farmboy

Same as swansont's answer to the next question really dude, that doesn't contradict the second law in any way that I'm aware of. There are many examples of how a force can be applied locally to overcome the nature of entropy, it's just that the trend over the long term is for the system to move towards higher entropy. The human body, for example is an instance of a highly ordered (low entropy) system which makes use of chemical energy in the short term to prevent from naturally moving to a state of high entropy (decomposition). I'm not a physicist, so forgive me if this is BS, but thermodynamics makes sense to me in statistical terms best. If you think about a random highly ordered system and then assume that you will make changes to it randomly. Now there is an entirely finite number of changes that can be made that will maintain the order of the system, but there are virtually an infinite number of changes that can be made which will add disorder to the system. So statistically any random change that is made will almost certainly introduce disorder to the system.

Apologies dude, I don't think that I did disagree with you per se, rather it was your post about the cultural factors which affect the incidences of homosexuality that made me go off on my own tangent lol. Actually reading back, was it even you that mentioned the stuff about prison? It was this more specifically, but the idea of cultural influence overall that I was questioning. Also just for clarity, it wasn't so much the differences between homo- and hetero-sexuality that I was pondering so much as the nature of sexuality overall. What I meant at the end of the day was that we are having a debate over what causes homosexuality, nature or nurture lol, but at least as far as I could see there wasn't even really a consensus as to what homosexuality actually is. For example someone suggested that incidences of homosexuality are higher in jail. Now obviously this would point strongly towards nurture being the major wouldn't causal factor. But then I personally wouldn't consider this to be an actual incidence of homosexuality judged by the same standards as one would use outside. That brought me onto other contentious issues, like a married man attracted to men. Is he actually hetero just because he is married and has sex with a woman? But yeah I was just opening the idea up to consideration more than anything else lol.

Yeah exactly. You hear the second law (like many 'laws' these days) edited slightly to fit a specific topic or teaching method, and this is what leads to people asking questions like the OP's. To the OP, basically the second law just says that systems will move towards a state of increased entropy. This does mean that everything will die out, if you take die out to mean that all complexity will eventually be lost from the universe.

Do you have a course handbook. I've been to two unis and in both instances they had a handbook that gave specific details regarding the layout that they wanted used. Failing that perhaps try looking at a couple or journal articles.

Hope you can see the massive contradiction in your argument here dude. It is still entirely plausible that homosexuality has a purely genetic explanation, just one that is too complex for us to understand directly. Sexuality is a spectrum after all so we could be looking at a whole list of differences in genes that takes us from purely homo to purely hetro. The truth is we just don't know, like you say ''it is a largely unexplainable phenomenon'' (at least given what we currently know. So how then do you justify going from sexuality is inexplicable to providing an explanation for it all in a single line then lol. I'm not certain I agree with this either, though it dawns on me the simple definition of homosexuality is probably an issue of some confusion here. For example I would consider the term homosexual applicable to anyone who is sexual attracted to another person of the same sex and hetrosexual the opposite (obviously there are degrees of sexuality but I just mean this in simple terms). Now a lot of people would disagree and say that sexuality is determined by what you do more than what you think, and this I cannot agree with. For example is a married man with children who is attracted to young men but never to a woman really a heterosexual because he denies his true nature? On the other side you have people who use same sex intercourse as a currency when perhaps they are in prison or like some porn stars lol. Moving on further still are all humans bisexual (or asexual perhaps lol?).

