paulsutton

You can use Sodium Thiosulfate to clean Silver. Paul What happens if you dilute acetic acid ? So 100ml measuring cylinder, put 10ml of acetic acid and 90ml of water (probably distilled) you then get a 10% solution. Would that make a difference, same would go for Citric acid, which as that can be bought in powder solution you could perhaps make known molar concentrations. Paul

Thanks, this makes more sense now, so the antibiotics in this case would kill any, I guess, dormant virus cells, before they can either move elsewhere or be transmitted to others.

There is current an outbreak of Meningitis B in Kent, United Kingdom, According to the BBC the students are being given vaccines and also preventitive anti biotics. I may be wrong here, but I thought anti biotics are used to treat infections, and not as a preventitive measure (which it what vaccines are for), Am I right here or just not understanding something. Thanks Paul

Thanks for this, if nothing else it confirms there is no right or wrong way as there are multiple conventions, I know things change over time, some are agreed changes, simple things like spelling Sulphur as Sulfur for example Does all the different group conventions make study more challenging or would a university / exam board use one convention.?

I have asked this on Mastodon, as it was related to another post I made there, but I thought I would ask here too Group 4 elements on the @compoundchem@mstdn.social infographic Carbon, Silicon etc, https://www.compoundchem.com/2013/12/29/group-4/ Whereas Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_4_element Suggests group 4 is Titanium, Zirconium, Most periodic tables are group 1,2 on the left, then there is a jump over the transition to group 3, Boron, Aluminum, Transition element groups are numbered IIIB, IVB (which wikipedia lists as group 4) 2nd group of the transition elements. So which is correct here, or does it depend on the periodic table you are looking at? Paul

This lecture is scheduled for the 28th Feb, but looks interesting s I am sharing here. I have also asked on Mastodon if a recording will be available. AllEventsAstronomy vs The billionaire space race

ScienceDailySchrödinger’s color theory finally completed after 100 yearsA century after Erwin Schrödinger sketched out a bold vision for how we perceive color, scientists have finally filled in the missing pieces. A Los Alamos team used advanced geometry to show that hue,So if we have software that recognizes colour, does this mean that software would need updating to allow for any changes to ideas on how we perceive colour?

I read about this on Mastodon, (I think) sounds pretty cool. Hopefully extend the life of the mission.

I agree with not using AI for study, a while back I found two posts on Mastodon regarding this. So from what I remember from these: 1 A teacher / professor provided access to AI, students were given a question then asked to explain what was wrong with the AI answer 2. A teacher / professor, required students to, of course fully cite their document including if they used AI, I got the impression from the post that the students found this created far more work than needed so just handed in their essay having undertaken the reqiired work / study / reading to produce it. Asking AI for an answer to a question is fine, getting access to all sources of information is probably a lot harder, as each source then needs to be checked, cross referenced etc. On the other side of this the Overleaf LaTeX editor now has integrated AI to help find and fix errors in your code. As this deals with the actual formatting of the document, and not the document content, would this be a different use case?

Thanks, I will take a look.

I was thinking, so there is a general space for Q&A. Paul

Ah y ea, this is fine.

I agree, a good science practical can be life changing and inspirational. Even good demonstrations can do that. I did start off with my own chemistry set from about 10. l am not sure what grade 8 is but I am guessing it is around 12/13 If you don't want to put the effort in, perhaps university is not the place for you. I don't want that to sound elitist but why is it that those who want to work hard, l study hard and learn are at a disadvantage over others who don't.

Happy to help too, but agree with the advice above, do some of your own research / reading then ask specific questions here.

