Sodium-potassium alloy aka Nak is fun stuff. It's a liquid at roomtemperature, looks like mercury. Ever see teflon burn under an argon atmosphere? Yeah, NaK fun stuff. Good times good times.
I would add to that comment by noting that Fox News was the only news channel to be fined by the british government for being biased during the pre-war build-up. The British have law requiring news programs to be unbiased, unlike here in the USA.
It was developed as a ozone same halon replacement, so no worries there.
As further explanation, the presence of fluorine atoms alone doesn't make a ozone depleting compound. CFCs are a problem due to the chlorines getting into the upper atomosphere, the clorine radical is a catalyst for the decomposition of O3. The fluorines aren't an issue since F radicals are too reactive to exist for a long period of time.
Also, the 3M compound is too heavy to make it up to the ozone layer, CFCs were a combination of inertness to the troposphereic environment and being light enough to rise to the ozone layer.
Like as in the naming convention, not chemically. The naming rules say you name the cation with a -nium suffix followed by the anion ending in -ide. ammo-nium hydrox-ide same rule generates hydro-nium hydrox-ide
It's actually a simple binary of Hydrogen and oxygen, so Hydrogen oxide is more correct.
I like hydrohydroxic acid because it's the term we used when talking to my old college president, a lawyer, who agreed that is was quite dangerous. He was quite the classic lawyer... that shithead.
Sulfuric acid comes under the rules of naming polyatomic anion acids. hydrosulfuric acid is H2S. HCl is namded as such because simple binary acids are named that way. It has nothing to do with water reactivity. Hydro is used to indicate oxidation state of the anion. Chloric acid is HClO3
Actually Chemistry nomenclature is a fun game, as a number of different systems are valid. The catch all rule with things like water is it goes by a "common" name, like ammonia or methane or salt. For your amusement some other ways of naming water: Hydrogen oxide (the isotope of hydrogen, duetrium has duetrium oxide)
dihydrogen monoxide (it is valid by one sytem which is used to name binary compounds of nonmetals. ex: N2O5 = dinitrogen pentoxide)
Hydrohydroxic acid (in the acid system, like HCl)
hydrogen hydroxide (base nomenclature, like Sodium hydroxide)
hydroxic acid (like H2S is hydrosulfuric acid)
Hydronium hydroxide (like ammonium hydroxide)
anyhows, I think you get the point. From a practical stand point this exact problem makes it a pain to order chemicals from a catalog often times!
It is true that HOOH is generated in small quantiites in metabolism, but there are also many mechanisms for controling the radicals generated by this process (and the DNA damage as well.) The biggest issue I really have is the claim that magnetic fields are accelerating a chemical reaction. This effect just hasn't been shown in chemistry, and people try stuff like that all the time. (and then I read them and wonder how it got published!) The magnetic fields needed to influence even a couple of electrons are millions of times stronger (on the order of af several Guass) Look up esr electron spin resonace for evidence of this. Magnetic fields cuased a major problem I would expect NMR scientist to have an alarmingly high rate of cancer since they deal with extremely high magnetic fields on a regular basis for years (some for 30+ years now.) But we just don't see that.
The only difference I see as a possiblilty (which doesn't weaken my argument) is that they are using a 60 Hz sinisoidal field. But since it takes a million time stronger field just to influence a few electrons, this is like one person trying to push a train.
Being a Ph.D. chemist this is one area I feel qualified to comment on. They are making claims that the magnetic field effect has to do with free radicals generated by iron. The first tip off that they have no clue is referencing the Fenton Reaction. This reaction has nothing to do with the area they are working in. It is using iron to catalyze the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. They are just picking some reaction that sounds like it may involve DNA damage and referencing it. This works because everyone reading it doesn't really understand the mechanics of the reaction.
Also they meantion several times that other studies with the same type of magnetic field only stronger have been not shown any DNA damage. If it is a chemically induced cleavage then more field strength MUST equal more damage. The fact that it doesn't makes the studies questionable. In additoin to this, my understanding of DNA analysis is that DNA is pretty sensitive, it seems more reasonable that they are committing a systematic error in their data collection. The no name journal that this is published in also speaks to crappy research.
