jdurg

The problem with the anarchist's cookbook is that it is filled with half truths. There is nothing more dangerous, in chemistry especially, to give someone half of the knowledge they need. That is why we all rip the cookbook. I've read it many times, and thankfully I was bright enough to realize that a lot of what they say isn't exactly as 'safe or easy' as they make it out to be.

Yes. Because DU does not emit neutrons at an elevated level which can be appreciably detected. Anything containing potassium in it can spontaneous emit neutrons. So you should stay away from bananas too. My saying that DU does not emit neutrons is like my saying that walking outside on a sunny day does not kill you. (The reality is, there is a small percentage of the time where walking outside on a sunny day can kill you, but the percentage is so small that you can just ignore those odds and say that walking outside on a sunny day won't kill you). If you want me to be 100% literal with everything I say, then trust me, you'll never have enough time to read through everything I post and you'll be frightened half to death when I explain how going outside will result in your exposure to deadly amounts of radiation and how the water you ingest can kill you.

Potassium has to be the most obnoxious of the alkali metals. Looking at my chunk of potassium, I see a couple of very tiny spots on there which have an orange/brown color to them. I really wish these superoxides wouldn't form. Now I have to CAREFULLY remove those small pieces of the metal and try to find a more oxygen free containment for my potassium.

Stoichiometrically perfect hydrogen/oxygen mixtures are also very platinum sensitive. A piece of platinum wire warmed up a bit by holding it in your fingertips for a while will be hot enough to instantly catalyze the combination of hydrogen and oxygen. It's quite a surprise when you pop a H2/O2 ballon with warm Pt wire and see it ignite instantly.

But the 2:1 will knock you on your butt from the surprisingly loud 'KABOOM' it gives off.

The whole reason for the concentrated NaOH solution is that it provides more NaOH in a smaller amount of liquid. This way you don't have to change out the solution as often. Also, the higher the concentration, the greater the frequency with which the CO2 molecules will interact with the OH- ions in solution to give you the HCO3- ions that should be produced. In fact, I think on the space shuttles they use honeycombs made of KOH to absorb the CO2 that the astronauts are breathing out.

Me thinks he meant to say hydrogen and oxygen, as that does create a shockingly loud 'boom' when the proper ratio of gases is used.

After bubbling through the NaOH, you could always blow the gas through a dessicant to soak up all of the water. There shouldn't be a heck of a lot of moisture in there unless you have a high temperature.

Like all things, if it's a long term exposure then you have problems. One short term exposure isn't going to do much of anything. The real problem with PVC is constant, daily exposure to the burning of it. If you lived next to a factory that routinely burned PVC, then it could be a problem. Your next door neighbor burning some PVC will increase your risk of getting cancer about as much as spending a day at the beach will.

The thing is, there's enough raw uranium lying around this earth to make many places naturally 'iffy' regardless of any DU used in the areas. A friend of mine who I play cards with on a weekly basis works at an airport. Any time any form of aircraft comes in to the airport and DU is used as a counterweight, they have to weigh the DU to make sure that all of it is there. There's a long audit trail on who touched it last. I think a lot of people have a tough time truly understanding how it is all tracked. Also, if people have the ability to turn DU into plutonium, then they also have the ability to turn uranium ore into plutonium. There is no tracking of uranium ore, as many people can just go into their backyard and dig into the ground to get some.

Did you also know that exposure to the sun can cause cancer? What if those terrorists figured out a way to make everyone get out into the sunlight? The cancer rates throughout the world would skyrocket! How can I sleep at night?!!!!! As for your question about a neutron bomb near depleted uranium, the answer is 'NOTHING!'. The neutrons would be moving far too fast for the uranium to absorb any, not to mention the fact that the only part of the uranium which would even see the neutrons is the exterior surface. You may wind up with three or four atoms of plutonium if that happened. Getting U-238 to absorb a neutron is not freaking easy. You have to moderate the neutron and slow it down to the proper speed, then you have to hope that it gets absorbed properly. It's not a 100% success rate. If it was, then countries would have no problem producing plutonium on a massive scale. People would produce plutonium in their backyards and have no problem with it. Also, depleted urnaium is used as a tampering material in fission bombs. That's because U-238 is faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar more effective at reflecting neutrons than absorbing them. Surrounding the fuel with the U-238 makes sure that all the neutrons can be absorbed by the U-235 and that the bomb goes critical. I don't understand why you think it's a piece of cake and no problem at all to make plutonium out of U-238. Do you think the terrorists don't have access to the internet? I can guarantee you they know a LOT more about the stuff than you do, or many of the members of this forum do. However, they haven't done anything with it, have they? Why could that be? BECAUSE IT'S NOT AS EASY AND EFFICIENT AS YOU MAKE IT OUT TO BE! Go to the United States' Nuclear Regulatory Commission and do some reading on the legality behind depleted uranium. At no time is a private individual allowed to possess more than 1 pound of the stuff without a license. Over the course of a year, one is allowed to own only up to about 15 pounds without needing a license. Every place that uses depleted uranium has to be reported to the government. So those dentists, those labs, those hospitals all report to the NRC. You can't just walk in there and get depleted uranium. I've tried. They simply cannot sell it or give it away. The only way I got my depleted uranium was because I was in the right place at the right time. If you are worried about terrorists gathering depleted uranium and making plutonium out of it, then you should just lock yourself up in a lead lined shelter and never see the light of day. Those fears are unfounded and simply obsurd. Please take a few courses in quantum mechanics and nuclear chemistry/physics. An individual can take anything and make a case about why it's wrong and harmful. Give me a few minutes and I can put together an article about how water is a dangerous chemical and can be used to wreak utter havoc on a civilized nation.

