John Cuthber

Do any of the starting materials absorb at 1641 and 1562? If you started from an acid halide does the corresponding acid absorb there? If not then the evidence is pretty good that you have an amide.

"No, the baby boomers (at least in the US) are a WW2 thing. They're retiring right now" That's debatable, the peak seems to be in the 60s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birthratechart_stretch.PNG More importantly, if you are right, then they will be even more convincingly dead by about 2050 when the magic graph hits some arbitrary number. I still think this is focusing on the wrong issue. Our population is aging; how do we pay for pensions and old folks homes?

I know this looks a bit like a plug, but I have no commercial links to these people, honest. I'd be happy to get just about any of the t shirts etc from here. http://store.xkcd.com/

Never mind the details. You are just plain wrong. Zn is more reactive than Fe.

The "baby boom" was on its way out when I was born (1965). So the babyboomers will retire about 2030. If they live to be 80 (most won't) they will be dead by 2045. That graph predicts a "problem" in 2050. Since practically all the babyboomers will be dead by then and most of them will have died long before then, I don't see how they can (directly) be the cause of the problem predicted for 2050. Of course there's every chance that the regulations will have changed by then. The most obvious solution is to raise the retirement age which should increase tax revenue and reduce social care spending. It doesn't matter if the healthcare costs are met by a nationalised healthcare scheme like the NHS or Medicare or by private healthcare insurance. The costs of an aging population will rise. New developments in medicine will often also increase the bill. Somebody has to foot the bill, and arguing about the relative merits of public or private insurance is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

What's that stuff doing on a science website?

"Somebody... Please... Just shoot me now." Can I shoot them instead please?

Can I just check on something here? Prof. Hawking (who is known to be very clever) thinks the NHS is a good thing. Someone, who is unwise enough to fail to check on a simple matter of fact, thinks the NHS is a bad idea. Anyway, I'm glad to hear about the award of the medal.

Conceptually, escape velocity is quite easy. You don't need the maths to understand that an object falling to (for example) Earth will only end up with a finite velocity when it hits the ground no matter how far it falls from (because once yo are a long way off the extra enery gained from falling tends to zero). If you reverse that process and throw something faster than that finite velocity, it escapes. "Astin, you can help me with this one since you know what I want to do." No, I'm afraid that Astin can't help you unless Astin can rewrite the laws of physics..

I think both move round their common centre of gravity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_mass

There are lots of possible solvents. What do you want to do with the solution?

"How certain are you that Ronald Reagan was, in fact, a President of the United States? " A bit more so than these folks.

I don't think the Canizzaro reaction works with acetaldehyde. Formaldehyde is fine, but with acetaldehyde you deprotonate the alpha carbon atom then the anion atacks the carbonyl of another acetaldehyde. Something like this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldol_condensation Then you get further reaction to form polymeric sludge.

You must have posted that while I was editing my post to include "or both".

You raise a valid point; people will say that. But only once.

"How much of the food processed globally is given back to the earth in the form of natural decay? " All of it (apart from the tiny amount sent into space.) Where else could it go. If you think about it, it's a really silly question. The only question is whether the guy asking is a fool, a troll, or both.

I have an idea. we set up a new rule. Anyone can post a "we didn't go to the moon" type message provided that they supply evidence for it as proof. If, however, they post a "proof" that has been discredited before they get permanantly banned from the site. That would keep threads like this nice and short. Any takers?

I thought I was the board's resident Communist.

"Most plastic is made from petroleum and is then heated in high-temperature furnaces and then it soldifies. " It's a whole lot more complicated that that. Almost all plastics are made from materials that are temselves made from fractions distilled from petroleum. The distilled products are generally colourless and the compounds derived from them generally are too. The only plastic I can think of that is "naturally" black is bakelite. but even in the case of bakelite the colour is due to degradation products- in principle the polymer could be made colourless.

I think you have got that the wrong way round. What you need is an English to American dictionary. (or were you just trying to piss off the Welsh?)

A plasma is just ionised gas. Light a candle and put the probes of a good ohm meter in the flame. It conducts so it's ionised so it's plasma. The temperatutre's about 1400C

If you add too much reagent you might get a mess of mixed chrome(III) +Chrome(VI) compounds.

I suspect that nobody else does.

Bishadi, as I pointed out, magnetic fields do affect the brain. Your word-salad attempt to show why they don't is, therefore, rather silly.

"and so, for an electron to leave any atom, what must be 'upon' that electron?" An electromagnetic force needs to act on it. Anyway, if memory serves me after about 20 years of not needing to know. The answer is that the overlap integral that you can calculate from time dependent perturbation theory isn't very big. Not very helpful as an answer, but at least it's not gibberish like Bishadi's post.