exchemist

Thats interesting. Is it the cube? I had assumed (without thinking much about it) a square relation, based on the ke in the wind. How does a cubic relation arise?

Well that is true of course: methodological naturalism is key. But surely, leaving God out of scientific studies of the natural world only requires pretence if you are someone who thinks that God is constantly tinkering with nature? If you think that, then I quite agree you have no business doing science, but it is not what mainstream Christians (or Jews?) think - at any rate those that have given the issue any thought in relation to science (most people do not think about science much, one way or the other). I'm less sure about other religions - though I imagine Buddhism would not have a problem.

I don't really follow this. Palin wasn't exactly a scientist, so perhaps we can put her to one side. I can't see that any "pretence" is involved unless you are some sort of benighted fundamentalist that believes that all of your ancient scripture has to be taken literally, word for word. I don't know much about religions other than Christianity, but I do know that mainstream Christian belief (and, I rather think, many strands of Jewish belief too) regard a fair number of the Old Testament stories as allegories, or otherwise not strictly historical. This has been the case among at least some Christian theologians since Origen in about 200AD and has been a mainstream view for centuries. If you talk to any thoughtful cleric from the Catholic, Anglican/Episcopalian, Methodist or Presbyterian traditions, you will find they don't find science and Christian belief incompatible.

Yes, pretending to oneself does imply intellectual dishonesty, I think. . But what I am really after is why you claim that any pretence would have to be involved. You have not explained that so far. Whereas I have explained why there need not be any pretence. Where is my explanation at fault, in your view?

But where is the "pretence"? There is nothing in most religious beliefs that demands a God that continually intervenes in natural processes. Considering natural processes as unfolding according to laws that we can discover is something that can be done without any intellectual dishonesty on the part of the believer, surely?

Must admit I don't see how that is an answer. It seems to be a very ambiguous remark, raising immediately the questions of what evidence, and evidence of what, you are alluding to. The way I see it, for much of the history of science the uncovering of order in the physical world was seen as suggestive of the intricate work of a creator - and was celebrated as such, cf. Haydn's c.18th work Die Shöpfung (The Creation). Latterly, though, we have reached the point at which all this intricacy of nature is seen to stem from the operation of a relatively few, fundamental, orderly features of physics (what we sometimes call the "laws" of physics). So as far as the natural world is concerned, one is left with the idea that it is just these orderly features of physics that are responsible for the rest of "creation". Einstein and Spinoza seem to have identified this basic order in nature with what is commonly called God. But religion is not principally concerned with the creation of the physical world anyway. It is much more about providing a guide for individuals to live their lives by. This is much more to do with the subjective experiences of individuals and their interactions: the world of human feelings, harmony with nature, spirituality and so forth. The physicalist can dismiss all that as just the operation of the machinery of the body, and a resulting edifice of fantasy, but that does seem to write off a lot of what people find important.

This is rather an odd remark. Plenty of famous scientists in the past have been religious believers, and plenty are today too, without needing to "pretend" about anything.

I can't help, though at least I now know what a potometer is, thanks to your enquiry. So thanks for that. From reading about them briefly, it seems to me that anyone providing you with tips for their use will first of all need to know what type you are using.

Well "Tina", comment removed by mod. I bet you can't provide a link to a reference showing Beall's "apology". Furthermore I note you do not deny the Wiki statement about the mass resignation of the editorial board in 2014.

20mph is quite a strong breeze, for a city house. 10mph would be a more realistic average, I should have thought, judging by the daily wind speeds in London weather forecasts at least. Which presumably reduces the power by a factor of 4.

My understanding is that in general they are all different combinations. For instance camembert requires both bacteria and a particular penicillium mould (a fungus) to develop its characteristic flavour, rind and texture.

Re ( d) I do not believe you can calculate ΔH for the decomposition from the information you have been given. I assume you have to look up some enthalpy values. It is not clear to me what is meant by the 3 different values you quote. Your ( e ) is a reaction scheme for the formation of N2O4 from oxygen and nitrogen, but it is not a reaction mechanism for the decomposition of N2O4, which I think is what you are being asked for. I think you need a step to activate the molecule and then a step by which it dissociates.

