Domain: frostburg.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to frostburg.edu.
Comments · 13
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A Very Potent Reminder
The richest man in the world (that no one today has heard of) once owned the mine and the mill in this town and fueled the World Wars in part with its products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/p...
A reminder that the downsizing of jobs led to the World Wars, and that automation will lead to much worse than world war; our annihilation.
Karl Wittgenstein was a very cunning man, but a proxy for the globalist cabal. They killed all of his sons except the famous Ludwig and bled away the fortune. Another reminder that no matter how well you do for them, they will never accept you and will always betray you to the end of your line.
Perhaps this is too much for some of you to accept, but can you really deny that automation prioritized profit ahead of people? That it in fact automation totally disregards the people? Is this the point when you parrot your masters' notions that some must fall for progress to continue? Exactly what portion of this progress benefits you?
There are no forces of nature standing plain in sight for us to conquer. We cannot overcome our limitations with material. No amount of capital will take us beyond the Earth. The people are the only thing we have; only by investing in them will the solutions to our progress be found. We must stop the class of madmen that bred themselves to accumulate capital for its own end. Left alone they would kill us all to stop us from competing for their capital.
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Re:You are entering a carbon-friendly area
How so,
pH is a logarithmic measure of hydrogen ion concentration, originally defined by Danish biochemist Søren Peter Lauritz Sørensen in 1909 [1].
pH = -log^[H+]
where log is a base-10 logarithm and [H+] is the concentration of hydrogen ions in moles per liter of solution. According to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, the "p" stands for the German word for "power", potenz, so pH is an abbreviation for "power of hydrogen" [2].
The pH scale was defined because the enormous range of hydrogen ion concentrations found in aqueous solutions make using H+ molarity awkward. For example, in a typical acid-base titration, [H+] may vary from about 0.01 M to 0.0000000000001 M. It is easier to write "the pH varies from 2 to 13".
The hydrogen ion concentration in pure water around room temperature is about 1.0 × 10-7 M. A pH of 7 is considered "neutral", because the concentration of hydrogen ions is exactly equal to the concentration of hydroxide (OH-) ions produced by dissociation of the water. Increasing the concentration of hydrogen ions above 1.0 × 10-7 M produces a solution with a pH of less than 7, and the solution is considered "acidic". Decreasing the concentration below 1.0 × 10-7 M produces a solution with a pH above 7, and the solution is considered "alkaline" or "basic". What is pH?
As you can see from the mathamatics, as the number of hydrogen Ions in a solution increases and the solutition becomes more acidic, the pH goes down, such that a solution with a pH of 2, pH = -log(10^-2), is ten times more acidic than a solution at pH 3, pH = -log(10^-3).
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Re:You know what they call alternative medicine...
Both you and GP are confusing things here:
Willow bark extract: salicylic acid. Extremely bitter and acute stomach irritant. Not an effective analgesic by today's standards: even if you get someone to ingest an effective dose (as opposed to them concluding they prefer to keep their headache after the first taste), they're at risk of getting medically significant digestive tract disruptions.
Aspirin: acetylsalicylic acid. The acetyl group is covalently bound (not a buffer) and takes away the most undesirable effects of salicylic acid described above. Sold as a pain killer since the late 1800s. Most common serious side effects of long-term use is gastric bleeding, though the effect is still much weaker than for salicylic acid.
Buffered aspirin: an attempt to decrease absorption of aspirin in the stomach lining through formulation. Benefits are disputed.
Aspirin tablets with enteric coating or containing ascorbic acid (vitamin C): other attempts to decrease the impact on the stomach through formulation. More solid rationale than simply buffering, but benefits are the subject of ongoing debate nevertheless. Research on this is slow because the medical community has all but switched to ibuprofen for analgesic effect.
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Re:But what about the massive environmental damage
both wrong. the periodic table has nothing to do with commonness.