Would it be possible to have a deficated LaTeX section please, this could then cover Maths, Physics, Chemistry , writing all one place. Paul

Good point, the BBC have already said how hard it is to prove misconduct in public office, as for the sex crimes, the photos prove nothing really, It is about who knew what and when. The vultures are circling however, I have already had an e-mail from change.org asking me to sign a petition demanding he is removed from the line of Ascension to the throne, as the BBC have already said, this is not easy and the whole commonwealth needs to be involved in that process too, so could take months. I would much rather the government got on with running the country and making our laws stronger to protect people going forward in the future. You are right, due process has to be followed, that starts with investigation and going through any and all collected evidence to decide what is relevant to the case. Let's hope that happens, and they are left to do that. Paul

Thanks for this, I think the suggestions here are great and make a lot more sense than what I suggested, I agree Andrew has to serve time, ironically for him at His Majesties Pleasure. He is still innocent till proven guilty under UK law, so if this is sexual crimes, being complicit, or passing on sensitive documents to people. The law has to be followed as does due process, any actions could easily impact the legal case, which is the last thing any of the victims would want. I wonder how one picks a jury for such a case.

Just asking this, given the current reporting seems to suggest Andrew Winsor is incapable of understanding what he has done, who he has associated with and other actions are wrong. In the old days we may have used terms such as 'Stupid', but that was then and not in 2026. I just wondered if some of what is going on here is an indication there are some underlying reasons why he seems to deny all wrongdoing, and fail to understand the seriosness of the allegations against him. I am NOT trying to justify his actions or make the victims experience any less serious, this is more a question to see if anything he is demonstrations is an indication of being on some sort of Spectrum (Which I know is the wrong term, but I think people here will understand what I mean) On a wider note, this hardly seems isolated, Mark Zukerberg seems to be in denial that his products are addictive, despite enough evidence to bring the issue to court, Elon Musk is similar in that things have to go his way, same for President Trump. Autism has a wide range of traits, Paul

To me AI is a set of tools, we have Large Language Models, Machine Learning and other tools within that, I agree it is about asking the right questions, then asking again so we get close to the expected answer. Usually we use tools to save time, an electric saw has not made handsaws obsolete for example, we just use the right tool for the job we are doing. As with anything we need to know what to expect as output based on the input so we know it is correct. I don;'t see myself as a luddite, I just have not really had a huge use case for using LLMs to help with writing,, it is built in to OverLeaf so sort of useful for spelling /; grammar checking (or enhances that feature) as well as Writing LaTeX documents. As in a previous thread, using AI to read an e-mail write a summary then write a reply seems either lazy or evidence we are subjected to too much information, so we need to change how we do things across the board rather than trying to make managing it easier. Paul

I agree here, however between forums such as this, the fediverse and other places I feel there are pockets of people who expect higher standards or we work at high standards. When it comes to learning and knowledge it takes effort, hard work (in many cases). If we write at an academic level, we have to cite sources of information and there are constraints on that (Wikipedia is not an academic source). Thanks to social media etc attention spans seem to have got shorter, not good when you really want to deep dive in to a topic. I am not ready to abandon all hope just yet, but do share your sentiment.

If you are talking to a passenger and driving, you can say 'be quiet for a moment' if the situation demands it, so you are able to focus on driving or other drivers.

Revealed: 10 new insights in climate science https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Space_for_our_climate/Revealed_10_new_insights_in_climate_science Some of these are probably quite worrying, what is more worrying is the number of people who think all this climate change stuff is a hoax etc.

While by law anyone over the age of 18 is an adult (at least this is the case in the United Kingdom), I think it can in some cases be up to age 25 for people with some disabilities in terms of the law. However, there now seems to be evidence that the human brain does not fully develop until later (as in after the teenage years) Maturation of the adolescent brain https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3621648/ I am not an expert at this, but some of the topic did get me thinking that I have read about this before. Just sharing. Paul

I can't find anything on this either, plenty of press reports but nothing in what would perhaps be a science journal etc.

I recently found the LaTeX elements package, which is apparently built on the bohr package which I used and posted a question about the othe day. I have taken some of the example code blocks n the elements documentation and got it to produce a table of elements 1-118 along with some information on the elements. I have made a blog post about this on my website, but I don't think I am permitted to share links to personal blogs I uploaded the project files to a codeberg repository so I can share here, as this may be useful. https://codeberg.org/zleap/elementtable Interestingly I tend to view properties as melting point etc rather than atomic number etc. Anyway hopefully it is OK to post this and if it is useful then feel free to use etc. The output is (as you would expect with LaTeX) quite nice. Paul