I think latentheat hit the nail right on the head there.

Okay, I'd really like to know the physics behind that one. I'm having trouble grasping how the addition of a substance like sawdust can cause the ice to withstand the heat of the priming charge going off in the gun.

The thing is, the heat of the priming charge that goes off, and is required to send the bullet on its way, is just far too high to keep the ice solid. The heat generated immediately vaporizes the ice. If you tried the sawdust idea, you may even get the sawdust to combust inside the barrell of the gun which would probably be a very bad thing.

Also, ice is an incredibly brittle solid. Only very large 'bricks' of the stuff have any sense of stability to it. Anything the size of a bullet will wind up being too brittle to do anything with. The idea of using ice for a bullet is simply a fantasy myth by spy novel/movie writers and has no basis on fact.

No and yes. Gallium expands as it solidifies, so if you have a bunch of gallium that quickly solidifies, it can shatter the glass container it's in. So if you do store gallium in a glass container, make sure that it's not a narrow glass container. If there's a wide opening, or a lot of surface area, as the gallium solidifies it can rise upwards instead of outwards. This will keep the glass container intact. Thankfully, gallium doesn't really solidify all that readily. It takes a while for liquid Ga to become solid again, so there really aren't very many situations where it would quickly form a solid and crack the glass.

Well you need to define some limits there. Do you mean least toxic in an elemental form? Because mercury could easily be considered the most toxic element if it's in the form of the right compound. In terms of the pure elements, Neon would work for me as the least toxic, and arsenic would be up there in terms of most toxic.

Okay, but what if the gasoline catches fire?

By converting the drug into a salt, it becomes MUCH easier for the drug to get into your mostly water based body. This allows a greater percentage of the drug to actually do what it's supposed to do rather than just get eliminated from the body.

The problem is, carbon dioxide isn't that much more dense than most other gases. Therefore, just letting it settle won't really get rid of it. Look at the natural atmosphere. There's a good deal of CO2 in there, but it doesn't all settle down to the earth. If it did, we'd have a hard time living. The only really 'easy' way to get rid of the CO2 from the gas mixture is chemically. This is because the amount of time you'd have to wait for the CO2 to settle to the bottom would be ridiculously long. Perhaps the easiest, and cheapest, way to remove CO2 is a very concentrated sodium hydroxide solution. NaOH absorbs CO2 from the air to form NaHCO3. If you pass this gas through a solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH is incredibly inexpensive), it will absorb a great deal of the CO2. You'll just have to replenish the NaOH supply every now and then, but based upon the amount of gas going through you should be able to calculate how much is needed on a weekly basis.

Chemically speaking, it is the same thing. The human body sees no difference between cocaine hydrochloride and freebase cocaine (i.e. crack). Crack is simply the cocaine molecule that has not been neutralized with an acid. Therefore, it is a freebase and the melting point is much, much lower which allows for it to be smoked. The term 'crack' comes from the fact that the substance crackles and pops when heated due to the bicarbonate decomposing into carbon dioxide upon heating. Take crack cocaine and add some hydrochloric acid to it and you get the cocaine hydrochloride which is the powder that is soluble in water and referred to as 'nose candy'. Basically speaking, it's just a different form of administration. It would be like saying morphine administered by IV is not the same as morphine taken by pill. As for the original question, I too am not sure why you would need to know how to differentiate between the two unless you 'purchased' your substance from a shady individual. Tylenol #3 is sold OTC in Canada, while cocaine in any form is never legally sold. So the only way you could have a question about the composition is if you obtained it from a 'not so legal' source. It's a really fine line we're walking here between chemical inquisition and drugs.

Comitting genocide is also highly possible, and how to do it is public knowledge. How to get all the people of the race/religion you don't like into one area so that they can be killed, however slow it might start, is also public knowledge.

I'm quite fond of Long Island Iced Teas.

How about we just banish all laws and allow everybody to do anything they want? Why should we not allow 10 and 11 year olds to drive cars, but we can allow 16 and 17 year olds to drive? That doesn't sound fair. (end sarcasm). Frankly, as a kid you need to have rules set forth for you. It teaches you discipline and teaches you how to act in society. When you get older and get a job, you will have rules and regulations that you have to follow if you want to keep your job. These things which seem 'ridiculous' to the kids are early training for keeping a job and being a productive member of society later on in life.