Gilded

Good haiku there Phi. I'm glad that I didn't have to bump this up again. - Elements are fun! Oh bugger, I think I ate some polonium.

"why is ethanol much more expensive then methanol i have found 500ml of ethanol for £24 and 2.5ltr of methanol for £5+" Ethanol has quite a bit of uses more than methanol, that I'd imagine is one reason. Probably something to do with the difficulty of manufacturing process too...

"Wise is the man who likes sci-fi section better than a kick in the head." -The guy next to that guy with the house next to the nice lawn No really, I'd imagine it could be quite quite fun.

"always add the acid to the water, Never the otherway around (if you want to keep your face)." There's a nice Finnish rhyme about that that involves not getting your finger blistered. With that in mind, I hopefully never do the "Hey whatta AAARGHH MY FACE!".

Why even get drunk when you can just skip your night sleep to achieve a similar effect! I wonder if they are going to force people to pay alc. tax for staying awake too long. Psychosis is also something that you might suffer if you stay awake really, really long. Luckily, I haven't experienced it. However, a talking soda machine told me so and even hit me in the head. :< I however showed him, and I even beat up his friend, the toaster, who said he was in the furniture business. Never trust anyone who's in the furniture business. They deal with PINE TABLES!

Btw, do you people have... err, return funds for plastic and glass bottles (and metal drink cans) in UK and US? The sort that you get money for when you return them. It's a great way to make some extra money, especially if you know where the local hobos go with their 24 packs of beer.

"I've learned that we are responsible for what we do, unless we are celebrities." Lol, couldn't be without thinking of a certain Finnish ex-ski-jumper (Matti Nykänen) who beats his wife (I think he's been married 5 times) and recently stabbed a person in the back, and is now going to jail for 2 years or so. Why did he stab the man? He lost against him in the noble game of "finger hook".

"The global problem of food is not one of production, but one of distribution. Google for evidence if you are interested." Well that's exactly what I was trying to point out (in a way).

Huh? Howcome I've seen charts where the Q factor (when calculating equivalence dose of ionizing radiation) for neutrons is 20 at one point, and when the MeV increases, it's 5.

"The down-quark can decay into an up-quark by emitting a 'W-boson', and the W-boson can then decay to an electron and neutrino." Nice explanation. But how does the quark decay work in the case of positron emission? I know that one of the up-quarks becomes a down-quark, emitting a positron and an anti-neutrino, but is there a boson or something between?

We've got all sorts of nutjob political parties here. Communists, Christian social democrats (or whatever they are)... Still, it doesn't make me want to move to USA.

That barrier chart-thing is quite cool. Do you happen to know where to find a similar chart for neutrons in the ionization aspect, as their risk as ionizing particles seems to drop when they exceed 2 MeV (or something).

Gilded and Phi for All are walking through a bog area. Soon they see a sign that says "Warning! Bog faggots ahead!" Phi asks Gilded: "Yo Gil, what's a bog faggot?" Gilded replies: "I have no idea... but stay close, just to be sure". Soon they enter a foggy zone of the bog, and Phi realizes that Gilded has gone somewhere! Panicked, Phi starts running and suddenly starts to sink in the bog. "Oh dear, a boghole!" Phi thinks. He tries to struggle, but can't get out. Phi realizes he's knee-deep in the boghole. Soon, a man walks by. "Help me good man, I'm in a boghole!" The man replies: "Well, I'm one of those bog faggots. I'll help you up... if you'll be my sexslave for a week" Phi shouts: "Oh dear, no! I'm not that kind of guy, I have a wife and kids!" The bog faggot replies: "Well suit yourself" and walks away. Soon, Phi finds himself waist-deep in the boghole. Another man walks by. "Please help me, I'm in a boghole!" Phi shouts. "Well, I'm one of those bog faggots. Be my sexslave for two weeks and I'll help you", the man says. "Oh no, I'm not that kind of guy. You know what, I think I can get out of here by my own." The man says: "Suit yourself" and walks away. Minutes pass, and Phi sinks even further down. Now he's neck-deep in the boghole! His vision starts to blur of all the bog fumes. He barely sees a blurred character walking by. Phi thinks that it must be another swamp faggot and tries to trick him. "Hey, you, help me out! I'll be your sexslave, just save my life!" "Oh dear, that must be one of those swamp faggots!" Gilded shouts and runs away. <Note: A sudden burst of methane from the bog lifted Phi for All from the boghole. Gilded and Phi lived happily ever after. The methane ignited though, and burned Phi's left shoe's shoelace quite badly.>

I think there was a thread here that was about something like "How to achieve effective REM-sleep"... Can't remember really, because of memory loss due to lack of sleep. Oh, the irony!

"Without adequate rest, the brain's ability to function quickly deteriorates. The brain works harder to counteract sleep deprivation effects, but operates less effectively: concentration levels drop, and memory becomes impaired. Speech becomes slurred and fragmented, and mental reaction time slows. " Sounds like me alright! Luckily, the fever part lasted only for about a day. Yet I'm still quite tired. Screwed up my math exam today too! Yay.

"The protons in the nucleus and the incoming alpha repel each other. You have to have enough energy to overcome the repulsion in order to get within the range of the nuclear force." So, slow alpha particles are repelled by the nucleus' protons? I'd imagine that might have something to do with the bad ratio of neutrons for alpha particles (I think it was 30 neutrons / million alphas in an experiment with a beryllium sheet and an Am-241 alpha source), since alphas don't usually go too fast.

"By emitting a neutron, the C-13 sheds about 5MeV of that excitation." A fast neutron then? Btw, I had no idea whatsoever about the Coulomb repulsion. Can someone explain it?

"This all seems too dangerous and complicated to play with (although interesting to talk about.)" As fluorine is the most electronegative element, it's not too fun to play with. Platinum happens to be one of the few elements it doesn't react with.

With the stream thing I meant plastic sulphur in the form that's similar to a rubber band. "who mentioned Red Sulper at room temp? LOL :)" Sneaky little Britsman. I assumed you were talking about sulphur that's organized so that it appears red (which is the case with red and white phosphorous).

D'oh. I meant stable in the aspect of not being in excited state, but in ground state, as you pointed out. The fever aftermath does magical things to writing things.

It tells me that it's increased by about 4 atomic mass units, which would be the case IF the nuclei would take all 2 protons and 2 neutrons, as I said.

I know plastic sulphur is made by cooling a stream of S rapidly, and I also know that when heated sulphur gets a red color. "I`ve seen Red sulpher too :)" A room temp. sulfur that's red? How's that done?

So, I decided to find out why beryllium (and aluminum) actually emits neutrons when hit by alpha particles. I was quite sure that the two extra protons and neutrons make it an isotope that's very unstable and a neutron emitter. But no. Be-9 + alpha (2 neutrons 2 protons) -> C-12 + a neutron It was quite interesting to see that alpha decay doesn't work in reverse (at least not in this case). Why is this? Why doesn't the nuclei take all the particles becoming C-13? Does this have something to do with preserving momentum or something?

"Since fluorine doesn't eat glass (HF does)" That's true, however: Normal bonds in a quartz glass tube: Si-O-Si bonds Rare, yet unavoidable in a quartz glass tube: Si-OH ends Guess if the fluorine forms HF with Mr. H there? And even if there are only a few H2O molecules in the tube, the HF will form and destroy the tube (very, very slowly though)

"don`t boil it too much, warm will be just fine, Sulpher will melt eventualy and make quite a mess." Have you ever seen plastic sulphur? It's quite interesting, I'd like to have some for my collection.