exchemist

Yep, that's the one I would go for as well, for the same reasons as @studiot. As the units of entropy are energy/temperature, say J/K, it gives a sense of thermal energy becoming less able to do work as its temperature drops, so a sort of heat dissipation. It's a bit harder to see how this applies in the case of entropy of mixing, but in that case too each component it becomes spread out through a larger volume, so its internal energy becomes more dissipated.

Looks like a homework multiple choice question. What do you think and what makes you uncertain of the best answer?

Thanks, that's very informative. But according to the link, neutrinos are detected, not by beta decay, as @Heis3nbergsaid, but by emission of Cerenkov radiation, in which, apparently, both electron and muon neutrinos can show up but not, for some reason tau neutrinos. They don't say why, but I can imagine that it would be less likely a particle with such a large mass will be accelerated to speeds greater than the local phase velocity of light in the detection medium.

Exactement. The Immaculate Conception of Mary has nothing to do with parthenogenesis, however.

Who claims "science is about reality", and what was the context in which this was said?

Do muon and tau neutrinos also participate in beta decay reactions, then? Or, when you say "similar", do you mean different from beta decay but in some way analogous? Or is it that they do, but to a much lesser degree, due to their greater mass (which you referred to earlier)? Is this a cross-section effect? (I don't know anything about this stuff.)

Why is it that we can only detect electron neutrinos?

That would seem to indicate there is not much to worry about, at current levels of exposure.

Oh so you mean candle soot. I see. I'm not sure I would expect that to do anything. And I've just tried it- having taken the elementary precaution of removing the metal foil and the metal disc securing the base of the wick - and nothing happens.

I don't follow you. Dioxane is present in some cosmetic preparations, at <10ppm. At that concentration, yes, I would rub it on my face without worrying too much. Except that, being a bloke, I don't use cosmetics......... unless you count shaving lotion.

What graphite is this?

Because it does scientific research and produces results. You can read about what people studying it do here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology They don't just speculate about life on other planets. They study life here in extreme environments, to see what range of environments could support the kinds of life we have here on Earth. They study the environments of other astronomical bodies. They look at things such as the chemistry of meteorites and comets, etc. And they publish the results of these studies.

Well pretty different, it seems to me. Dioxins, being aromatic, are chemically related to phenols, while dioxane is an ether. Dioxins are persistent pollutants while dioxane biodegrades. Dioxins bioaccumulate, whereas dioxane apparently doesn't. These differences in behaviour are presumably related to dioxane being water soluble while dioxins are lipid soluble.

And your petulant sarcasm, in response to getting your previous wrong idea rejected here, is not hostility? Look, if you want to make a serious point, and are willing to respond constructively to the responses you get, people like me will be more than happy to take you seriously, whether you can spell or not. But you have yet to show any sign of being able to do that - and by your own admission this thread was not started in that spirit. If you take the p***, you must expect that others will do so too.

It's spelt "meant", and "your". The sarcasm (not really irony) of your post was very obvious, but as it raised no serious point of discussion I thought I might as well correct your spelling.

It's spelt "exist".

Hang on, that's about dioxins, not dioxane. They are quite different, surely.

Why would you want anything with similar properties to dioxane? So far as I am aware, dioxane is not used to make cosmetics. Trace levels (<10ppm) can sometimes be present, as a byproduct of the manufacturing process for some of the other ingredients, but it seems to serve no purpose in cosmetics.

What's to stop it pulling the other tree, the one used as the anchor, out of the ground instead? Or do they carefully select a tree that they think is more firmly embedded than the stump? Of course, there are other methods nowadays:

To return briefly to the other points you raised, yes, I'm quite happy with the idea that theories involve reasoning from assumptions that are based on generalisations from observation. I still maintain that axioms is the wrong word for them, as these things are based on observation, and subject to being abandoned if later observations show something different. They are purely empirical. I also fully agree that there are questions science can't answer, for want of suitable observations to test any hypothesis, the origin of the universe being one of them. Whether this will always be so, I am not sure. There does seem to be a fundamental difficulty in finding an explanation for the all of the order ("laws") in nature - though some "laws" turn out to be derived from others. Where I think you go off the tracks is in suggesting that we must have an explanation for the origin of the universe, even though science cannot provide one (First Cause and all that).

I don't understand why you say "chlorine is still king", as if borates and chlorine were alternatives. As I understand it, there is no suggestion that use of borates is an alternative to chlorine. They seem to be a buffering and water conditioning agent, not a disinfectant. Why has use of borates been abandoned?

What I mean really is that in science "truths" are generally not claimed at all. You don't find people claiming "truth" in science papers, or even in university textbooks. What you find, generally, is people claiming that such-and-such is "consistent with" some model, or with a set of observations, not that it is "true". When I say that in science all "truth" is provisional, it is a way of saying it is not claimed as such. Truth is much more the currency of the logician or philosopher, rather than of the empirical mindset of the scientist. But anyway this is good, because we seem at last to be on the same page regarding what science seeks to do. I feel it is important to keep the idea of models (of aspects of nature) in mind. History shows that models in science are often found wanting and revised or replaced, Newtonian gravitation and mechanics being classics. What I find important to note about these, however, is that we still use them, all the time. So it not that they are "wrong", having previously thought to be "right", but that we now recognise they are incomplete and have limitations in their scope of application. In chemistry, which is far messier than physics on account of the complexity of the multi-electron atoms of the Periodic Table, we quite commonly use more than one model for the same thing, according to circumstances. We are aware that each is a simplification or an approximation, and we're used to pulling out the best model for the job at hand, knowing that they are connected at a deeper level and what the limitations of each will be. In fact, I wonder sometimes if the chemist is even more consciously aware than the physicist of the idea that theories are just models.

Just a minute. Can we please first of all agree that I am not asking you to "elevate science and theories to the status of unquestioned absolute truth" ? Secondly, are you now willing to accept what I have been saying, which is that in science all "truths" are provisional, there are no "absolute truths" and that there is nothing that cannot be challenged? If we can agree this, we can proceed to the other points - if we both have the stamina.

I think you and I have got to clear up the last point before it is worth discussing anything else. What you accuse me of is the polar opposite of what I have been saying to you throughout. - I have been saying that all scientific theories are mere models of aspects of nature. - I have been saying there are no axioms, just propositions, open to testing by observation. - I have been saying these so-called "laws" are made-made representations of aspects of the order we perceive in nature. I have, in effect, been saying there are no absolute truths in science whatsoever, and that everything is open to challenge. Yet, you seem determined to hear me saying what your own prejudices apparently assume I should say, while ignoring what I have actually been saying. Why?

Indeed. So, also taking into account the other responses, it seems you are right in thinking that charcoal is fairly inert, biologically, though as some posters have pointed out it does tend to adsorb substances and can be a good substrate for the growth of micro-organisms. But, to return to the question you originally asked, only a small proportion of the carbon in cellulose is converted to charcoal in a fire. Most is burnt to CO2, or CO, which itself can burn to CO2. So only a very small amount of carbon is sequestered in the form of charcoal. (In fact a lot more carbon is sequestered by conversion into carbonates, in the sea.) Meanwhile, a great deal more CO2 is being liberated, both by the burning of fossil fuels and by natural processes, e.g. volcanism. If you are interested in the various natural processes involved, you can look up the "carbon cycle" and find descriptions of the carbon sources and sinks and how they inter-relate:https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle