jdurg

I went to the clinic yesterday and the doctor there took one look at it and said that it was infected. So I was prescribed some antibiotics, antihistamines, and anti-inflammatories. While at the clinic, I also had my right hand/wrist x-rayed. It is still bothering me a tiny little bit if I move my hand/wrist wrong while gripping something. On the x-rays, what appeared to be two tiny 3-4mm long hairline fractures exist on two of the bones at the bottom of the right hand where the hand meets the wrist. The doctor said that they are probably some compression/stress hairline fractures that formed when I hit the ground while swining my golf clubs. However, they are so tiny that they didn't break through the outer portion of the bone, hence the little to no swelling that I experienced. In reality, there is nothing that could be done or needed to be done since there is no risk of displacement or further damage happening unless I do something really stupid. So he just gave me some arthritis medication to help ease the soreness and told me to drink plenty of milk. If it's still sore in a few weeks, then I'm to come back and I'll be directed to an orthopedist so they can get other in depth scans done to check for tissue damage. (However I doubt it will still be sore then. The nabumetone(sp?) they gave me has gotten rid of the residual soreness).

Well, I've been meaning to get my sore right hand checked out anyway, so this just gives me a further excuse. I have a couple more mosquito bites on my back and right upper arm, but those two aren't puffing up and turning rock hard and deep red/purple like the one on my right wrist (Right underneath where the thumb meets the hand) and my right elbow/forearm. (About an inch up from the elbow on the back side of my forearm).

Out on the golf course yesterday, I became an all you can eat buffet for the mosquitos in the area. (I actually caught one of them in the process of feeding off of me. It was kind of cool to see. I swatted it away and it left its snout stuck in my arm, and every time my heart beat the snout would twitch a bit). Anyway, when the mosquitos first bit it just itched a tiny bit but I left it alone and just put some rubbing alcohol on it. Today, however, the two bites that I have noticed have swelled up tremendously! It now looks like I have a golfball under my left forearm and my right wrist. I'm going to get it checked out after work, but since they are both quite red, swollen, and warm to the touch I can only assume that they are infected. Man this sucks!

Not to mention that given enough energy, it is theoretically possible to form compounds with all of the noble gases as you can form ions with each of them. With an electronless species with no charge, it is absolutely impossible to form any type of chemical compound no matter what you do. With helium and neon, it's VERY difficult but theoretically it can be done. With the element zero proposed in this thread, it is IMPOSSIBLE in every sense of the word.

An example of a metal/non-metal covalent bond is beryllium chloride. BeCl2 is covalent in nature and not ionic. I think the IUPAC name for H2O is actualy 'water', so there really is no 'right or wrong' name for H2O as its common name is acceptable.

Oh, I know YT. I was just saying that pre-emptively as I'm sure we'd eventually get someone posting in here saying 'he just wants to blow something up'. Happens in virtually all forums.

I had a 'you dumbass' moment a few weeks ago. I was at the driving range working on my swing with my 8 and 9 irons and was hitting the ball perfectly. Suddenly, probably because of fatigue after two buckets of balls, I started topping the ball again. In frustration, I took my 8 iron and with my right arm slammed it into the ground. The club went a few inches into the earth and stopped abruptly, thus bending my right thumb backwards quite a bit. Since then, it has hurt like crazy to put any type of strong grip on something, and if my golf swing is even slightly out of whack, a sharp pain runs through my right hand and wrist. Heh.

Probably for the same reason people want sodium/potassium metal, nitrogen triiodide, nitric acid, etc. They hear about the high reactivity and have a major urge to try it out themselves. Or they see a demonstration of it and want to try it out on a larger scale. When you haven't seen it done that often, you think it's the coolest thing in the world. Once you've seen it done a few dozen times, or once you've been injured or nearly been injured by it, it loses its 'edge' and becomes a ho-hum type of thing. That's pretty much my feeling on reacting alkali metals with water. You can only do it so many times before it becomes somewhat boring. However, I don't really think we should think any less of people who want to try these experiments out. If it weren't for my urge to try and synthesize nitrogen triiodide, I never would have even begun collecting elements and my interest in chemistry would have dropped considerably. So the best thing we can do is make sure that everyone knows the major risks associated with these experiments. Themit reactions are very interesting to see, but they can go out of control in a blink of an eye. Remember, you're dealing with LIQUID iron here. That stuff is frighteningly hot and will ignite virtually anything it touches. Also, if some water were to accidentally drop into the reaction vessel, it will cause a massive steam explosion and fling molten iron all over the place. This can cause widespread fires and major property and health damage. Thermit is not something to pooh-pooh. It is nasty stuff that should only be done in VERY small quantities unless you have a wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide open field to do this in that has been fireproofed and you have the local fire department around to supervise it. (As you can't just put it out by spraying water or a fire extinguisher on it. You basically have to let it burn out and pray that it doesn't harm anything important).

