jdurg

I fully agree. I played paintball for the first time in my life this past weekend, and I must say that endurance is very important to have. The first few games we played I was fine and was able to sprint and felt fine. After those games, however, my endurance just dropped and I was rundown and unable to move quickly anymore. (I have a ton of welts because of that. lol). My leg muscles are killing me right now and cramping up, so I'm just trying to increase my potassium intake and just get used to the high level of activity. After a while of this type of exertion, your body will get used to it and adjust.

I believe because its structure is similar to that of the insulin hormone, but distinctly different enough that it causes completely different responses in the body. A good analogy would be between a realistic looking water pistol and a handgun. They both look quite similar, but their functionality and effect on their surroundings is completely different.

Yes, it is possible to have a natural immunity to chickenpox, and I know that they can test for it these days. I know this because I myself was tested for natural immunity. I have never had chickenpox and I turn 25 later this year. Growing up, however, I had many opportunities to catch it. When I came down with Type I Diabetes at the age of 1.5, my sister began to show signs of chickepox a few days after I went into the hospital. I didn't catch it. Twice, when I was sleeping over at my best friend's house as a kid, his sister came down with chicken pox a few days afterwards. (And yes, you can get chickepox more than once and it won't be shingles. In fact, I've never even heard of shingles affecting children. I've only heard that shingles is what is very likely to happen if you get chickenpox as an adult). I also slept over another friend's house as a child and he came down with chickenpox while I was sleeping over. Still, I never caught it. So when I turned 18 and was getting ready to go out to college I had my physical done. I told my doctor that I had never gotten chickenpox before and was wondering if I was naturally immune. They did the bloodwork and it came back negative. I had no chickenpox antibodies in my system. So the doctor immediately ordered a chickenpox vaccine and he me come in a few weeks later to get it. They then ran immunity tests again about a month later and it showed that I had the immunity. So the next time you see your doctor, ask if they could test you for chickenpox immunity. If you aren't immune, ask for the vaccine since getting shingles is apparently NOT a fun thing.

The USA 5-cent piece contains nickel, but not all to much of it. Only about 22% I believe. If you want some pure Nickel, get ahold of some Canadian Half-Dollars or Quarters dated prior to the year 2000. I believe those are made out of pure nickel metal.

Hey there everyone. I got a reply from Alex over at the site mentioned in Gilded's quote above, and yes, he speaks and understands English just fine. I am currently working on getting some more information about the fluorine gas ampoules and the alkali metal ampoules. I may actually get some real fluorine gas!

Yeah, I had a buddy who has a Geiger Counter do some testing on some Rhenium and Indium, and background radiation COMPLETELY drowns out any radiation emitted by the metals. So if you have them, there's nothing to worry about. The radiation is so completely weak that it can't be detected. In other good news the word of an upcoming raise at work allowed me to spend $180 for another 5-gram button of Osmium. That should arrive next week. Now each month I should be able to afford a five gram button as long as my poker winnings continue to support me.

If ethanol didn't mix with water, there'd be a lot of unhappy, yet healthier, people in this world.

LMFAO! Okay, I think you should really edit the spelling in that post because when you quickly read through that, it just doesn't sound right.

LMAO. Nah. I don't even think that I'll be getting royalties from this. I'm just going to be happy getting a copy of the textbook. However, now that I "know" someone in the publishing sector, perhaps I could start putting together a book on element collecting. Hmmmm......................

The only problems you really encounter in a religious discussion/debate is when one member believes that he can change the religious opinion of another members. Frankly, this cannot happen. There is no way that a person who believes in the religion will suddenly abandon it because of what someone says. There is also no way that someone who is athiest is suddenly going to believe in god, etc. because of what someone says. If everybody who goes into a religious thread understands that, then no conflicts exist. The conflicts arise when members try and change other people's opinion, or force their opinion onto others.

Either way, in order to get us up into outer space, you'll have to attach the equivalent of a gigantic "bomb" to where us humans are sitting. Space travel is not the safest thing to do, and I'm more amazed at how few accidents we've actually had in relation to all the trips we've taken.

As it should.

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Steam can be well above 100 degrees C. It normally forms at 100 degrees, but if the surroundings are hot enough it can be well above that. If you boil water in a gigantic chamber so that the air pressure remains at 1 atmosphere, if you provide enough heat to that chamber you can increase the temperature of steam much higher than 100 degrees. Like with ice, if it's cold enough the temperature of ice will be well below 0 degrees. Put some water in liquid nitrogen. I guarantee you that the ice's temperature will be below 0 degrees. Asking what the temperature is of steam is like asking what's the temperature of water, or what's the temperature of iron.

No need to sign up. You can see them if you go over to the forums and click on the periodic table link. I'd post the actual photo that will be in the book, but it's a HUGE photograph and would just kill bandwidth. I've shown a few of my photos here on the forums. In fact, if you go to the element collecting thread you can see my PGMs in the second to last page, I believe.

