big314mp

There was a scientific american article, maybe about a year ago, that suggested superconducting wires, run inside liquid hydrogen pipes. The idea was to jump start the hydrogen economy, as well as the superconducting grid, all in one fell swoop. The hydrogen provided the cryogenic cooling for the superconductor, and the whole assembly would fit on current utility company property.

What a joke. I wish the American people were smart enough to see through this kind of crap, but quantum mechanics will have me walking through walls before that happens. What happened to the idea of, "we got some of what we want, let's take it and run." And god forbid we take subsidies away from oil companies. Somewhere I read that the cost of the LHC was slightly more than ExxonMobile's profits in one quarter.

I thought PBr3 was a brominating agent, that converted hydroxyl groups to bromides. I think the reaction he wants is: PBr3 + HOC6H5 -> BrC6H5 + other stuff I think it would work alright (IMO). The reaction mechanism is: The alcohol acts as a nucleophile and kicks a bromide off of the PBr3. The bromide that was kicked off acts as a nucleophile and kicks off the -OHPBr2 group.

The reason for the people postulated the existence of the ether, was that it was assumed that light needed a medium to travel through (there are other relevant effects also, but this was the basic one). Once it was accepted that light can travel through a vacuum, the need for an ether was mostly gone. The virtual particles come from nothing, and return to nothing. Virtual particles are always created in pairs. For example, a virtual electron is always created alongside a virtual positron. These then annihilate each other, returning the energy that they "borrowed" from space. There are experiments that show the existence of virtual particles. One specific one that I'm thinking of involved virtual photons. I'll go look for the details on it and post them back. I highly recommend the book "Schrodinger's kittens" as it explains all of these things very well. "The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene is another good book to read. It goes much more in depth than the TV show.

What I don't get is how the people in the third bracket from the top ($226,982 - $603,402) pay $12 less, when their tax rate doesn't change The premise of the graduated income tax being "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Obama talked about this in his interview with Bill O'Reilly, where he acknowledged that it is stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. He justified it by saying that the poor need it, and the rich can afford it. Mugging for charity, if you will

Radon gas wouldn't work? I don't know about that particular demo, but I've found that the vocal effects of SF6 can be replicated using hookah smoke.

If coke bottles are tempered, it would be a relatively straightforward explanation: http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2008-06/shattering-strongest-glass

Well, back in high school, my friends and I set up an electrolysis machine (for lack of a better phrase) to produce hydrogen and oxygen. It used DC current, saturated magnesium sulphate solution, and copper electrodes. The oxygen rapidly corroded the copper electrodes (which we just replaced, since copper was fairly cheap) to form copper hydroxide that collected on the bottom of the tank. It's one way you could get to copper sulphate, and you get a nifty supply of hydrogen while you're at it.

What would the result be? It seems like you would have 2 photons, each with a wavelength half of the original photon. Except that is 4x as much energy as the original photon started with. Is it even meaningful to speak of the photon being that big? Do photons "get bigger" in the traditional sense that an elephant is larger than a mouse? I think part of the problem may be that we are applying human intuition to this problem.

I'll go get my air pump. Maybe if everyone just held their breath? I think the premise was to disrupt the storm in one area, so that the whole thing falls apart. Sort of a butterfly effect type of deal.

It's the basis for several pharmaceuticals, as well as a rather bulky organic group...not much more I can say beyond that, however. There's a thread about adamantane alkylation on these forums that was fairly recent.

I would also recommend the book "Schrodinger's kittens", as that provides a good look at the different interpretation of QM. I would be careful of the Copenhagen Interpretation (not exclusively this one, but since this is the most common one, I mention it) as it is just an interpretation. There are many different interpretations out there. "Schrodinger's kittens" is the sequel to the book "Schrodinger's cat", which I have not read, and thus cannot make any statements about. Kittens will stand on its own, however.

It would be just like a liquid-liquid extraction. You can also add some sodium bicarbonate to the water, to neutralize the HCN, so you can get a better extraction.

I think what they were going for was, the photon was as big as the universe at 2 o'clock, then the universe gets bigger, what is the photon at 5 o'clock. Of course, you also have to consider that the universe may be infinite in size, so infinite wavelength may be a possibility.

The reason I suggested the ceramic shard, was that a version of this is a very common parlor trick, and it is also a common way of breaking into cars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_rocks

The best I've heard it described as, is that there are four dimensions (think of them as spatial for the moment) and the sum total of our motion in those four dimensions adds up to the speed of light. Ex: You are moving at 10m/s in one direction, then you are also moving at 299,999,990m/s in the time dimension. Since there is no such thing as "negative speed" it is impossible to move backwards in the time dimension.

Nobody has yet made the perennial suggestion to soak up the water using one of those super absorbent polymer things (similar to the stuff used in diapers). So I'll suggest it .

It complexes with the aluminum ions, or the aluminum metal? Surely there must be a relatively straightforward way to separate it, as a good portion of the earth's crust is composed of aluminum, which would have to be removed from any ores before they can be used as fuel.

The ether idea was mostly discarded after the michelson-morley series of experiments, where they tried to determine the effect of the ether on two beams of light: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment This experiment was designed to measure the motion of the ether relative to the earth. No motion was found, so the existence of the ether was put to rest. Virtual particles are a quantum effect stemming from (I will do horrendous injustice to QM here) the notion that you cannot know with certainty that there are no particles in such and such a space. It is equivalent to saying that you know the position and momentum of a particle with certainty. Someone explained it to me as, "If quantum mechanics doesn't forbid it, then it most certainly happens." And yes, these particles are created from nothing, but they must also return to nothing very quickly. The more massive the particle created, the shorter the time it exists.

The Planck energy is quite large, and I doubt there are very many photons in the universe with that much energy. Maybe the planck energy would set a maximum, but it sure doesn't set a minimum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_energy By the time you read this, it might have already changed, but you have 1666 posts, and I think that's kind of nifty.

This sounds like homework At any rate, the 200g sample and the 150g sample are the same material, so the ratio of the elements that make it up will be the same. For example, 18.02g of water will have 2.02g of hydrogen and 16.00g of oxygen. 36.04g of water (twice as much) will have 4.04g of hydrogen (2x) and 32.00g of oxygen (also 2x). This is because all water is composed of certain elements in definite ratios. And welcome to SFN!

Well, you would add a metal (in it's metallic form) that is higher on the activity series than lead to a solution of lead bromide. A steel nail would work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activity_series

The nitric acid would be contaminated with a whole mess of different NOx gasses, as well as some ammonium nitrate and water. The ammonium nitrate would come from ammonia reacting with nitric acid. To synthesize magnesium nitrate, you might just want to mix magnesium sulfate (epsom salt) and sodium nitrate, and then cool the mixture, so that sodium sulfate precipitates out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_nitrate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_sulphate

It breaks because he put something very hard in there, like a sharp piece of ceramic. The fact that the ceramic is hard and sharp, means that when it hits the side of the coke bottle, it can create quite a bit of pressure at one specific point, cracking the bottle.

So is there a unique solution or not?