John Cuthber

I thought Yes was a rock group, famous for long songs with incomprehensible lyrics.

well the answer is ammonia NH3, it is poler which allows it to become NH4

I guess you also didn't get the bit about responding in less than an hour.

H2O is polar and forms H3O+

A few of the others are too, but I don't want to spoil the fun.

"Yes, those Republicans, they sure know how to preserve the sanctity of marriage. "

Yep, Ask that Clinton bloke.

Rich powerful men are generally successfull at getting their rocks off. It doesn't matter how they came to be rich and powerful. Lots of politicians will end up playing away from home and lots of them will get caught.

I really can't see how it matters if they are left or right wing.

(and BTW, my views are a long way to the left of any mainstream US political party)

If you look at the score for "research quality " in physics (however that's measured) you will see that there are plenty of other universities (including UCL) between Oxford and Cambridge, so talking about "Oxbridge" doesn't make much sense here. Also, neither Oxford nor Cambridge wins on that score so "UniversityofLancasterNottingham" anyone?

Talk to me after you have been mugged because some drug addict needed $50 to go buy his drugs and get his fix.

 

Or better still, go talk to a close family member of a drug addict. Ask them how torn up they are inside because their loved one died from an overdose. Or how they felt when said family member stole from them to get their drug money. Or ask a father how he feels about his daughter pimping herself out because she needs the money for her drug habit. There are lots of other victims...

The problems you speak of are down to the illegality of drugs rather than drugs per se but anyway, can I remind you that I did say the whole "durgs: right or wrong" discusion belongs in another thread).

Meanwhile, back at the topic.

Re "Talk to me after you have been mugged because some drug addict needed $50 to go buy his drugs and get his fix."

I am doing. Thankfully, because I live in the UK where guns are banned I was as well armed as he was. I won the fist fight because he was stoned. Neither of us was seriously injured.

Explain to me again please, how it would have been better if we had both had guns.

"It isn't at all difficult to kill someone with drugs either."

OK, so I forgot to add "at 20 paces"

The difference is that I pretty much need your consent to kill you with drugs.

The "just say no" campaign doesn't work against bullets.

(Incidentally, being addicted to at least some drugs isn't a death sentence in the way you suggest- but that's a whole different thread)

When I see someone write "Also, do you think that if the citizens of Iran were as well armed as the citizens of other countries (UK and US for example) " I wonder if they know what they are talking about. I live in the UK and I'm not sure that I know wnyon who owns a gun. If they do then it will be a shotgun. No pistols, no rifles.

I agree with Captian Panic. Guns are essentially designed to kill people so ther fewer of therm there are aboput the place the better.

I know people will still kill each other anyway but why make it easier?

Re "Why is easy access to a gun much worse than easy access to drugs? "

Because, while I may find it rather easy to kill myself with drugs, it's rather difficult to kill someone else. This inequality does not apply to guns.

Was that really a serious question?

While I'm at it, there's the old argument that if you outlaw guns then only outlaws will have them. For a start it isn't true- you can still arm the police.

In the UK it's pretty close to the truth to say that "only outlaws have guns".

Great!

This makes it nice and easy for our police to spot the outlaws and shoot them. (Theoretically, they arrest them, but the public doesn't usually care if gun carrying crooks get shot by the police.)

In the bad old days before they had maches they used tinder boxes. You struck a flint against a piece of steel then let the sparks fall onto tinder. Blowing on the glowing tinder could just about get a flame out of it. You then used this to light slivers of wood coated with sulphur because it's easy to light. Modern matches include sulphur for the same reason.

That's what I mean by "easy" in this context.

The fact that it burns better in pure oxygen isn't under debate here; most things do.

Its pretty hard to burn pure sulfur just in air. You need higher temperatures and a high concentration of oxygen.

 

Bollocks.

Sulphur is relatively easy to burn.

Estimates vary but the ignition temperature is about 200 to 250 C

I'm reserving judgement on whether or not he's a crackpot until he answers my earlier question.

