Gilded

First of all, sorry for my absence lately. With all this spare time I have at the moment (no school, no work) I think I've been directing too much of it to gaming rather than something constructive... say, science. Luckily, there was something that sparked my interest again. This has been bothering me for quite a while actually. While I'm not the kind of person that warms everything he can in the microwave, I sometimes warm sausages or meatballs or such. Well, today I had some meatballs in the microwave and after a few seconds of warming a sudden spark occurred between two meatballs that were right next to each other. This was clearly an electric arc, and the distinct smell of electric burning was noticed afterwards. This has happened earlier with sausages, and sometimes with vegetables. Basically it's two pieces of moist organic matter in the microwave, and for some reason the contact point between them burns up (pretty vigorously I might say). So, why does this happen? Eddy currents? During my high school physics I went from quite basic electromagnetism to theoretical physics/relativity so one might say this isn't my sharpest area. Anyhow it's most annoying, as electrically burnt food often tastes rather bad.

While some likely-sounding scenarios have been presented I'd like to think it will be something very silly that no-one will expect. Then you could at least laugh about it afterwards if there is an afterwards.

Says the second law of thermodynamics.

A silverfish. Silver scales have high bling factor and I could just live my life eating pastry crumbs off the floor during nights. Also, I could stealthily find out how many hours Phi spends daily pwning people over the internet.

I would spend the rest of my days figuring out whether Quake can be finished in under 10 minutes.

While both are used as fertilizers only the nitrate is a potent oxidizer.

Hmm apparently many conspiracy theorists believe that thermate was used at WTC... Anyway, basically the only reference to the composition of the mixture itself I've found is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermate Judging by a few other sources, it seems like it was used quite a lot in WW2 in incendiary grenades so I guess it's rather potent but ignites more easily than plain thermite.

If you have to use asbestos for something make sure you don't breathe the fibers. Having your cells poked with microscopic "needles" is rarely a good thing unless you want cancer.

1kg of Fe2O3:Al thermite, in an approximately 75:25 ratio in a steel pan, done on 31st of December. In this case, accompanied by a cheerful song known as DragonForce - Through the Fire and Flames. Btw has anyone tried mixing barium nitrate with thermite to make "thermate"? I might try it if I ever get my hands on some Ba(NO3)2.

Another substance which is relatively harmless to humans but can kill dogs is xylitol (a sugar used in some chewing gums, mints, etc.).

Nice! Apparently I missed this the first time it was posted. Can't see anything but fireflies or something now... Although I'm waiting for a dangerous animal to appear and for someone like Nigel Marven to go and catch it by its neck or something.

Grind, grind, grind. Farm, farm, farm. I wouldn't consider playing an MMO 24h straight to be so hard or tiring as playing some FPS or RTS game effectively for 24h.

Yeah, it's called "salmiakki" here. I had always wondered what crystalline ammonium chloride tastes like and a couple of weeks ago I had a few tiny crystals and I must say it's pretty strong stuff and it's understandable that it's often diluted to great degree.

Ooh, nice. ...Hope you don't mind me saying that it's a bit of a surprise move from you to tell us to nitrate something just before New Year's Eve.

Just that ammonium chloride is widely used in confectionery in Finland and Scandinavia in general... I don't usually go around tasting possibly harmful chemicals though.

I wonder if it's safe to taste ammonium bromide? It seems to be listed as more dangerous than ammonium chloride. Not that its taste probably differs much from NH4Cl.

I could go with that "stopping useless-crap-buying" thing, but I guess it'll all pay off someday when I build some sort of a doomsday weapon out of all the junk I have lying around.

The densest gas is probably sulfur hexafluoride, and the molecule is pretty big too.

I'm not sure if you could even build a rink like that without taking advantage of superconductors and/or powerful electromagnets.

Bismuth is actually dirt cheap compared to another more diamagnetic material, namely pyrolytic graphite. Bismuth isn't diamagnetic enough for a thin sheet to suffice for commercial-grade magnet levitating, but that doesn't really matter as it really doesn't cost that much.

Ahh yes, I recall you mentioning that before. Must've been a slightly painful experience... Guess the only molten metal you might have in your nose without particularly nasty consequences is gallium, I still wouldn't recommend putting it there though.

The 25g of astatine is mentioned in the new Guinness World Records too (without any mention of its extreme unstability being the reason to its scarcity). I'd like to see them list some stable element records for a change though. Anyhow, I'm happy to hear that iridium is the rarest stable one as I have a 5g pellet of it.

I'd imagine the rarest stable gas in the atmosphere would be xenon but I wonder what's the rarest stable element in the Earth's crust? Iridium? Osmium? Edit: Or now that I think of it, it certainly could be rhodium, at least if prices are anything to go by. ... Turns out iridium is the rarest stable element in seawater, apparently.

It would be remarkable though if the heavier nuclei would indeed be more stable. But wasn't there some predicted problem with the electron velocities when you go further down the table?

Hmm it suddenly occured to me that I haven't whored The Perry Bible Fellowship on SFN... at least I don't recall doing so. Anyhow, it's a great webcomic and quite possible the most ingenious one around. Ever. Updated around once a week. With very diverse and sometimes rather dark humor. Check it out at http://www.pbfcomics.com/ Also, if you've been seeing strange dreams about ancient gods awakening in underwater cities recently you might want to check out Goomi's Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom) at http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/home.html . Considering this is a science forum I'll have to mention it has occasional geometry and physics related jokes. And please, feel free to mention any web comic you feel like is so great that everyone should be forced with electrified pitchforks to read it.