John Cuthber

What are you on about? Ever heard of a high pressure mercury lamp? They have relatively large amounts of mercury in them and they work quite well at producing UV light. Anyway, as has been said, the little Hg in an ordinary lamp isn't a problem. If it's an old enough lamp then the Be in the phosphor might be.

Probably too late to be any use but here it is. Carbon Black works according to this. http://www.cabot-corp.com/cws/businesses.nsf/234648fdcbb818db85256c2e007a6a22/fdbb31882f4001cc85256c7a0050228f/$FILE/Molded.pdf#search=%22carbon%20black%20pigment%20ABS%22

OK, It's been a while so I apologise for bumping this but... If this quote about Lister "He also made surgeons wear clean gloves and wash their hands before and after operations with 5% carbolic acid solutions. Although it should be noted that he first persuaded Robert Goodyear to manufacture rubber gloves for his nurse since the carbolic acid caused her to suffer from contact dermatitis. Instruments were also washed in the same solution and assistants sprayed the solution in the operating theatre. One of his conclusions was to stop using natural porous materials in manufacturing the handles of medical instruments." from wiki is right then Lister was using 5% phenol, that's 50g/litre. Last time I checked 50,000mg/L was not 5 times as concentrated as 100 mg/L. I apologise for underestimating the difference- the stuff Noty was talking about is 500 times more dilute.

What would you want that for? It's not the easiest of syntheses because you would need to break a P-O bond.

I think that procedure probably gives reasonably clean nucleic acid- certainly if there were a lot of trash in it, it wouldn't be a stringy goo like DNA. I think it's not too dificult to hydrlyse DNA to its constituents. Enzymatic hydrolysis would be neatest but I think a strong base would do.

The rate law applies to the speed of reaction. The law of mass action applies to the extent of the reactiuon.

IIRC the carbolic acid that Lister used in the pioneering days of antisepsis was 1% phenol ie about 100 times more concentrated than the solution you are using. Since his patients (and the doctors) survived spraying it around, I think it's fair to say that you don't need to worry too much. Of course, as with all toxic chemicals, it's prudent to keep exposure low.

"And seems the nasty habit of naming things wrong as "phosphors" when there is no phosphor at all strikes again. " OK, what do you think a phosphor is?

"I wonder if alot of these animals generally seek shelter when they hear low frequency sound, as associated with thunderstorms, and this helps them deal with earthquakes by coincidence." If you are a cow and there is a thunderstorm you are in trouble. You can't rely on going into a nice steel framed building (certainly across evolutionary timescales you can't) and you don't really want to stand under a tree. If there's a wood then going into it and hoping you aren't under the tree that gets hit would be good. Going down hill would also be better than uphill. If you are a cow that knows an earthquake is comming your best bet is to stand in the open (so nothing lands on you); this would be sucidal in a thunderstorm. If it's going to create a tsunami then you really want to go up hill rather than down. The behaviour that would be adaptive for (relatively common) thunderstorms would be ill advised if there's a (relatively rare) earthquake. Btw, what's all this rubbish about 5 senses? You can close your eyes and touch your nose with your index finger. You cant hear, see, taste smell or feel it coming- how can you do this? How do you know when your bladder is full or when you are hungry? People have a lot more than 5 senses. It's entirely reasonable that cattle and other animals sense the oncoming earthquake. It's also possible that after an earthquake people think "That's odd, my dog was acting strange just before the quake; he must have known it was comming." Of course, the dog might have known that next door's bitch was on heat. Coincidences like that keep the psycics and astrologers in business.

IRIC CaSO4 is slightly soluble and CaCO3 is rather less so. It might be possible to convert CaSO4 into CaCO3 by boiling it with excess Na2CO3 (this trick works with PbSO4). That would give Na2SO4 (very impure because of the Na2CO3) and CaCO3 (which is easily dissolved with acetic or hydrochloric acids).

I wouldn't go for putting KOH in the cabbage. Many odours are caused by acidic materials and laso a lot of materials get oxidised by air more readily when they are in alkaline conditions- this might also get rid of the smell.

Re KMnO4 and methanol- "just mix the two, maybe heat a little. i dont think heat is required. you'll end up with a precipitate. just gravity filter" I don't think that's a good idea. Mixing solutions of the 2 in water is a safer bet.

Butane isn't the stuff I had in mind. There are lighters that run on petrol- highly refined petrol at that- called "lighter fluid". There are also lighters that use butane. AFAIK zippo don't do butane lighters.

I think that the stuff sold as fuel for "zippo" type lighters is pretty much the same stuff as pet. ether.

Tonic water fluoresces because of the quinine it contains. IIRC carotene is fluorescent too.

The label on my cooking oil tells me that it's 91.4 g of fat per 100 ml and it's 3382KJ/ 100 ml. Since it's practically pure fat that gives 37KJ per gram. Near enough to 1000 seconds of power for a 40 Watt lamp for each gram of fat. If all Mr Blane lost was fat he would have lost about 10KG in weight. Proteins store roughly half the energy on a weight for weight basis. (My personal opinion is that he also lost credibillity, but I don't think that has an energy value).

If you only need to point out that some things are more than about 8 or 9 thousand years then you hardly need science http://www.sonic.net/bristlecone/dendro.html Shows you that it can be done by counting tree rings.

Is assisted suicide legal where you live? Seriously, does hot conc H2SO4 oxidise carbon? If so would boiling the stuff destroy the impurity?

Make a saturated solution of barium sulphate, filter it, evaporate off nearly all the water. The excess BaSO4 will now be present as a solid.

I don't see why that makes a difference. Surely you could take one of those hot air baloons, stitch the bottom shut (leving only a small hole) then fill it with air.

When I did this (many years ago) as a high school experiment we got coke bottles fitted with bungs, and short lengths of rubber tubing. We weighed the bottles (etc) full of air then drew the air out with a vacuum pump (a vacuum cleaner doesn't produce a nearly good enough vacuum), tied the rubber tubing to seal out the air then re-weighed the bottles. I remember being quite suprised at how much the air weighed -it's about 1.2 g / litre. For most classrooms the air in the room probably weighs more than you do. (BTW, Evon1020v I may or may not think mathematically, but I can't for the life of me see what measuring "g" has to do with the question.)

There are only 2 common metals that disolve in NaOH solution ; Zn and Al. Zn doesn't work nearly as well. The solution of aluminate or zincate will give a ppt of the hydroxide if you neutralise it with acetic acid. Zinc hydroxide will dissolve in ammonia solution.

There is another way of separating racemic mixtures. It doesn't always work but it has historical importance because it's the first method that got reported (By Pasteur iirc). With some racemic mixtures the molecules prefer to associate with others of the same type so, if you crystalise the stuf slowly, you get 2 sorts of crystals- one set are right handed and the others left handed. You can then sort them out with a pair of tweezers (Of course this only works because you can tell left from right and that, in turn, means that you are chiral).

Probably the most important bit of information in trying to find out what it's made of is "where did you get it?". If you found it in the street it probably isn't anything rare or expensive. If it came from a bottle labeled "zinc" then it's not unreasonable to test for zinc.