Well, one does have to realize that if you're on a motorcycle those bugs and pieces of sand out there can really do some damage to your eyes if you aren't wearing anything to protect them.

As a poker player myself, I can attest to this 'gut feeling' syndrome. I can also concurr that it is simply the result of a subconcious gathering of information. Your senses are constantly picking up little bits of information and relaying them to your brain. The better you get playing poker, the more you are able to recognize these 'subconcious' bits of information that you are picking up. There have been many times where I have made some questionable calls or folds based upon the betting going on and the cards on the table. In about 95% of those instances, I have been right with my decision as the person I'm playing against just had to show their cards. I've also noticed that I don't get these 'feelings' if I've had too much to drink or if I'm feeling ill or tired. This is because the tiredness/illness and inebriation alter my ability to pick up on these little 'tells'. I've also come across those situations where I'll look down to see Jack-Ten offsuit while faced with a raise from a bad position. I'll really want to play that hand and I think to myself 'oh, the straight will hit if I stick around'. It's even worse when I have a mid pocket pair and higher cards hit on the flop. I'll think that if I stick around I'll catch my trips. Oddly enough, I seem to be right during the times that I fold. I always think 'damn, if only I'd stuck around'. The thing is, the human mind is GREAT at remembering all the times that it did hit, but it sucks at remembering the MANY more numerous times that it didn't hit. So as for what the 'gut feeling' is, it's simply intense thinking going on in your mind which results in some other physiological changes. (Increased heart rate, blood pressure, etc.)

It's basically a mini catalytic converter. It takes the low molecular weight hydrocarbons and causes it to burn into water and carbon dioxide.

I beg to differ. The only way you can 'smell' something is if it is airborne and has volatalized. HOCl just simply will not be volatalized in order for you to smell it. HOCl and NaOCl are virtually the exact same thing. When in solution, an equillibrium exists resulting in the production of minor amounts of chlorine gas. The smell from a bottle of bleach is the smell of chlorine gas. There is no doubt about that. Hypochlorus acid is not a stable acid.

The temperature isn't what matters. What matters is how quickly it goes from one temperature to another. When a liquid cools slowly, the crystals have time to form and grow on each other as the liquid turns into a solid. If the liquid is cooled quickly, the crystals just don't have time to form before the liquid has gone below its melting point. As a result, you get a large amount of tiny crystals since the crystals don't have enough time to grow in size. A good analogy with this is ice-cream. If you take some ice cream and let it sit out so that it starts to melt, then you put it back in the freezer, it takes a while for the liquid to cool down so the ice crystals that form are very large and the ice cream becomes almost 'gritty'. Now if you take the ice-cream and instantly freeze it via dry ice or liquid nitrogen, the crystals don't have any time to form and you get some of the smoothest ice cream there is. That's the difference between soft serve and 'normal' ice cream. In soft serve ice cream, the mixture was cooled very rapidly which did not give the ice cream enough time to form sizeable crystals. With normal ice cream, the mixture is cooled much more slowly so crystals have time to grow.

It's kind of an unfortuneate trade off. In order for metals like sodium and potassium to be so much fun when reacting with water, they have to be kind of hard to obtain in a pure form. If they didn't react as readily with water, then they'd be easier to make in their pure form. Kind of a catch-22 there.

You can buy calcium carbonate at Staples. It's known as 'Chalk'.

