Gilded

Presumably OC spray (pepper spray). Edit: Meh, iNow was faster.

Lots of misnomers in biology, if they count. "Oh, it turns out that the yellow giant shrew is actually a lizard and not yellow at all but changing the name would be such a hassle."

Back in high school I felt that biology to be really tedious (didn't take more than the obligatory courses), got something like 8/10. I was very interested in physics at the start (got a 10 for the first course) but then I got a bit bored, ending up skipping electromagnetics and most of relativity/theoretical physics, I think in the end I got a 8/10 too. In chemistry everything just fell into place, even though I didn't get a very good grade in the high school final exam I still had a course average of 9.8 or something which was rounded up to 10. (Too bad the course average doesn't really matter at all, the final exam, Abitur, is more important.)

In the rare case that Finnish people talk to each other, sarcasm is in most cases expressed in exaggerated tones too. Something people like to do is add a long "yeah right" sort of thing in the beginning of a sentence which reduces the need for exaggerated tones somewhat. Sometimes words comparable to "indeed" are used, especially if speaking in a "mockingly praising" tone. The same words are sometimes used in a humorous tone to acknowledge sarcasm. Overall I don't think it differs too much from English.

No indeed, mostly because they do exert a gravitational force on other particles. Gravitons don't, but they're hypothetical particles.

That's not 118 though, but 122. Element 118 (ununoctium) is very unstable, and was detected a few years back. And there hasn't been any confirmation on 122 (or any elements above 118) as of yet.

Yeah it sounds logical that it would happen. What also worries me is the possibility that the bubbles would act as nucleation sites themselves which would expand them even more. Although I'm not sure if this happens to a significant extent with small bubbles in an idealized mixture of just water and CO2.

I've also come to like Flower of Scotland (although it's not an official anthem) after I heard the Alestorm cover.

As I was watching CO2 bubbles accelerating upwards in my glass of coke and wondered how fast they'll eventually go in a very tall glass, in other words what would be a bubble's terminal velocity, I realized that although it would be interesting to calculate an estimate I needed hydrodynamics, which is something I hate. I've been brushing up my rather non-existant previous hydrodynamics knowledge but I'm still a bit confused. Are small bubbles (let's say 0.001m in diameter) practically rigid spheres? That would certainly make things easier, as I could just use the "normal" terminal velocity formula, right?

Oh noes, don't pull QM into this context. But yeah it has something to do with it, IIRC it's what gives electrically charged particles a magnetic moment.

QFT. (No, not Quantum Field Theory)

I found a picture of my sister's dog: http://xs221.xs.to/xs221/07466/sani.jpg I suppose that's an ergonomic resting position to dogs. Or maybe she's just possessed or something.

Hmm. A nitrogen atom attached to three other atoms (with single bonds) can obviously capture a H+ to form an ammonium ion, but it won't make it a very strong base; even ammonia is a weak base. I'm not sure about phosphate groups in this respect though. They are slightly polar but I've forgotten how this H+ capturing business goes with double bonded oxygen.

Doesn't anyone pick random adjectives from dictionaries anymore?

Multiple choice questions are quite annoying if they have more than one technically correct answer, which seems like what has happened here. When this happens, you're better off with the "most correct" one, which in this case is NH2- since it's an incredibly strong base compared to phosphate ions. Also, if this is a homework assignment from a chemistry book you should also call the people who made it. Inform them of this in a polite manner, such as exclaiming "WTF IS THIS S***???"

Damn the Man for not letting me sterilize myself in the process of making glowy things! Oh well.

To start with, electrical charge is a fundamental property of some particles. As to what makes electrons and protons have the charges they do, electrons are fundamental particles with charge of -e (e being the "fundamental charge"), where as protons are composite particles containing one down quark which has a charge of -1/3e, and two up quarks that have charges of +2/3e (therefore giving a proton the charge of +e). An electric field is a vector field, and two opposing fields create an attraction between the particles, like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EfieldTwoOppositePointCharges.svg Some of the physics expert here can explain it more thoroughly if you want to know more.

I've used Java but I've forgotten basically all about it.

Hmm, this might be a bit problematic then. I suppose americium from smoke detectors could work, if I had thousands of smoke detectors to dismantle.

Since this probably requires knowledge from someone who knows more about radiation I decided to post this here, feel free to move this to a more suitable category. Anyway, I've been thinking about doing something with radioluminescence. The question is whether one can do something like this with just zinc sulfide and (reasonably "hot") powdered uranium ore or do you need something uncomfortably active like radium in those infamous radium paint clocks? Of course, a reasonably safe choice would be tritium encased in a phosphor-coated capsule but I can't see myself getting tritium any time soon (except by buying tritium keychains which would kinda defeat the point of what I'm going to do). I'll settle for pretty much anything you can see in a dark room, and which doesn't require some sort of magnifying lens.

I'd like to add that even with nuclear fusion it's quite impractical in terms of energy if you want to make something heavy. Even iron fusion is endothermic (uses more energy than it releases) and gold is a lot heavier.

It's certainly hard to top that, but how about something small-scale with radioluminescence?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7474278.stm Interesting PR move for sure. I wonder what sort of ramifications this will have. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that Ecoterrorists Burned Down" ?

There will be friction, thus there will be conversion of mechanical work into thermal energy. That seems like an issue to me.

I do live in the same house as a dog but it's my sister's. One crazy Lapphund, looks quite like the second one from the left in this picture.