Movies are wrong?!!!! HOW CAN THAT BE?!!!! I've based my entire thoughts and beliefs on other cultures and peoples based on what I see on TV and Film. Surely they cannot be lying to me! [/end sarcasm. Please don't take my post as a jab. I was just trying to be funny. ]

Hey everyone, I've received some good news over the past couple of weeks that I wanted to share with everyone here. As you all know, I have an ever growing collection of the elements which I've photographed extensively. Those photos are currently hosted over at http://www.chemicalforums.com and are also being used by Peter Van der Krogt on his elementymology website. (A REALLY cool site that goes into the history behind the naming of each element. http://www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/index.html.) So lots of people have seen and are seeing my element pictures which is a really neat feeling. A couple of weeks ago, I received a private message over at the other forums from the President of a publishing company. His company is currently working on a general chemistry textbook and the authors were looking for certain pictures of elements. He was just browsing the internet and came upon my photograph of the three main phosphorus allotropes. It was exactly what they were looking for, so he contacted me to see if he could use the picture and if I could provide a higher-resolution image. I was at first kind of shocked by it but quickly said sure. He said that I'd be given credit for the picture in the textbook and that he'd get back to me soon. Last week I got another e-mail from him which gave me the FTP information needed to upload the photo. I took a new picture and uploaded the photograph to their FTP. He took the picture and showed it to the authors of the textbook who absolutely loved it. In fact, they love it so much that they are going to use it as the introduction photograph for Chapter 8: Structure and Bonding I. (I think that's the title). I am just so giddy right now about that. I thought my photo would be a little inset photograph in a chapter that would probably just be browsed over. Now I find out that I'll be used as one of the huge, full-page photos to open up a chapter. I can't wait for the book to come out. I was also made aware that they liked all of my element pictures and there's a small chance that further contact will be made about other elements. Now I'm not expecting any contact to be made in regards to other photos, but if they would like something else I'd be happy to oblige. It just feels great knowing that my name will be in a chemistry textbook. I've had research published so I'm listed as an author in a journal article, but to have my name as a little blurb for a photo in a chemistry textbook feels so much better. BTW, here's the information on the book: Title: General Chemistry 1e Authors: Bruce Averill and Patricia Eldredge ISBN: 0-8053-3803-9 Copyright: 2006 The book will be out late this year or very, very early next year. I'll be sent a copy of the book when it comes out. Can't wait to see it.

That's why we write it out as CuSO4*xH2O.

VERY sensitive machines. Another thing with radiation is that it's not just the activity, but the energy of said activity that plays a big role. You can have a very actively decaying sample of an element, but if it gives off little to no energy in said decay, then it's not really dangerous. Look at Rhenium. The energy it gives off when Re-187 decays is 0.003 MeV. That's is absolutely nothing. (Hence why Re-187 is of no concern to people. Mix in a ridiculously long half-life with a ridiculous low decay energy, and you have what you can call a stable isotope really). With In, the half-life of 440 trillion years and the decay energy of .496 MeV renders it virtually harmless. Unless my calculations were off, the activity of a one gram sample of Indium would be about 0.396 decays per second. If you're worried about that type of activity, you should just end your life now because the air around you is more "active" than that. With the detection of long half-lives, I think they have very sensitive chambers composed entirely of one stable isotope of a stable element. I can only imagine the machine being incredibly expensive.

Here's another neat bit of information kind of like the Rhenium one that collector pointed out. Indium is also a stable element where the dominant isotope is radioactive. Naturally occuring indium is about 97% In-115 and 3% In-113. In-115 is radioactive and decays by beta decay. So in all actuallity, pure samples of indium are far more radioactive than they are stable. However, there is no need to worry since the half-life of In-115 is 440 trillion years. Thats 44 followed by 13 zeros. If you do the calculations, a gram of pure indium has an activity of around 0.36 Bq. lol. So suffice it to say, there's no need to worry since you really can't even detect activity that low.

Hey Fortuna. Now that you said this was for an industrial process, it all becomes a lot clearer to me. The reason why the KOH they used had water in it was because it's just cheaper that way. You can buy anhydrous KOH, but it has to be packaged so that no water can be absorbed from the atmosphere. As a result, the cost goes WAY up. It's cheaper to just dry it yourself, which is what they used with the CaO/Dessicant. So in your situation, it was just more cost effective to use the readily available, more inexpensive KOH which has already absorbed water.

KOH is pretty hygroscopic, and I certainly wouldn't suggest electrolyzing the molten salt anyplace but inside an argon drybox. (Since molten potassium will tend to ignite in normal, water/oxygen saturated air). But there is no water inherently bound to KOH. If there was, we'd have to write it as [math]KOH.xH_2O[/math]. Like we do with many hydrated copper salts.