jdurg

But bismuth is a heavy metal and it's not toxic at all. Then again, there always has to be an exception.

YT, you do know that most of the emergency Exit signs are powered by tritium compounds and phosphorescent materials, right? There's no need for batteries there as the radiation generates the light continuously. All hospitals use these types of emergency exit signs as they will still work even if the power goes out or there's a failed circuit someplace.

A mole is a counting unit. When you buy 12 doughnuts, do you say 'I want 12 doughnuts'? No. You say I want a dozen. A score, a couple, a pair, etc. are all counting units as well. A mole is the counting unit for 6.022x10^23 items. So a mole of cars would be 6.022x10^23 cars. If you have a general chemistry textbook, just look in the section about Avogadro's Number and the definition of a mole and it should become a lot clearer to you.

Oh really? I guess I need to further my comprehension of the english language.

Why, specifically and not just in your opinion, is Mythbusters not credible?

Off the top of my head, these are the more common elements I could think of: Carbon Hydrogen Oxygen Nitrogen Sulfur Sodium Potassium Chlorine Iron Cobalt Iodine

But you also need to realize that the water will hit the hot iron and immediately form steam. This steam will instantly move out and away and be unable to absorb any more energy from the molten iron. In addition, the molten iron will quickly absorb energy from the water and cool down to a lower temperature. Frankly, there's just not enough time for the water to be in contact with the iron and heat up to the point of decomposition.

Well, in the other thermite thread I mentioned that any water which gets mixed with the molten iron will immediately create a steam explosion that sends liquid Fe all over the place.

Really, the explosion you get when you drop molten iron into water isn't from hydrogen and oxygen. It's caused by the water instantly going over its boiling point and the superheated water suddenly vaporizing which sends the molten iron all over the place. The rapidly expanding steam can sometimes look like an explosion of hydrogen and oxygen, but there is a big difference between the two.

The thing is, these terrorists now have the USA ROYALLY pissed at them, and now the UK will become even more ROYALLY pissed at them too. Pretty soon, they'll have pissed off every country on Earth and they'll have nowhere to hide. What is tragic is that now there are millions, if not billions, of law-abiding, respectful Muslims who may wind up losing their lives and respect due to this very miniscule handful of racist pigs.

I don't know how this is going to come out, but it's incidents like this that kind of make me happy that New York City didn't get the Olympic Games in 2012. I have a feeling the IOC decided against NY in fear of a major terrorist attack happening there. I just hope that they also make sure that security is tightened when the olympics happen in London. One thing I will say, however, is that when Bin Laden is finally caught, you will see a massive celebration taking place throughout the world. I know that in the grand scheme of things he really means nothing, but I guarantee you that you'll see a lot more happy people on this Earth as pretty much everyone has lost all tolerance for these terrorist groups and their beliefs.

Sorry to say it, but the idea that drinking coffee will make you pee more and get rid of the alcohol is completely wrong. Urine is just filtrate from your blood, so the alcohol MUST get into your bloodstream in order for you to urinate it away. Therefore, peeing a lot to reduce the amount of alcohol that gets into your blood simply does not work. The alcohol gets into your blood no matter what you do. In fact, caffeine may make you even more intoxicated because it increases your heartrate and your blood pressure, thus causing the alcohol to reach your brain faster than normal. Any increased metabolism is counterbalanced by this increased speed at which it gets into your brain. Hundreds of thousands of separate studies have shown that the effects of alcohol are not lessened at all by the effects of caffeine. One may think that they are more sober than they really believe they are, but when the higher level brain functioning tests are performed, they show no improvement over those who haven't had caffeine. There is only one way to sober up, and that is with time.

