33 SNP. For Europeans, A has a frequency of 0.220 and G = 0.780. Then for the genotypes: AA = 0.051, AG=0.339, GG=0.610. I would assume the genotype frequencies are a matter of statistics. Maths isn't my strong point, I can't figure out how to calculate them from the allele frequencies. Also I've seen some weird things on dbsnp like two allele frequencies A=0.50,C=0.50 adding up to AC=1.00 which makes me wonder if its even possible to calculate them with a simple mathematical formula. But if thats the case, how can they determine the allele frequencies if they're not even related to the genotype frequencies? EDIT: I checked out one of those online calculators, and they give the expected results (for AA and GG, the value is what you get when you square the allele frequencies), they don't work on these real life examples.

Yeah of course you can but you'd have to deal with insanely high temperatures to do that. A better approach may be to convert the metals into compounds 1 at a time. For example theres a technique you can use to purify nickel where you react it with carbon monoxide to form nickel tetracarbonyl which is a gas.

Dunno, why don't you mix them together, heat them up and see any copper sulphate gets formed. Is it anhydrous copper sulphate your after? Making hydrated copper sulphate is pretty easy, I just put a piece of copper metal in a beaker then add sulphuric acid and a bit of peroxide and let the acid oxidise the copper for a few hours. Is your copper oxide red or black? Copper oxide is insoluble in water whereas copper sulphate and magnesium sulphate are soluble. I bet its easy to get a 1 way metathesis reaction going. Dissolve as much magnesium sulphate in water as you can then add the copper oxide. Boil the water if you have and I bet it'll turn blue.

You could react sodium hydroxide with aluminum. Make up a saturated NaOH solution then drop some Al foil into it and watch what happens. The Al will get dissolved and will generate heat in the process so if you keep adding Al, the solution will reach 100C. You can clearly see the steam being generated. Concentrated NaOH solution is highly corrosive so be sure to handle it with great care. Also this reaction generates hydrogen gas which is flammable and not healthy to inhale. You don't need a fume hood though, just don't keep your head directly above the reaction vessel and you should be fine. To make this more interesting for your class mates, you could ignite the H gas as its generated. Unless you are reacting massive amounts of Al with NaOH at once, the flame produced will be very mild and you'll probably have to keep reigniting it. In fact, I'd say its a good idea to ignite the H gas produced because people will learn more from the demonstration. I recommend bringing a barbeque lighter cuz its safer and more convenient than using a regular lighter.

I highly recommend the book "Chemistry: The Central Science" by Brown and LeMay. Its a brilliant general chemistry book. The 1st book I bought was Chemistry For Dummies. I read it but when I got Chemistry: The Central Science I realised how crap Chemistry For Dummies is in comparison and see that I shoulda just got a proper book from the start. This goes for more specialised books too, just get a proper book and that will be all you'll ever need. For organic chem I recommend Organic Chemistry by McMurray. For Inorganic Chem I recommend Inorganic Chemistry by Shiver & Atkins. For Pharmacology I have Rang and Dales Pharmacology which is brilliant. I'm in my 3rd year of chemistry in uni and up until a few months ago I only had 2 books (the general chem and organic chem ones I mentioned). I noticed someone was selling their book collection so I decided to get a handful of books and it was one of the best investments I've ever made. Like this I read the book as my primary info source then use the internet to elaborate on concepts and fill in any gaps in my knowledge. This is a highly effective way of learning.

Don't have time to read your post but I'll answer the question in the title. When you ingest a drug orally it goes into your gastrointestinal tract. Unless the drugs target is in the GI tract, the drug needs to get absorbed into the blood stream. If you ingest a basic drug such as amphetamine then it will be protonated in the stomach because the pH in the stomach is pretty low. In other words the amphetamine gets converted into amphetamine hydrochloride by your stomach acid. Charged compounds (such as the amphetamine salt) generally don't bypass lipid membranes easily. Consequently, amphetamine hydrochloride will be much less likely to get absorbed through the stomach than amphetamine free base. This is why drug users report that taking antacids before ingesting the drug makes it more potent. Conversely if you ingest an acidic drug like GHB then low pH in the stomach means more of the drug gets absorbed because low pH will keep the GHB protonated. Taking an antacid in this case would mean more of the GHB gets converted into a salt and therefore less of it gets absorbed. To sum it up: salts are far more polar than uncharged compounds and therefore they don't mix well with lipids. Since membranes are made of lipids, polar compounds like salts can't bypass membranes easily. If a drug has a basic or acidic group then the pH will determine whether the drug is charged or not.