From: http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/periodic/faq/what-element-is-most-abundant.shtml :
"On earth, oxygen is the most common element, making up about 47% of the earth's mass. Silicon is second, making up 28%, followed by aluminum (8%), iron (5%), magnesium (2%), calcium (4%), sodium (3%), and potassium (3%). All of the remaining elements together make up less than 1% of the earth's mass."
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Want to read more about this 30-year-old subject?
In case someone would like to read more about Triclosan and Triclocarban:
Triclosan and triclocarban: "Triclosan and triclocarban have been used as effective antiseptics [1] in soap since the 1960's."
From the National Institute of Health, a U.S. government web site: The finding of mutants that carry no cost to resistance implies that such resistant strains could persist in natural populations, even without the constant presence of triclosan as a selective agent. That was 6 years ago. The issues in the current article referenced by Slashdot are not new.
Some bacteria are naturally resistant to Triclosan, and always have been.
To see more about Triclosan and Triclocarban, put those words into the U.S. government's PubMed.gov web site.
As I said before, people use soap with Triclosan and Triclocarban to prevent body odor, fungus, and bacteria on the skin. People who work outside and people who can't shower every day are not going to stop using anti-bacterial soaps because the University of Michigan writes a misleading press release.
Saying, as the title of this Slashdot article does, "Anti-Bacterial Soap No Better Than Plain Soap" is misleading. The article referenced by the Slashdot article is titled "Plain soap as effective as antibacterial but without the risk" is not what the study showed. The study concerned infectious diseases, and ignored the real reasons people use Triclosan: To avoid body oder, skin bacteria, and skin fungal infections.
I have no involvement with the use of Triclosan and Triclocarban other than as an occasional user. -
Re:OH NOES!!!
The average right-winger has no introspection... Facts, logic, rationality and consistencey are all irrelevant to convincing others to believe in his twisted paradigm.
Actually Plato thought democracy is politically unstable, and even undesirable:
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/PlatoRep.h tm
And those thoughts came from a man that probably had a lot better teachers than we do, like Socrates, and the fact that he lived in a time when there was a democracy in Athens, so they knew exactly what a democracy was. Democracy was a lot closer to the people. You didn't need representatives, you represented yourself. Of course in those times most of the Greeks had slaves, only men could participate in debates, so it would be fair to say that those who were living in democracy was less than 10% of the total.
Why did Plato survive for so long? I think his ideas founded the middle ages, like Adam Smith's economic ideas founded the modern age.
It is interesting to note that few societies live in democracy. Most societies live in aristocracy (goverment of the best ones), they just do not agree with each other on who are the best to govern. Some think representatives (representative democracy) is the best form of government, most ancient sociaties think gerontocracy (govermnment of the older ones), others think a specific tribe (oligarchy), others think autocracy (each one does as see fit), others think anarchy (no government), others think the government should let things resolve themselves and the government should stop people from taking advantage of others (taoist form of goverment), others think goverments are created only for satisfying themselves and staying in power (Machiavelli).
The US typically think of democracy as "checks and balances", while latin american countries tend to be "presidentialistic" (meaning that most powers rest on the president). Presidentialistic democracy allows the president to veto a law if they don't like it, just by not publishing it, which is a form of not allowing reforms. Also some laws can be "dictated" by the president (hence "dictator"), making democracy more an illusion than a real balance of powers.
Gays are bad? He's gay.
"Nazis are bad? Then you are a Nazi." The logic of that reasoning is not very compelling.
Being gay is considered in the US and in most of Europe to be a choice rather than a disease. A hundred years ago doctors treated Histeria in women by repeatedly introducing their fingers into their vaginas until their faces turned red and their vaginas collapsed their walls into their tired fingers. They were so tired treating Histeria that they developed machines to do the jobs, way before electricity existed. Then they realized they had been masturbating women for decades and removed Histeria from the textbooks of diseases.