If you want the simple explanation about the lower melting point, just remember that the melting point of a substance is determined by how strong the intermolecular forces are between the individual atoms/molecules of the substance. Something like oxygen gas has a very low melting point because the simple Van der Waals forces keeping the oxygen together are very, very weak. Water, on the other hand, has a higher melting point because the hydrogen bonding it experiences keeps it together fairly tightly, but not tight enough to remain a solid at room temperature. Ionic compounds like NaCl have quite high melting points because the ionic charges on the components are very strong and keep the individual particles together. You need a lot of energy to overcome those intermolecular forces. Metals tend to have high melting points as well because metallic bonding, the force keeping metals together, is a very strong intermolecular force. A few metals are exceptions to this, but most metals won't be liquid until elevated temperatures are reached. When you have an alloy, the presence of the different metals causes the intermetallic bonding to weaken. This weakening results in a lower melting point. A similar thing can be seen by mixing a lot of salt with some water. The melting point of the water will drop considerably.

Ahhhhh....... The good ol' concentrated H2SO4 + Sugar reaction. It's the first real chemistry demo I ever saw that didn't involve weak wussy chemicals. 8th grade chemistry class it was. It's the reaction that got me into chemistry.

It may have been said already, but another nasty smell is the smell of burning human hair/flesh. I was remembered of this foul odor yesterday. I recently had my hair cut down to the typical buzzed look that I sport, and decided to go play golf but without my hat. (As before my hair was just long enough to provide me with some protection). I forgot the hat and played out in the blazing sun for about 3.5 hours. I now have a VERY vicious sunburn on my scalp, and when I went in the shower the odor of burned hair and burned flesh filled the room. BLECH!

For the bismuth, I'm not even sure if the gastric acid reaction would result in a toxic compound, since the only thing the gastric acid would do would be to make a soluble form of the Bismuth cation. That ion is already present in the Bismuth subsalicylate. From its location on the periodic table, one would assume that Bi is pretty toxic since it's right near lead, thallium, antimony, tellurium and polonium which are all quite toxic indeed. Bismuth is the odd man out it seems. (I'm not certain about it, but I think that Bi ppts out of the Pepto-Bismol when it gets inside of you, hence why after ingesting it your poop turns black.)

Lye is the more commonly known name for sodium hydroxide, in addition to caustic soda.

The thing is, it's not all that economically viable to try and get the lithium in that manner. Those batteries are not exactly inexpensive and in order to get a good deal of lithium you have to spend a decent amount of money. When making small amounts of ANY of the alkali metals, it's really not cost effective. (And by small amounts I mean less than 1 kg quantities. Chemical manufacturers are able to do it because they make massive quantities and the price per gram for them is dirt cheap due to the bulk quantities).

Hehe. It was only done during my college years, and usually after you do it once the socks no longer have the fuzz on them that are needed for the cool fire effect.

Actually, Bismuth is completely non-toxic. Bismuth is a key component of Pepto Bismol in the form of Bismuth subsalicylate. So in an ionic form or metallic form, Bismuth really poses no health risk.

Gallium has a very low melting point. The heat of the light bulbs in the area, especially if they were photographry light bulbs, is enough to make it molten. Gallium and Indium will combine to form a liquid alloy at room temperature. So the heat from the lightbulbs melted the gallium, and the gallium then attacked the indium. This is why gallium requires Hazmat shipping in large quantities. (Since if the Ga melted during transportation and leaked out of the container, it could alloy with any metal in site and create some serious problems). But what you have is a Gallium/Indium alloy. Neat stuff, but it makes a mess. As for my ingestion, it wasn't a whole bottle. It was a little nub about the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen.

Just as a test, I purposely ingested a small piece of gallium that was remaining in the original container I had it in. Guess what, I'm still alive and not even close to being ill.

Guys, he's full of crap. If he had 8 75 gallon bags filled with hydrogen, that would be 2271.25 Liters of Hydrogen gas which is about 101 moles of hydrogen. That means that it would have taken 2.25 straight DAYS of electrolysis using 100 amps of current. There is no way that could have taken place. The charger would have been drained severely, or overheated thus producing less current than expected. Also, over that period of time the hydrogen would have quickly escaped from those trash bags as hydrogen molecules are incredibly small and will readily escape anything. I'm sorry, but I 100% don't buy this story. It's possible that he made some hydrogen and ignited it, but there is no way he did it to the extent he is trying to make us all believe.

Again though, H2 disperses VERY quickly. It's hard to get a massive concentration of it unless there is a constant influx of the stuff.