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exchemist

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Everything posted by exchemist

  1. Silverfish use cellulase, I think.
  2. And what do you think of the answers you have been given here? Do you now understand?
  3. You are right: I stand corrected. My full version of the OED gives two meanings for the verb (summarised by me) as: to render intricate, or to entangle or ensnare. The OED however describes it as "now rare" and all but one of the examples of its use are from before 1750 (the exception being a Dundee journal, in 1900). So using it as a verb today is a fairly bizarre choice, liable to confuse.
  4. China’s handling of Covid is an example of autocratic hubris. How will they get out of it? And, longer term, they are sitting on a huge demographic timebomb.
  5. China has its own problems. The move to a cult of personality sows the seeds of downfall.
  6. Indeed, I see they have succeeded in prizing Kazakhstan away from Russia's orbit and into their own. Russia itself could one day end up being a satellite of China!
  7. But with E1 it will be a carbocation, surely, which Me can stabilise as alkyl groups are slightly electron-donating? (I admit it's many years since I did this stuff.)
  8. If it's E2, surely there is no charged intermediate, is there? If it's E1, I think I'd expect Cl- to leave and the resulting carbocation to be stabilised by Me. Or am I getting mixed up?
  9. That's because it's been eliminated in the formation of the double bond.
  10. OK but won't the Me group influence the proportions of 2-3 vs. 3-4 double bonds? What effect do you expect it to have?
  11. China and N Korea are ruled by totalitarian despots like Putin, so the answer is obvious. Vietnam has not sided with Russia but is maintaining a neutral stance. The rest of your post is too incoherent to respond to - though a sort of blurred hatred of the West seems to come through.
  12. Ah, is this about the Zaitsev Rule?
  13. What does "do an E2 with NH3 on the 2-metyl-3R-Cl-4S-F pentane"mean? E2 I assume means an elimination reaction, somehow involving ammonia, but what are the substituents on pentane and what were the 2 products? There seems to be a .jpg file attached which we can't see. If you use a few more words, it may help to clarify what this is about.
  14. This is so idiotic I burst out laughing.
  15. Yes there's a lot of pious nonsense talked by Truss about not putting companies off investing. But the business cases on which these oil and gas, or renewable generation, investments were made never envisaged profit margins anywhere close to what they are earning at present, thanks to Putin and the war. I am convinced the major fossil fuel companies expect to have some of it clawed back. But they are not going to volunteer to hand it back, obviously, because of duty to their shareholders.
  16. Yes, you're right about 3.7. I was quoting only an approximate figure. I used to make "nitrogen tri-iodide" * at school, which we painted on the stone steps to the lab. When the teacher arrived his heels crackled and emitted little puffs of purple smoke, which was most gratifying and psychedelic (this was 1971). * More properly an adduct: NI3.NH3, apparently. My tutorial partner at university had made picric acid at school, which was the basis for a rather a good end of term prank. The school song would be sung, to piano accompaniment, and there was a bridging passage between the verses, employing one note that was not otherwise in the piece. So they painted that piano hammer with picric acid and when the moment came there was a satisfying BANG, accompanied by a cloud of dust, dead ladybirds etc., from the interior of the piano, followed by an eerie pause, before the pianist hesitantly took up the tune again.
  17. It's obviously possible, but how would the community have confidence in it? Furthermore the issue is not so much integrity, but quality control. There is plenty of poor science done in good faith, i.e. with integrity, but also little or no value. There are occasional scandals of bad faith or fraudulent science but the main job of peer review is to maintain quality, isn't it?
  18. Yes it’s LisaL, Gaiagirl etc etc, back again. The funniest one from this person was the man allegedly strangled by his own thymus gland. And the various spontaneous combustion ones (Frank Baker et al). http://www.sciforums.com/threads/a-biologist-told-me-that-the-water-molecule-is-too-small-to-cause-an-immune-reaction-is-he-correct.165491/page-3#post-3703935
  19. This is unfolding just as I predicted. I hope everyone is enjoying their turn on the Theorist magic roundabout. He can keep it revolving almost indefinitely. I'm saving my remaining 50p coins for something else.
  20. exchemist replied to studiot's topic in Politics
    All modern neonazi movements (German, Austrian, Italian, Danish and now Swedish) are far-right, so far as I am aware. Normally, xenophobia is the bedrock of their appeal.
  21. exchemist replied to studiot's topic in Politics
    Well it's nice to have a right wing party that espouses democracy, I suppose. Though as it has neonazi roots, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. For a long while, it seems the Scandinavian countries were largely insulated from immigration by their languages, and by their relative lack of a colonial past. But now for some reason they are getting their share, and seeing some disturbance to their traditional social cohesion. This is the reaction. A similar story is playing out in many countries.
  22. This poster is Theorist, or Pbob or countless sock puppets, back again to waste everybody’s time. He’s using the usual method: make a garbled sciency-sounding assertion to start the ball rolling, and then lob in further chunks on other topics at intervals, to keep respondents dancing and struggling to keep up with the deluge of errors and misconceptions. He has no interest in learning, so you are wasting your time. The sole object is to make the scientists dance and exploit their goodwill for his amusement.

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