"Why is the "simplest" explanation a non-Biological one? What is so "complicated" about "hey, man, Martian microbes make Methane" ?"

 

Because rocks are much more simple than life forms.

Was that meant to be a serious question?

If he really thinks that some form of life is the "simple" explanation for methane then, in my view, he's a crackpot.

I think we can generally agree that the stuff journalists write is often tripe.

What I was talking about was the posts that say things like

"you'd really just be left with a nice neat conical hole in you, a little tiny hole for the entry would and a gaping chasm as an exit wound"

or

"What I was getting at was the ridiculous notion that someone got hit by a 30,000mph object and didn't explode into a shower of gore."

I have heard that dihydrogen monoxide was used by the Russians when they were doing research on biological weapons.

On the domestic level, you don't prepare it; you buy it. Ordinary bleach is an impure solution of sodium hypochlorite.

I think the larger point is that we don't breathe pure oxygen.

Or, at least, we don't breathe it for long. ;-)

I would expect anybody being hit by a supersonic bullet to suffer critical existence failure.

That's odd because people often survive being hit by bullets.

If the path of the rock only intercepts the outermost thousandth of an inch of my hand, how much damage will it do?

Oh I know that.

 

What I was getting at was the ridiculous notion that someone got hit by a 30,000mph object and didn't explode into a shower of gore.

Is it really really dark where you are?

If not then I thionk yopu may be under conmstant bombardment by photons traveiling rather faster than that. Not to mention cosmic rays etc.

What I don't understand is why everyone seems to think that, just because it's moving really fast, an object can't strike a glancing blow and do relatively little damage.

uh, yes it does, i have some on me right now

 

its also known as ammonia water, ammonical liquor, ammonia liquor, aqua ammonia or aqueous ammonia

 

any of those ring a bell?

They all ring a bell.

Ammonium hydroxide still doesn't exist.

Measure the elctrical conductivity of the stuff and you find it's a bit short on ions. If you look at the raman spectrum you find there's nothing new covalent there either.

I don't think "the guy" looked at the date of the message he replied to.

BTW, oxygen is toxic.

Last time I checked, ammonium hydroxide didn't exist.

Bubble air through it. Some of the H2S will be oxidised, some just driven out of solution.

Just make sure to check it's clean before you poison any fish.

Widdekind,

Does "infinitessimally favour", practically speaking, mean anything?

The likelihood of life being quite common is (marginally) favoured by our being here.

True, but not news.

Also, as D H says, you missed out the possibility that life is quite rare. I think that is the most likely option (I accept that's no more than a hunch) and you seem not to have even considreed it. Why not?

I'm uncertain about naming it after Heisenberg.

I understand that the problem isn't analytically soluble.

Sure there were. They were called "wagons", and while they didn't use fossil fuels, they were actually *worse* in terms of energy efficiency because, well, there's no "off" switch on the horse or horses needed to pull them.

 

The need to move large objects, or large quantities of objects, to very specific places (moreso than rail or boat, at least) has been around since the dawn of agriculture, and will continue long after cars are all electric. The issue is how to make those same vehicles more ecologically friendly and energy efficient.

A (literally) 4 horse-power wagon hardly counts as a gas guzler.

Imagine the manure problem if a typical vehicle was drawn by 100 horses.

That's the essential problem here; too much energy use.

I don't know the terminal velocity of a pebble, but it can't be that different from a hail stone of the same size.

Assume, for the sake of doing a rough calculation, that the meteorite is 9 times denser than ice (not a bad guess if it's iron).

I'm pretty sure that the viscous drag rises as the square of the velocity and, for an object 9 times denser, the force would be 9 times greater so the velocity would be 3 times greater.

A bit of searching gave me this data

"Research has found that a hailstone's terminal velocity is roughly proportional to the square root of its diameter, with a diameter of 1 cm corresponding to a terminal velocity of 50 km/h (Munich Re, 1984)."

so I gues about 150Km/Hr or 100 mph is the right ballpark as ophiolite said. (or rather less if it's not as dense as iron)