Gilded

"or have a moat of something stronger than water" Yes, I can see it now. A moat of -80 Celsius methanol, constantly cooled by sprays of liquid nitrogen! That would probably attract and kill the nice hobos though.

"If it's made out of tungsten, I will not be able to bend it." It could be approx. 95% gold 5% tungsten and you'll never know it! It's a conspiracy, run for the hills and load your muskets! No, really. If you'd combine a) observing the temperature of melting b) measuring density, you'd probably be able to see if it's relatively pure gold, if you don't mind the melting part. Though usually a certificate comes with the ingots, so unless you get a suspicious 1kg gold bar for 100$ or something then you shouldn't worry too much. :F

"I maintain my vote for life already having been found on Mars by the Viking landers" People can come to all sorts of conclusions they want, but until they show me an actual, living, native Martian micro-organism, I'm not going to believe those "conclusions".

Huh? Then howcome you won't have any sodium sulphate afterwards? Or the more proper question would go: Why won't you have any sodium sulphate afterwards? Because I can't see why a displacement reaction would do something like that in this case.

"was "brain" a typo?" You jolly little bugger, you fried my Brittish humor detector. "just like smelling salt and vinegar crisps your mouth starts to water." Hey, it's Pavlov's dogs all over again; this time with humans and pr0n.

"so if you had a 50/50 mix of sodium sulphate and Copper sulphate in your electrolyte, you`de get a copper deposit, and no sodium deposit." You mean sodium (not sulphate) and copper sulphate? Or then I'm not getting something here.

"I would because I have read the list." Brilliant. It's odd that they didn't have a box to check for my clothes size for the T-shirt and the hat though, probably XXL both with all those nerds (=me) ordering the gold package.

"Buying tomorrow. From a proper shop and everything." I'm downloading it right now. With a "1Mb" connection (it doesn't really seem to be one ), just started. This might take a while... Edit: Btw, because I was temporarily insane, I went for the Collector's Edition Gold-version (cost me over 130$ with S&H + tax!). You wouldn't believe if I told what kind of crap comes with it.

Sooo... Half-Life 2 is available tomorrow (at least legally it is :> ). Anyone else going to buy it/has preordered it with Steam? I think it has had so much hype that if it sucks, some people (most likely including me) are going to smack their heads against the wall for a few months.

"Cower in fear cars!" Yipes, I thought the kangaroos are the things to watch for when you're driving a car down under. - Now now Verusamore, vanity is one of the great virtues! Or was it sins, hmmmm...

"Scientifically, why people like to watch porn??" Btw, that should probably be why SOME people like to watch porn. As there are some who don't. Some find porn to be a turn on, some don't. "Why am I a porn expert all of a sudden?" No particular reason. Except for your five-year studies and a Ph. D. in pornology at Cambridge! We're on to you!

Yum yum, a Big Crunch. In a book, I think it was stated that it's about 35 billion years after the Bang when the universe goes *crunch*. Don't know if that's complete bulls*** though, as it was a geography book.

An interesting question indeed. Probably has something to do with voyeurism (if we're talking about actually watching two, or more people having sex). I think we're gonna need an expert to clarify this more, though. Now where's Sayonara³ when you need him?

"how about our Car being trashed 5 times in that last 2 years whilst parked up outside?" Oh boy... I promise that if I ever win the lottery (or Nobel prize ) I'm gonna get a moat and an electric fence built for you.

"i know somebody who accidently almost killed himself with caffeine. he twitched and could not sleep for days" Rofl. Saw an auction @ eBay for 450g of pure caffeine, that should do it.

""eureka" alos a great science museum in the UK." We got one here too. It's called "Heureka" here. "W 184 and 74. Au 197 and 79." Gee, we're not talking atomic masses here are we? If the case would be like you pointed out, then why is osmium more dense than, let's say, lead? Edit: "apparently he wasn`t wearing any clothes at the time either" Yeah, it's told that he ran out of the spa (or the place where you could take a bath anyway), in his very birthday suit.

"too many people are scared that buying a little HCL will have the bomb squad round" I'm actually starting to think Finland is the promised country of garage chemists, since the police force has their hands full of drunken teens and the higher authorities are used only in extreme cases, such as serious hostage situations. And of course in the case you're very paranoid about these things, you might want to figure out a gooood reason for ordering such materials, if someone asks. FBI: Now where do you need that 98% nitric acid, formaldehyde and ammonia for? You: I'm... err, making drain cleaner! Edit: "(they got the wrong address and I`m minus a propper front Door still)" Man, you got a tough life! Your shed being robbed all the time, and the police... neither side of the law is there for you.

"using both of these you can work out it`s purity, as gold has a given weight per CM^3" Are you aware that both gold and tungsten have 19.3g/cm^3 theoretical density?

Rofl, Pu. I'd like to get a sample (a couple of atoms or so :> ), too bad it seems that the natural mineral where plutonium occurs is a uranium-containing allanite, which doesn't come by too often. :<

"where do you get toluene???" I thought you can get toluene from just about any of those bigger paint stores? Or is that some sort of mix instead of pure toluene?

"I dont need anything fancy, just HCL, H2SO4" I'd call high conc. HCl or H2SO4 quite fancy. http://www.labpakchemicals.com/ is a good choice (depending where you're from of course). They have a minimum 50£ order though, but they say they have "secure" ordering, so no one should wonder why you're purchasing 50£ worth of suspicious chemicals. Or, you might end up having the nice men from the police at your door the day after your order. Someone should try ordering from them and tell how it went.

"blue I`ve never heard" Me neither. Perhaps bud means black P, which is sometimes called violet P.

Hmmh. Isn't it hydrogen peroxide, some sort of dye, and... err, I got to look this up. I bet bud knows better. Edit: Aha! "The chemicals used to create this reaction in glow sticks are usually hydrogen peroxide and a mixture of phenyl oxalate ester and the fluorescent dye that gives the glow stick its color. The hydrogen peroxide is contained in a small glass tube that floats within the mixture inside the plastic glow stick. This is why you must bend a glow stick to make it start glowing. When the stick bends, the glass vial breaks, the hydrogen peroxide is released, the chemical reaction begins and you get the distinctive glow." (Taken from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-glow-sticks.htm ) Edit2: So we come to the conclusion, that you could probably make a glow stick yourself rather easily.

Ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, eh? You could make a nice Kine-Pak-style explosive with ammonium nitrate and nitromethane, with aluminum powder if you wish. But please don't.

"Heh. Because I like having two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, and erm........... another special appendage." Yeah, I'd like to keep my... nose too. "It will also be pretty easy to tell if its real 24 karat gold based upon the density." Not really, it could just be a block of tungsten plated with gold. Of course, bending the metal is something you might want to try to test if it's solid gold, just don't bend it too much. And if nothing else works, sneak into your local university and use their mass spectrometer. :>