greg1917

I presume your joking? did the government also sneak into my bedroom and steal that 10 quid note i cant find? You know what, come to think of it, it could only have been the US government. an oganisation linked with so many pathetically inept conspiracy theories must be responsible for something right?

there is an unbelievable amount of flagrant BS eminating from pictures of mars. people claiming pictures of rock formations resemble faces indicate life not only need a slap but perhaps a lesson in shut-the-f***-up. the human mind is extremely good at recognising and interpreting the features of a face. the fact that so many random rock formations resemble faces is purely because of this - would a benevolent civilastion leave a mountain in the shape of a smiley face? NO. statistacally, with the sheer area of land being photographed, it is almost certain that rock formations will resemble a recogniseable human feature every now and again. combined with shadows playing tricks, you have a large number of faces, a few aircraft hangars, algebra (yep, apparently formulae embedded in the rock), a school bus and probably an image of colonel gadaffi thrown in for good measure. hell, theres probably a map to blue beards' treasure as well. so what does this mean? that a race of beings carved happy faces in mountains hundreds of miles across? or perhaps that sometimes rocks lie in a certain arrangement and we happen to see a pattern because were used to seeing that image of an animal/feature. well im sold, lets make the wild assumption theres intelligent life on the red planet.

Flying machines? Heretics! begone from whence thee came, banished to the land of adam and zarkov.

I still dont understand why the current theory is even remotely wrong in this area. you said that electron orbitals did not explain the strength of diamond when they are in fact the reason behind it. I respect that youve put time, energy and maths into an alternative hypothesis but electrons inhabit oribtals of probability. large numbers of complex things affect an electrons movement - obviously adjacent electrons, distance from the nucleus, perhaps electrons from bonded/neighbouring atoms. because of this an electrons actual path is wildly eccentric and can only be described as inhabiting a certain region of space where the elctron may be found. electrons exhibit WPD, this is an inescapable fact. are the surfaces of the polyhedrons youve drawn where an electron inhabits an energy level?

I know little of American politics other than when the globe laughed hysterically as the worlds policeman fumbled and made a meal over an apparently simple emocratic proces, an election. To achieve balance to the force - how to be a good republican. 1. You have to believe that the nation's current 8-year prosperity was due to the work of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, but yesterday's gasoline prices are all Clinton's fault. 2. You have to believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own. 3. You have to be against all government programs, but expect Social Security checks on time. 4. You have to believe that AIDS victims deserve their disease, but smokers with lung cancer and overweight individuals with heart disease don't deserve theirs. 5. You have to appreciate the power rush that comes with sporting a gun. 6. You have to believe everything Rush Limbaugh says. 7. You have to believe that the agricultural, restaurant, housing and hotel industries can survive without immigrant labor. 8. You have to believe God hates homosexuality, but loves the death penalty. 9. You have to believe society is color-blind and growing up black in America doesn't diminish your opportunities, but you still won't vote for Alan Keyes. 10. You have to believe that pollution is OK as long as it makes a profit. 11. You have to believe in prayer in schools, as long as you don't pray to Allah or Buddha. 12. You have to believe Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde were really faithful husbands. 13. You have to believe speaking a few Spanish phrases makes you instantly popular in the barrio. 14. You have to believe that only your own teenagers are still virgins. 15. You have to be against government interference in business, until your oil company, corporation or Savings and Loan is about to go broke and you beg for a government bail out. 16. You love Jesus and Jesus loves you and, by the way, Jesus shares your hatred for AIDS victims, homosexuals, and President Clinton. 17. You have to believe government has nothing to do with providing police protection, national defense, and building roads. 18. You have to believe a poor, minority student with a disciplinary history and failing grades will be admitted into an elite private school with a $1,000 voucher.

Stop smoking? While Im at it why dont i stop drinking beer, and robbing old people.

Nope?

Nope There arent very many black holes because it takes a) special equipment and b) astrophysicists who eat data for breakfast to properly map and chart them. Plus they require a star of a certain size to collapse which themselves arent thin on the ground. Consider antigravity. why would it implode? Aside: on the topic of annihilation, i was in a bar last night and noticed that when a large spotty ugly female went up to an extremely attractive and gorgeous woman, they seemd to repel each other, refusing to talk. I kept on watching the situation (well, kept on watching the little fox that was wearing a skirt that could have doubled as a belt:D ) and as the two finally came together a cat fight instantly developed. the ensuing fracas destroyed beer bottles and a table until the bouncer came over. Im thinking antiugly meets ugly. any thoughts?

Ooooooooooh snazzy. but will it stop crazy pseudoscientists predicting pole shifts, claiming thermodynamic laws are wrong, advocating spin gravity......... etc. Nice site Blike.

Well my local MP seems to represent his constituents, but apparently according to you he's too busy pandering to ruling party politics. He represents the predominately asian community by voting for what is good for Pollokshields in the Commons; party whips dont rule with an iron fist as much as Blair would want them to. And if he didnt represent his constituents he wouldnt be voted for that seat in the first place.

Where? I cant rememebr any magnet lens stuff.