2Na(s) + I2(s)[in excess] -> 2NaI(s) Just make sure you do this experiment in a large, heat resistant container and that the sodium you use has had the majority of its oxide coating and oil removed from it. Then you put the chemicals in the container and heat it up until the activation energy barrier is met and the reaction proceeds on its own. Some may say that you need to initiate the reaction with a drop of water, but that can create some contamination with sodium hydroxide.

Please explain to me how you can have a chargeless neutron with a negatively charged electron hanging around it?

All the while doing this under argon as the Na that forms will be in a molten state which will GREATLY intensify its reactivity, and if there's oxygen in the area it may very well catch fire. If there's any humidity in the air, it will react instantly with that as well. Frankly, it's easier and cheaper to just buy it.

Sorry Ophiolite, I didn't mean to pick on you squarely, but by your first post in this thread which I have quoted above, you stated "More sub-cutaneous, anti-evolution propaganda". Sub-cutaneous, from what I have been taught, means 'under the skin'. So in saying 'sub-cutaneous, anti-evolution propaganda' it comes out as if you said 'Hidden creationist propaganda' as anything 'under the skin' is hidden from view. If they were trying to exhibit anti-evolution propaganda without coming right out and saying it, then it would have to be a conspiracy of some sort, correct? (Since conspiracies aren't the sort of thing that are talked about in an open fashion). (BTW, I fall into the evolution and not creationism group. With a background in science, I just fail to see any solid arguments in favor of creationism). Anyway, to get back on topic, these type of games are always high on my priority list. I must have played SimCity to death when it came out, and I still play SimCity 4 every now and then. I'm just in higher anticipation of of Civilization 4 coming out.

Chlorine smells exactly like bleach and like a pool because both household bleach and a well sanitized pool emit chlorine gas. (Due to the equillibrium of Cl2 + 2NaOH <=> NaClO + NaCl + H2O. ) So when you open a bottle of bleach, you are smelling a minute trace of chlorine gas. When you stand next to a pool that was just recently chlorinated, you are smelling a trace amount of chlorine gas.

GWB will veto this bill because it is in HIS religious interests to due so. We have already seen that Bush is unable to separate church and state in his decisions as President. Frankly, I wish there was a way to throw him out of office for using his religious beliefs in order to make laws and veto bills. If he vetos this bill and doesn't give any non religious reason for the veto, then I will lose the last nanogram of respect I have for the government of this country. (Especially if the house and senate fail to override the religion based decision by the president. I cannot wait for this religion driven bozo to get out of office). [stated by a type I diabetic who's only hope for a cure is via stem cell research].

Good god guys, THIS IS A FREAKING VIDEO GAME!!!! There is NO attempt to persuade people into different levels of thinking or cause them to act and behave in manners that the designers feel are the "right ones". This is an idea someone had and they wanted to put it into a videogame. If you can't see it as that, then you need to get off of your high horse and come back to reality for a little bit. Jesus christ. If you think this game is going to cause hundreds of millions of people to start thinking that this is the 100% correct theory on evolution, then you must also think that just because you've played SimCity that you can run an entire Metropolis without any problems at all. Or that because you've played 'The Sims' you have a complete, full understanding of the human race. Or because you've played a flight simulator you can fly a commercial jet without any training required. It is a videogame designed to give people a good time in a fantasy world. It is not political, theological, or scientific propaganda. It's a video game! (Sorry for the rant, but my only 'red button' is when people have to think that there's a conspiracy behind everything, even something as simple as a videogame).

Crystals will form on their own without the need for a 'seed' as long as the Bi is pure enough and it's allowed to cool down. As it cools, crystals will form and then grow and rise to the top of the liquid as solid Bi is actually less dense than liquid Bi. When they rise, you just pluck them out and there ya go.

As anybody who is in to science knows, there is no better feeling than discovering something on your own without any help or instruction to lead you there. For me, I got that feeling yesterday at the golf course. I recently took up golf but couldn't swing the clubs properly for the life of me. I was HORRIBLE. Suddenly, after watching a lot of golf swings and going through my head what I was doing wrong, I discovered something. A simple little thing such as a bent left knee was all that was separating me from a good golf game. I went to the driving range and tried out this new manner of swining, and it worked! I was hitting the ball straight as can be and for quite a long distance. I took the new swing to the course and chopped 24 strokes off of my game. It felt great being able to make the adjustment and play a good game. God I love that feeling.