Yes. That is what we used to do on the lubricating oil plant, when changing a blending vessel from one product family to another that was not chemically compatible.

Get psychiatric help or take your meds.

In French they do speak of un jaune d'oeuf (et un blanc, bien sûr). I don't know about other languages.

Agree with your ( a ) but your ( b ) seems to overlook the fact that the rate has already decayed away to some extent after one minute has elapsed, compared to its initial value, because by this time the concentration of reactant has already fallen appreciably. I think you need to go back to the rate expression for a 1st order reaction: - d[A]/dt = k[A], (A being the reactant i.e. consumed with time) from which you get: [A]/[A₀] = exp[-kt]. And take it from there.

OK sorry if this was a bit too much. Just take away the message that the bonding in graphite is partly covalent and in effect partly metallic along the planes, so that is why it can conduct heat and electricity along the planes. Exception to rules are what make a subject fun, but they can be confusing to the beginner.

Is that it, then? All this fuss, just to argue for inserting the f block in between the s and d blocks - which any chemist already knows is where it fits? Or is there any more to this?

In principle it should have some chemical properties in common with bismuth, though modified by the relativistic effects that influence orbital stability in very heavy elements, so may resemble thallium in some respects. There is a write up of expected chemical properties in the Wiki article on this element. But of course, if it were stable, we would already know it was not Moscovium.😉

OK. These seem to be linear analogues of the planar conducting structure I was describing in graphite: https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/GB/en/technical-documents/technical-article/materials-science-and-engineering/organic-electronics/light-emitting-polymers i.e. long 1D chains of conjugated aromatic rings, built up from dye molecules, rather than 2D sheets.

The exception in that case is due to the electrons in the π-bonds. To go back a step, benzene is often drawn with 6 carbon atoms in a ring, with alternating single and double bonds (the Kekulé structure). But actually that is misleading. All 6 bonds are identical. You can consider each of the 6 atoms as sp2 hybridised, i.e. forming 3 σ-bonds at 120deg to one another, 2 to neighbouring carbons and one to hydrogen. That leaves one electron per atom in a p-orbital, perpendicular to the plane of the ring. These p-orbitals overlap with their neighbours to form a delocalised system, all the way round the ring. You can see this in the anomalous magnetic properties of benzene and other so-called aromatic molecules with this type of structure. You can generate a "ring current", causing the electrons to flow round the ring and create a magnetic field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatic_ring_current The same is true of fused aromatic rings, e.g like the ones in the diagram below: Graphite is what you get if you have an effectively infinite set of these fused rings, forming a sheet (like chickenwire), with successive sheets of rings stacked on top of each other. The bonding between sheets is only weak van der Waals attraction. This is why graphite is slippery (it has applications as a solid lubricant). Regarding conduction of electricity (and heat*) what you end up with is a metal-like situation, with a "sea" of delocalised electrons, able to move across the sheet of rings freely. The difference from a metal is that the electrons are confined to one plane. They cannot easily jump from one sheet to the next. But along the plane of the rings you have metallic behaviour. *Graphite is used for the heat shields of spacecraft, as it conducts heat well along the planes, but very poorly between one and the next. So it is ideal! OLEPS? Wot dey?

A changing magnetic field will classically induce an EMF. If a conductor is available, a current may then flow. But in the case of an electron in a molecular orbital, (i) this does not produce a changing magnetic field and (ii), as I've pointed out, there is no conductor if the bonding is covalent.

Give me an example of a porous liquid, then, and I'll withdraw my remark.

Aha, my troll detector has gone off. Nobody serious would think a 5cSt liquid could be porous.

When you say 5cSt, you don't say what temperature. If you mean 40C, that is quite a low viscosity lubricant. It will leave only a thin film, which I think won't collect as much dirt and dust as a more viscous product. Silicones themselves are fairly inert with respect to weak acids (e.g. citric, acetic), at least at the concentrations found in foodstuffs. I am not aware of any micro-organisms that metabolise silicones, but they most certainly could grow in any food particles or droplets that adhere to machinery parts wetted by the lubricant. But all this is just my opinion. I am not expert on lubricants for the food processing industry. I think you would be better off to direct these questions to people in the industry with relevant experience of silicone lubricants.