Children and teenagers are not allowed to express their sexuality in a natural way, then they are going to express it in unnatural ways. Degenerate behavior developed in school will only grow more degenerate in adulthood. A late example is Brazil where a thousand bishops were found guilty of abusing children, and we all know that catholic priest are not allowed to have sex, ever. That energy must go into somewhere else: degeneration. John Paul II even knew about pedophiles in the Catholic church and instead of removing them from the church and putting them behind bars, moved to other places where they would continue to do harm. Ratzinger condemned gays in the catholic church as not acceptable but condoned pedophiles as acceptable.
What people think now about all this? They probably don't know. But history is not kind with this kind of people. Ratzinger will probably be knows as the pedophile pope. -
Re:trade with russia
makes no difference to sea levels.
EVERY time this comes up I have to debunk this stuff.
Do you understand why things float in water? Because the mass of water they displace is equal to the mass of the thing floating.
So now you have very dense saltwater, and much less dense freshwater ice (do you understand why ice is freshwater? It forces the salt out as the surface freezes, so the saltwater below it is even saltier and denser) If you have 1kg of ice, it displaces 1kg of saltwater. Simple enough right? Now let's hit it with the math.
Density of fresh water at 0C: 999.9 kg/m^3
Density of ice at 0C: 915.0 kg/m^3
Density of Ocean: We'll take 1020kg/m^3, the minimum on the site, even though at the pole due to the salt concentration noted in the first link the density of the saltwater will be way higher, but any density over 999.9kg/m^3 means that the water level shall rise as I show below:
1 cubic meter of ice (915.0 kg) displaces 915.0kg of saltwater. 915.0kg of saltwater is 0.897m^3 (915kg/(1020kg/m^3)), which means that our 1m^3 of ice has .103m^3 above the surface of the water (so says the old sailor's adage of icebergs being 9/10ths below water).
Now, let's say the ice were to suddenly vanish. There would be a "hole" in the ocean with 0.897m^3 of air in it. Water would of course rush into the "hole" and the water level would drop by 0.897m^3 spread out over the entire surface of the ocean.
But let's say the ice were to melt. Our 915kg of ice would become 915kg of fresh water, which would occupy about 0.915m^3 (915kg/(999.9kg/m^3)). The hole the ice occupied previously was only 0.897m^3 large, which leaves us with .018m^3 more water than we began with. This .018m^3 would spread out over the surface of the ocean, raising the water level ever so slightly. (sorry, your "no difference" myth has just been busted.)
Don't forget that this tiny amount will be joined by water running off of Greenland, Antartica and other polar landmasses with ice on them, 100% of which will raise the water level. -
Re:Be thankful that you only find fibre
You are right. http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/gase
s /faq/heavier-or-lighter-than-air.shtml
I have no excuse for being wrong. -
well, I DO like it
assuming all the other data a typical periodic table [poster sized or wall chart] crams in to each element's box can be added to this depiction.
Don't you see that all the orbital or shells [that make for a confusing notation that chemists painfully memorize and physicists gleefully re-explain with Schroedinger's wave equations that mean nothing to most of us] are made much more intuitive in this representation? This new chart can still give those with no education in atomic physics the intuitive recognition of "what should come next", "what's missing" and "what will weigh more" as the old chart has. Consider that chem teachers are are told to regard as advanced any student who understands this notation[search for "Level 3, the student is able to...". Or considered how labored even a chem101 treatment of this material is.
One thing I will concede: Pauling's notion of "electronegativity", so useful to chemists, was clearly related to location of an element on the standard periodic table [changing most strongly as you traversed diagonally from lower left to upper right]...its not so clear here. -
Re:While the freezer probably isn't the best way..
>>Put salt in the water. The ice and chilled water mixture gets colder with salt.
>Errggh.... no it doesn't :}
Errgh.. yes it does.
Salt in the water just allows it to be a liquid at a lower temp.