Sorry to say but science is full of quacks, unless it is in a top level journal take any findings with a grain of salt.
Nuclear chemistry is doing chemistry with radioactive materials. It doesn't involve smashing atoms at all, it is generally an subdivision of analytical chemistry as the major use is elemental analysis on very small samples. The growth of mass spectroscopy has basically killed the field as well. Hardly anyone studies nuclear chemistry anymore.
And as for there being jobs in chemistry, think again. The chemical industry has been hit harder than IT by the economic downturn. I haven't seen a posting for a chemistry job outside of the pharmaceutical field in months. Most of the companies are hoping not to go belly up.
The problem with manipulating atoms is that they are "fuzzy", in the sense that we don't know exactly where they are. This is quatum mechanics coming in to play. Our current understanding must treat atoms statistically. This brings up serious theoretical issues with nanoassemblers.
As a response to those you point out that "Biology does it all the time," they have a misunderstanding of the differences between nanofabrication and molecular catalysis. Cells build things by using molecular templates and selective enzymic catalysis, these are very chemical in nature. The idea of nano assemblers treats atoms as if they are bricks that can be stacked. Enzymes aren't magic, they are in the simplest sense templates that allow reactions that could already happen to occur faster.
Don't fall in to the trap of simply relabeling technology with new buzz words, catalysis isn't nanotech.
The current thinking about nuclear arms development is not to build more powerful weapons for the sake of thems selves, but to stay so far ahead of nations thinking about obtaining nuclear weapons that they will be hopelessly behind. Nuclear programs are VERY expensive, if a country has no hope of even being competitive, it will be much harder for them to justify the expense. In shoter terms, keep the lead so large that no one will want to play. i don't totally agree with this thinking, but from a certain perspective, it makes sense.
I think most all who read slashdot aren't 100% opensource anyway. If VA needs to sell something to exist by all means let them! encourage them!
Companies are like people, they may have different sides without being untrue to any.
Five years ago I was on academic senate in college (a small liberal arts school), and this was THE debate. The two sides both had good points, and the side you landed on seemed to have more to do with your view of the current state of education.
Those who wanted lower requirements had valid points: forcing students to take classes they have no interest in diminishes the "quality" of the class, professors are left to trty to develope interest in a field instead of teaching new material and really getting in depth about a subject.. Being one of the students more interested in the subjects I took, this appealed to me.
THhose in favor of requirements noted that undergraduates typically don't realize what different subjects really are, and may find that they are actually interested in different areas, having requirement eliminates the argument that advisors have with their students. The discussion becomes "ok what are you going to take" instead of "you really should take other things. Seeing how direction less my fellow students were, I could relate to this as well.
The swing is how you see our educational system, it developed originally that few went to college, only those who truly wanted more education went. Therefore it was easier to convince them to take a rounded education, as they had a thirst for learning.
The problem occurs when the number of students going to college surges becuase "you must have a college degree to get a good job" whether this is true or not. College became an extentsion of high school, and the mission became vague. People began to value the degree over the education. Being educated involves learning how to learn, a dgree is a piece of paper howing you put up with bullshit.
It is important to remember that job training happens ON THE JOB, not in college. College is and I believe should be about extenting your horizons and understanding. You have the rest of your life to learn job related skills, use college to investigate life (which means beyond classes as well.) A good friend of mine majored in history, and got a job directly out of college as a computer programer, without ever taking a CS class. How? people can be trained thinking is difficult to train.
I installed LinuxPPC on my iBook last year (which ran great I might add) but I still needed to boot to OS 9 to use the mac programs, so I played with Mac-on-Linux, it worked great with out a lot of bloat. My only difficulty was networking the emulated MacOS through Linux, it was a bit challenging, as well as printing, but these are problems every emulator faces. I remember something a while back comparing MOL and the classic enviroment. The Classic enviroment of OS X is smoother, but I remember MOL being faster.
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Sodium-potassium alloy aka Nak is fun stuff. It's a liquid at roomtemperature, looks like mercury. Ever see teflon burn under an argon atmosphere? Yeah, NaK fun stuff. Good times good times.
I would add to that comment by noting that Fox News was the only news channel to be fined by the british government for being biased during the pre-war build-up. The British have law requiring news programs to be unbiased, unlike here in the USA.