Science? Pah! Its for fat people. ----- Breaking news-------- The former bastion of the intellectual community, Zetatalk, has been cast asunder by the intelligencia. Strangely, as '12th planet' or 'planet X' did not appear, as foreseen by Zetatalk, the once great institution has lost credibility. 'How were we to know that current Pole shift data was accurate, non-disputable and freely available?' said one confused insider, clutching his intergalactic space ray gun for fear of impending galactic doom. Current signs indicate Zetatalk is preparing one last outrageous conspiracy theory to prove its worth. While cynics may cite the comically huge list of wild predictions that not only failed to come true but were debunked by school children beforehand, loyal Zeta followers have come out of their mail order planet X bunkers to support the fledging website. 'The same 18 foot space monsters who assassinated Kennedy (and interestingly also drive convertables in Ohio) have been witnessed by credible witnesses. We stand by our beliefs.' Indeed one such witness was keen to tell others of his experience. One hill billy, almost too wasted to give an interview, recollected "ah wus jus watching dem cows when a big space ship came down from the sky. they shon a big ol beam o' light on me and a' wus on a operatin' table, being anally probed. they wanted to know which end a' spoke out of." like earth docors, the aliens were unable to decide whether more BS passed out of the hill billy's rectum or his mouthpiece. Quite why so many anal probing incidents are reported is also a mystery, although they do seem to coincide with high sales peaks for gay porn DVDs. As Zetatalk prepares one last stand, we ask ourselves - do you believe? are you prepared to believe? are those who beilieve merely delusional halfwits whose only purpose is to believe stupendously ridiculous claims because apparently the simple explanation is too boring and needs to be sexed up? the science community watches with interest.

that would mean when an antihole met a hole they would annihilate each other leaving only........flatness..........

A hill maybe?

The thing is, some of us had the luck of being privately educated.

With the hilarious electoral farce that was summer 2001 in the US i can understand how people are unsure how effective the system of democracy is, but people in Britian are quite happy with a system where we actually elect our local parliamentary representatives. This as opposed to relying on chads and hanging chads and half chads and, fortunately for Bush, his siblings in positions of power. lucky that wasnt it?

Something as outrageous (and perhaps slightly trippy) would surely encourage imagination and appreciation of basic things, like eggs break when you lob them at walls and fragile people shouldnt perch on high ledges, else risk their outer shell's structural integrity being compromised. A friend of mine once said 'if the animators at Disney still took acid, kids these days wouldnt have to'.

What weighty argument? All you've done is draw a polyhedron around the carbon atom shell, that accounts for nothing. Electron orbitals are the reason for the strength of diamond and the comparative strength of diamond, two density calcualtions do not debunk the theories of Max Planck and others. in a diamond there is sp3 hybridisation giving a tetrahedron arrangement of 4 covalent bonds resulting a giant covalent network arrangement. in graphite there is sp2 hybridisation where flat layers of hexagonally arranged carbon are constructed on top of each other. the bond between the layers is simply van der waal's forces which is the reason 'sheets' of carbon can be removed easily - the fact that the pi bonds resulting from the sp2 hybridisation give distributed pi bonds around the 3 covalent bonds from each carbon atom, meaning these bonds are even stronger than an individual diamond bond. the distributed pi bonds also mean delocalised electrons allow charge to flow. In what way do electron orbitas not explain the questions you have asked? they are the reason for the stacking arrangements of both allotropes of carbon.

Yes, when they heated mercury it burned up a fifth of the air and when mice were exposed to this air they promptly died. when the red mercury oxide was heated at a higher temperature pure oxygen was obtained and it was observed that the mice were hyperactive in this environment. If they burnt mice it was probably due to the absurd amount of opium and hash they smoked in those days.

In the 1700's it was believed all substances contained stuff called 'phlogiston'. things that burned quickly, wood etc, rapidly disspiated their quantity of phlogiston. fire was the act of phlogiston rapidly leaving its host substance. rusting was a slower release of the substance. Lavoisier (with the help of an English chemist called Priestly) eventually discovered oxygen.

How can you find information on bond angles and inter-nuclear distances, yet melting points and density figures have escaped you? and electron clouds are not shapeless, the 3rd quantum number for an electron describes the shape of the orbital. these are worked out via the treatment of electrons as waves; their movement can be described mathematically and the probability of finding an electron inside a given region results in an electron orbital shape. they have specific shapes.

sorry, what precisely are you saying? that electrons dont inhabit orbitals of probability? if you want the boiling points of these very common and well documented organic compounds go look them up in a data booklet or an internet site. Why do pseudoscientists never give any reason for why they think current theories are wrong?

First of all in what way is chemistry more 'organised' than physics? Do the text books not fit on the shelf or something? Secondly the reason your teacher gives you more questions is probably because he/she doesnt know. Ive just finished an advanced higher in both subjects and neither is more 'organised' and neither has been around for very long. Faraday discovered benzene as well as his work on electricity. You could go back to alchemy, which dates hundreds of years, but thats more a crackpot science at heart.

Whether its physics or chemistry is irrelevant, its talking about an important chemical concept which is the behaviour, notation, probability and nature of electron orbitals. Why is it necessary to label things as chemsitry, physics, physical chemistry or chemical physics? Its all science, arguing over whose type is better is like 8 year olds arguing over whose games console is better.

I was giving an example of one type of method by which colour is observed. Obviously there are others and molecular vibrations are indeed complicated and come in many guises (symmetric stretching, twisting deformation, scissor bend...) but a sound understanding of chemistry in this area is quite important to appreciate the underlying theory. the principle quantum number, n, is the main energy level. 1,2,3, etc. the second quantum number, L, determines the shape of the sub-shell and is labbeled s,p,d,f. they can have values from zero to (n-1). thus if n=4 then L could equal 0 (s sub shell) 1 (p sub shell) 2 (d sub shell) 3 (f sub shell) The third quantum number, m, relates to the orientation in space of the orbital. it is dependant on L because m can be any whole number between -L and +L. thus if L=2 (a d orbital) then m could be -2, -1, 0, +1, +2. the orientations of the s orbiatls are spherical and increase with n. the three p orbitals are dumb bell shaped, lying along each axis also increasing with n. the 5 d orbitals are a little more complex, and as for the seven f orbitals, theyre more complex still. The fourth quantum number,s, is so called because it relates to spin. it is either +1/2 or -1/2.