exchemist

Don't be an arsehole. The procedure you were suggesting could easily put someone in hospital.

On the contrary, the countries of Western Europe are by far the best to live in, anywhere on the planet.

Yes. If the rolling road measured the power (torque x revs) output of the engine at the driving wheels, then if you measure the rate of fuel consumption and you know the calorific value of the fuel, you can work out what proportion of the calories burnt end up as mechanical power. It will be 25-30%, I expect. There will be some errors due to frictional losses in the transmission, so you will slightly underestimate the output of the engine itself. In a mechanical transmission those losses are small - <2% if I recall correctly - , but with a torque convertor they may be more significant. There may also be some errors due to the fuel not being 100% burnt to CO2.

Indeed. So you should not suggest hazardous procedures without at least pointing out the hazards.

Then you should not be recommending this procedure to a person whose expertise you do not know, on a public forum.

This strikes me as a terrible idea. Capturing large quantities of these gases is risky enough, but for an amateur to attempt to react them is definitely a recipe for an explosion.

How does this work? When you electrolyse NaCl, you evolve H2 and Cl2, and you are left with NaOH, i.e. an alkaline solution.

Instantaneous consumption is given by the rate of consumption, isn't it? The units of which are volume per unit distance, sure, but it does not seem to me to add anything to express this as an area, even though dimensionally that is what it is.

Yes I think so. What insight does this division provide?

Well the pH shows a value of about 1, with indicator paper, which is very approximate. You would get 1.3 with 0.1M oxalic acid: https://www.aqion.de/site/ph-of-organic-acids. So that doesn't prove much on its own. But it is true that the precipitate looks blue-white, which looks right for copper oxalate. The reaction is referred to here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_oxalate as a method for making copper oxalate, with sulphuric acid as a byproduct. (This video is by somebody different - a Dutchman by the sound of him. I can't place the earlier one.) If it works with copper sulphate it might work with zinc sulphate, seeing as that too is insoluble in water.

Hmm, a YouTuber who makes a point of trying to get round EU laws. Not sure I approve. But purely from the chemistry point of view, if the oxalate is insoluble and precipitates, then that should drive the equilibrium to the right, for a while. As the acidity increases though, less and less of the oxalic acid will dissociate into oxalate ions, so the thing will slow down and stop at some point.

I tend to agree. Everything has to have some value and the fact that a constant it has the value it does is no more improbable than any alternative value. To give a trivial example, the fact of my personal existence relies on a highly "improbable" chain of coincidences, regarding how my parents were conceived, how they happened to meet and so forth. But nobody feels the need to argue my existence must have been "designed" by some great plan, because of its intrinsically low probability.

OK, understood. Though this seems to be a very roundabout way to make it. Can you supply a link to show us where you are getting this route from? Zn oxalate seems to be insoluble in water so I imagine it might work in the same way.

Ah, possibly not. Regarding whether it works, I was wondering about that. If an insoluble chelated metal oxalate is precipitated from an aqueous solution, I guess you are left with an acidic solution with sulphate ions, i.e. dilute sulphuric acid. But it can't be a way to generate pure sulphuric acid.

Why are you doing this? Sulphuric acid is readily available, surely?

What bothers me is that this looks like a reduction overall, yet I can't see what is being oxidised. Unless it is the methanol.

I don't remember much organic synthesis, I'm afraid. I can see how you will get an enol (or enolate, under alkaline conditions) but how do you think the oxygen is removed?

It's in trouble then. They have no teeth, so how is it going to deal with the tail?

Yes, it is one of my go-to references for this kind of discussion.

A transatlantic ship crossing takes 4 days (on a fast, purpose-built ship), during which each passenger has to be given a cabin and meals, as if in a hotel, with all the associated staffing costs, but at sea, so a lot more expensive than on land. The cost of that has to be compared with a 7hr flight, with 2 in-flight meals provided. Planes can be tuned round in a couple of hours at each end, so a single A340, taking 250 people each flight, can transport 1000 people in each direction during a 4 day period. That's hard for ships to beat. And that's before you take into account of the value of time for the passenger, as others have pointed out.

I think it's the sort of question that people who believe in the "hard problem of consciousness" sometimes ask. It seems to me that if one takes the word "like" literally, the colour red is sui generis - it is what what it is - i.e. it is not "like" anything else - except for another similar colour, perhaps. But I think the question is actually intended to invite an answer to the (to my mind unanswerable) question of how to describe the sensation of experiencing the colour red. Another similar, well-known one is Nagel's: "What is it like to be a bat?" I assume they mean a flying one rather than a cricket bat*, but perhaps it doesn't matter. Massimo Pigliucci has little time for the "hard problem". He doesn't think it is a problem at all, but arises from a category error: https://philosophynow.org/issues/99/What_Hard_Problem I'm inclined to agree. *Reminds me of a scene in one of those 1950s schoolboy books, "How to be Topp" etc, in which a boy is not paying attention in biology class, when hibernation is being discussed:- Teacher: Molesworth! What are you doing? Molesworth: Me sir? Nothing, Sir. Teacher: Molesworth, what does a bat do in winter? Molesworth: Er, er.......er, it splits if you don't oil it, Sir.

Depends what they are doing. Filming police is ethical. Trying to provoke police into reactions that are subsequently misrepresented on social media is unethical. However many journalists and media interviewers habitually misrepresent interviewees, which is just as bad. There’s a lot of unethical behaviour about, unfortunately.

I think you have a good point in principle, regarding the general case of two masses attracted together, but in the case of objects falling towards Earth, the movement of Earth is negligible, as its mass is so much vastly greater than the object that is regarded as "falling" towards it. So if you really want, you might say the usual description is an approximation, but you might run the risk of earning points for pedantry.😀

Agree with much of this - except that I am not convinced by the "experienced air force personnel" argument, which is one that is frequently aired. These military people are not trained in careful evaluation of data in a scientific manner, but in quick evaluations biased towards the detection of potential adversaries. It has been shown in several cases that they can be wrong, due to being misled by such effects as parallax. But this has come to light as a result of careful analysis after the event. I must say I am a sceptic about the whole thing, due to there being only a tiny residue, in % terms, of unexplained cases, while the vast majority have been shown to be nothing special. What it seems to me this conclusively shows is there is a great capacity for human beings to misinterpret what they think they see, even aided by instruments. This, I think, is the only tangible outcome of all this research effort. I have nothing against the exercise of evaluating those outstanding cases, where the data permits it. But we should not fool ourselves: there will always be a residue of unexplained incidents, simply through lack of data to determine what was responsible. For this reason, it will always remain impossible to convince the confirmed believers that there is nothing out there cf. JFK, Diana, Bermuda Triangle, etc.

It is all in a day's work for one politician to claim another is telling lies, or to make assertions that indeed turn out to be lies. Let's have a proper reference for this claim.