It was developed as a ozone same halon replacement, so no worries there.
As further explanation, the presence of fluorine atoms alone doesn't make a ozone depleting compound. CFCs are a problem due to the chlorines getting into the upper atomosphere, the clorine radical is a catalyst for the decomposition of O3. The fluorines aren't an issue since F radicals are too reactive to exist for a long period of time.
Also, the 3M compound is too heavy to make it up to the ozone layer, CFCs were a combination of inertness to the troposphereic environment and being light enough to rise to the ozone layer.
You are thinking of the naming of metal cations, these are nonmetal cations. hence hydronium, ammonium, sulfonium, oxonium, carbonium, etc...
In metal cations the suffix indicates oxidation state, ferric is Fe(II) ferrous is Fe(III) and so on, there is no good general rule, just generalites.
Like as in the naming convention, not chemically. The naming rules say you name the cation with a -nium suffix followed by the anion ending in -ide. ammo-nium hydrox-ide same rule generates hydro-nium hydrox-ide
Get it?
It's actually a simple binary of Hydrogen and oxygen, so Hydrogen oxide is more correct.
I like hydrohydroxic acid because it's the term we used when talking to my old college president, a lawyer, who agreed that is was quite dangerous. He was quite the classic lawyer... that shithead.
Sulfuric acid comes under the rules of naming polyatomic anion acids. hydrosulfuric acid is H2S.
HCl is namded as such because simple binary acids are named that way. It has nothing to do with water reactivity. Hydro is used to indicate oxidation state of the anion. Chloric acid is HClO3
Actually Chemistry nomenclature is a fun game, as a number of different systems are valid. The catch all rule with things like water is it goes by a "common" name, like ammonia or methane or salt.
For your amusement some other ways of naming water:
Hydrogen oxide (the isotope of hydrogen, duetrium has duetrium oxide)
dihydrogen monoxide (it is valid by one sytem which is used to name binary compounds of nonmetals. ex:
N2O5 = dinitrogen pentoxide)
Hydrohydroxic acid (in the acid system, like HCl)
hydrogen hydroxide (base nomenclature, like Sodium hydroxide)
hydroxic acid (like H2S is hydrosulfuric acid)
Hydronium hydroxide (like ammonium hydroxide)
anyhows, I think you get the point. From a practical stand point this exact problem makes it a pain to order chemicals from a catalog often times!
now get your chemical nomenclature right: it's hydrohydroxic acid.
Just like HCl is hydrochloric acid and not Chloric Acid...
It is true that HOOH is generated in small quantiites in metabolism, but there are also many mechanisms for controling the radicals generated by this process (and the DNA damage as well.)
The biggest issue I really have is the claim that magnetic fields are accelerating a chemical reaction. This effect just hasn't been shown in chemistry, and people try stuff like that all the time. (and then I read them and wonder how it got published!) The magnetic fields needed to influence even a couple of electrons are millions of times stronger (on the order of af several Guass) Look up esr electron spin resonace for evidence of this. Magnetic fields cuased a major problem I would expect NMR scientist to have an alarmingly high rate of cancer since they deal with extremely high magnetic fields on a regular basis for years (some for 30+ years now.) But we just don't see that.
The only difference I see as a possiblilty (which doesn't weaken my argument) is that they are using a 60 Hz sinisoidal field. But since it takes a million time stronger field just to influence a few electrons, this is like one person trying to push a train.
Being a Ph.D. chemist this is one area I feel qualified to comment on. They are making claims that the magnetic field effect has to do with free radicals generated by iron. The first tip off that they have no clue is referencing the Fenton Reaction. This reaction has nothing to do with the area they are working in. It is using iron to catalyze the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. They are just picking some reaction that sounds like it may involve DNA damage and referencing it. This works because everyone reading it doesn't really understand the mechanics of the reaction.
Also they meantion several times that other studies with the same type of magnetic field only stronger have been not shown any DNA damage. If it is a chemically induced cleavage then more field strength MUST equal more damage. The fact that it doesn't makes the studies questionable.