Which means what? It means that you've shifted the equillibrium between ice and water to a lower temperature. Which will lead to the ice melting faster until the depressed freezing-point is reached. (after which the melting will actually proceed slower than before since the whole solution is colder)
The reason you use ice in an icecream maker is to allow better thermal conduction to the container with the ice cream.
I assume you mean 'salt in an icecream maker'. And that is wrong too.
But if you don't take my word for it (although you should; I've got a degree in physical chemistry), then perhaps you should go look at this entry in the General Chemistry Online FAQ, which adresses exactly this.
Perhaps you should read the whole thing before you start correcting people on basic chemistry. -
O.o you're kidding me, right?
OK Since I'm the one who submitted the article, please allow me to clarify some logical errors in your statements.
So, in order to have a large-scale hydrogen "economy", you need an alternate power source to make all that hydrogen in the first place.
News for you. Hydrogen is not "made". It's extracted. OK, putting the word jokes aside, I understand that what you mean is that *PURE* hydrogen is not found *NATURALLY* on Earth.
So we need an ALTERNATIVE power source to obtain it. So what? Electricity is not energy either! It's a bunch of electrons and possitive ions waiting for us to mix them together. We use turbines in dams to produce it. (kynetic energy -> electrical energy). We need engines (kynetic->chemical) to take out the oil from the deposits below Earth.
Didn't you study physics in high school? Just climbing some stairs transforms the kinetic energy you use to move, into "potential energy". And by falling you turn it into kinetic energy, too. And guess what, we're made of protons,electrons and neutrons, and all of these are made of quantums, which are discrete packets of *energy*.
EVERYTHING's energy, dude! So what's the mystery if hydrogen needs some alternate energy to be extracted from water or other compounds? Don't forget your thermodynamics lessons from college. All engines do is transforming one form of energy into another. And since no engine is 100% efficient, then we have what is known as "entropy", which constantly is increased across the universe.
So, what power source can we have to extract pure H2 from other materials? Well, we can have, for example, solar power.
Hydrogen can be built *instantly* with some electrolysis (either chemically or solar powered). I did it myself at home when i was a kid. You put these water-filled tubes in a bucket (upside down) ,insert the electrodes, add some acid as catalyst, and plug the wires into a battery. Voila! Oxygen in one, hydrogen in the other. Now Try making oil from wood with your chemistry kit.
The H2-generating process is sub-optimal right now (as was the vacuum tube in the 70's to act as a current switch), but technology always improves with time. And don't forget that big companies like Shell are investing millions of dollars into research.
The point with using hydrogen, is that:
a) It's combustible and can produce energy when reacting chemically with other elements/compounds.
b) Unlike fossil fuels, it doesn't require millions of years to be produced/extracted/whatever.
c) It's clean, it doesn't produce CO2 when burned.
Did you RTFA by the way? How do you think fossil fuels are made? Plants transformed H2O + CO2 + SOLAR POWER + nutrients into wood (and O2 as a byproduct). And these with time were transformed into hydrocarbons. Which consist of long hydrogen and carbon chains (not to be confused with carbohydrates - sugars -, which have oxygen in them).
The real energy in hydrocarbons is stored in the chemical bonds between the carbon and hydrogen atoms. By burning them, the combustion process releases these bonds. O2 + (long chains of C + H) ---> H2O + CO2. See? There's the hydrogen, and the C. What we're wanting to do, is get the carbon out of the equation. O2 + 2H2 ---> 2 H2O.
So, is hydrogen economy all that far-fetched? No, it isn't! We've been using hydrogen in our cars for a lot of time. The problem is that we're also using carbon.
Frankly, I'm amazed why your post was moderated as "insightful" (someone MOD it as overrated, please!). More mysterious than the universe is the human ignorance.
P.S. If this post is modded up, please do so as "informative". -
Re:X-PrizeFunny. Do you have any idea what you are talking about? I wonder.
The first site talks about launching a nuclear powered factory to mars to produce methane-based rocket fuel.
Methane is a LOUSY rocket fuel.
Does it say it can't be used as a rocket fuel? No, it's not ideal, but it's much easier to produce on Mars, and it has been used as a rocket propellant before. Have you ever heard the saying, the best is the enemy of the good? Sometimes you can use a merely good enough solution rather than wait for a technically superior one. Or do you think we should wait to develop anti-gravity first?
Well no. The NTP engine was NOT developed to near-flight status. It was never physically constructed, let alone tested. The operation of this device violates most nuclear test ban treaties, and operating one withing the Van Allen belt would eventually contaminate the Earth's surface with nuclear material.
The only nuclear propulsion system which of necessity would contaminate its surroundings is Orion. But NTP (eg Nerva) uses a nuclear reactor to expel any propellant you like (best with hydrogen though). The propellant in the basic design does get somewhat contaminated, but this can be eliminated using modfied designs. (BTW, that "almost humerous" site you mention is NASA's. Of course, you're smarter than they are
...) And FYI they did build and fire test rigs on the ground which showed that engineering-wise the principle is sound, but did not get a chance to test it in space before the program was cancelled.Even with this wonderous (but never actually built) form of propulsion, you merely cut down the amount of fuel. It still takes 6 months to get there because any faster or slower and you are increasing the distance to be traversed. Indeed the one study still has the same travel times I was talking about EVEN WITH THE NUCLEAR ENGINE.
Um, and so? Is there some law of physics which says a trip has to be made within a certain number of days? Why are you so hung up on the length of the trip? (Yes, I've read your original post about putting the astronauts to sleep and whatnot. I'm not sure why you think these issues are showstoppers when nobody in the field seems to.) And why do you think cutting down on the amount of fuel is a trivial concern? The more fuel you carry, the more fuel you have to carry to push THAT around. The point is to make the spacecraft smaller, lighter and CHEAPER. That's why we haven't gone to Mars, because every proposed mission from von Braun onwards has come with a $500 billion price tag attached to build some massive spacecraft, not because its "damn near impossible". Zubrin's plan can get it done much cheaper.
BTW, your "because any faster or slower and you are increasing the distance to be traversed" is silly. The standard 260 day travel time is the Hohmann minimum energy transfer orbit. If you burn more energy and go faster, you can indeed get there a lot quicker (you'll just have to burn even more to match orbits when you get there).
I don't get people like you. We can't do something right now, therefore it's impossible or not worth the attempt. With an ounce of imagination and historical awareness, you'd see how ridiculous this is.
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Re:X-PrizeThe first site talks about launching a nuclear powered factory to mars to produce methane-based rocket fuel.
Methane is a LOUSY rocket fuel.
Site number three is almost humerous, and I quote:
Conventional chemical rockets (currently used for the space shuttle) will be used to launch Mars-bound spacecraft into LEO. The propulsion system that will most likely be used by the Mars transit vehicles once in LEO will be Nuclear Thermal Propulsion. Developed to near-flight status in the 1960s, for any given velocity change, a nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) uses about half as much propellant as a chemical engine.
Well no. The NTP engine was NOT developed to near-flight status. It was never physically constructed, let alone tested. The operation of this device violates most nuclear test ban treaties, and operating one withing the Van Allen belt would eventually contaminate the Earth's surface with nuclear material. (Whether that is elementary at this point in light of previous atmospheric tests and Chernobyl I leave as an exercise for later.)
Even with this wonderous (but never actually built) form of propulsion, you merely cut down the amount of fuel. It still takes 6 months to get there because any faster or slower and you are increasing the distance to be traversed. Indeed the one study still has the same travel times I was talking about EVEN WITH THE NUCLEAR ENGINE.
Dear god, did you actually READ this material, or did you hope that merely siting several sites was going to give you creds?
There is a damn good reason it hasn't been done up until now: It's damn near impossible.