In additoin to this, my understanding of DNA analysis is that DNA is pretty sensitive, it seems more reasonable that they are committing a systematic error in their data collection. The no name journal that this is published in also speaks to crappy research.
Sorry to say but science is full of quacks, unless it is in a top level journal take any findings with a grain of salt.
wtf is nuclear chemistry?
Nuclear chemistry is doing chemistry with radioactive materials. It doesn't involve smashing atoms at all, it is generally an subdivision of analytical chemistry as the major use is elemental analysis on very small samples. The growth of mass spectroscopy has basically killed the field as well. Hardly anyone studies nuclear chemistry anymore.
And as for there being jobs in chemistry, think again. The chemical industry has been hit harder than IT by the economic downturn. I haven't seen a posting for a chemistry job outside of the pharmaceutical field in months. Most of the companies are hoping not to go belly up.
The problem with manipulating atoms is that they are "fuzzy", in the sense that we don't know exactly where they are. This is quatum mechanics coming in to play. Our current understanding must treat atoms statistically. This brings up serious theoretical issues with nanoassemblers.
As a response to those you point out that "Biology does it all the time," they have a misunderstanding of the differences between nanofabrication and molecular catalysis. Cells build things by using molecular templates and selective enzymic catalysis, these are very chemical in nature. The idea of nano assemblers treats atoms as if they are bricks that can be stacked. Enzymes aren't magic, they are in the simplest sense templates that allow reactions that could already happen to occur faster.
Don't fall in to the trap of simply relabeling technology with new buzz words, catalysis isn't nanotech.
they are listening better these days, it is a good trend, the open source guys they hired may be changing the culture for the better after all. cool.
damnation, everything good goes away doesn't it?
The current thinking about nuclear arms development is not to build more powerful weapons for the sake of thems selves, but to stay so far ahead of nations thinking about obtaining nuclear weapons that they will be hopelessly behind. Nuclear programs are VERY expensive, if a country has no hope of even being competitive, it will be much harder for them to justify the expense.
In shoter terms, keep the lead so large that no one will want to play.
i don't totally agree with this thinking, but from a certain perspective, it makes sense.
I think most all who read slashdot aren't 100% opensource anyway. If VA needs to sell something to exist by all means let them! encourage them!
Companies are like people, they may have different sides without being untrue to any.
Five years ago I was on academic senate in college (a small liberal arts school), and this was THE debate. The two sides both had good points, and the side you landed on seemed to have more to do with your view of the current state of education.
Those who wanted lower requirements had valid points: forcing students to take classes they have no interest in diminishes the "quality" of the class, professors are left to trty to develope interest in a field instead of teaching new material and really getting in depth about a subject.. Being one of the students more interested in the subjects I took, this appealed to me.
THhose in favor of requirements noted that undergraduates typically don't realize what different subjects really are, and may find that they are actually interested in different areas, having requirement eliminates the argument that advisors have with their students. The discussion becomes "ok what are you going to take" instead of "you really should take other things. Seeing how direction less my fellow students were, I could relate to this as well.
The swing is how you see our educational system, it developed originally that few went to college, only those who truly wanted more education went. Therefore it was easier to convince them to take a rounded education, as they had a thirst for learning.
The problem occurs when the number of students going to college surges becuase "you must have a college degree to get a good job" whether this is true or not. College became an extentsion of high school, and the mission became vague. People began to value the degree over the education. Being educated involves learning how to learn, a dgree is a piece of paper howing you put up with bullshit.
It is important to remember that job training happens ON THE JOB, not in college. College is and I believe should be about extenting your horizons and understanding. You have the rest of your life to learn job related skills, use college to investigate life (which means beyond classes as well.) A good friend of mine majored in history, and got a job directly out of college as a computer programer, without ever taking a CS class. How? people can be trained thinking is difficult to train.
I installed LinuxPPC on my iBook last year (which ran great I might add) but I still needed to boot to OS 9 to use the mac programs, so I played with Mac-on-Linux, it worked great with out a lot of bloat. My only difficulty was networking the emulated MacOS through Linux, it was a bit challenging, as well as printing, but these are problems every emulator faces. I remember something a while back comparing MOL and the classic enviroment. The Classic enviroment of OS X is smoother, but I remember MOL being faster.