Yes he will lol, I mentioned it in the other thread, and if you actually are telepathic that million would just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of how rich you could be. Not to mention you could revolutionise humaity's understanding of science and nature. And the reason that people assume that you are schizophremic (or perhaps just making things up) is that first in all history no instance of a person claiming a 'supernatural' ability who has ever stood up to scientific scrutiny. This makes it seem that it is highly probably that you are not in fact psychic, assuming that is true and that you actually believe in what you are saying, insanity fits the bill nicely. Schizophrenia more specifically matches up nicely with all the symptoms you mentioned. Considering the vast number of people who make claims of this nature, I think that the emphasis should definitely be on you to prove your claims validity. I'm it is true I will be the first personto apologise lol, and maybe get in line for tickets for the stage show,

Hi Horzaa dude, could you just clarify for me which of the options you were advocating there. You seem to be picking the oposite options to me but for the same reasons. I'll state what I think towards the end, and then you can clear up for me anything I am getting mistaken. Sorry, also to the OP, is my understanding of the degree progression you are hoping for accurate? It seems to me that for choice one you would first get a qualification as a biochemist (specialising in molecular, cell and developmental biology), then you would like to go on to do your phd. The second choice would be to do a course in Chemical and Biological engineering and you would presumably still go on to do a phd? Assuming that is accurate (and horzaa you can probably ignore my statement to you as I now think I know what is going on lol) I probably wouldn't go directly down any of the routes you suggestted. It is great to see that you have such a clear idea of where you want your career to go at this early stage (I am starting my phd next year and I'm still not too sure lol), but in my experience it is often a bad idea to chose such a rigid path this early on. You can allow yourself quite a bit more freedom in science without doing any damage to your career. People I know who did the really specialised courses at undergraduate often discovered that they hate them later, but at that stage it is too late to move into another related area (as there are none) and you have wasted your degree. With the more basic sciences (you could do chemistry, or biology or what I'd suggest just regular biochem) you can see what it is really like studying in the area you are interested in and if you hate it you have a dozen other fallback points. Like with me I wanted to do pharmaceutical/medicinal chemistry but changed to pure chem at the last minute and thank god I did. Found out that madicinal chem bored me arse off in practice and that I actually love inorganc chemistry lol. Getting back to you, you will be able to do your degree in biochem, and you are maybe thinking that this will harm your prospects of a successful career in your chosen field, but luckily it just won't. You plan to do a phd anyway and so you will be able to do a phd and maybe even a masters too working in the area that is important to you. This will actually be better in terms of jobs I think. You will have a broader all round knowledge, plus if you are working in research the employeers will be far more concerned with you phd experience/post doc projects than the difference between a few forgotten modules at uni lol. So yeah just to summarise, best to do your BSc in a broader subject area like biochem giving you a wider knowledge base and the chance to change specialisation without any repercussions (something many of my friends wish they had done lol). You are perhaps thinking that this will hinder a job in the area you specified, but after a phd in a relevant area the employeers will likely not even know. You will also get a chance to learn about and maybe even practise the engineering techniques that the 2nd course might have provided. And that is my logic lol.

Ah no problem dude. Well you probably realise this already, but just to make sure I am being clear the molarity is just the molar concentration per unit volume. So for simplicities sake say you add 10 moles pure NaOH to 1 litre of water that will give you an approximate concentration (molarity) of 10 moles per dm^3. Now you didn't know what that concentration was so you titrated it against an acid until you found out the molarity of the alcohol was say 9 moldm-3. Now the problem was that there was still an amount of the solid NaOH left floating around, but since it wasn't dissolved it had no effect on the equilibrium reached and so no effect on the value from the titration. So when that solid did dissolve it will have changed the molarity of the solution from 9 (or whatever I said it was) to something bigger than that. And I take it you appreciate why that will nulify any results you got using it?

No dude, the advice you gave did not presume that he was already not going to get medical help, you specifically advised him not to get medical help before he made it clear that he wasn't going to. And sorry dude but your analogy is irrelevant at best and ridiculous at worst, and I'll tell you two major reasons why. Firstly if everyone thought that I wasn't actually a student and that I was actually delusional/schizophrenic the absolute last thing that I would want people to do would be my enablers who hold back and let me spiral out of control just to avoid hurting my feelings. And secondly, and this is the most important part, telepathy doesn't really exist. Or at least there is not one shred of evidence that it exists in a single person ever to have lived. And that said I never insisted he was crazy, just hoped that he would go to the doctors to get the help necessary. He can test his ability quite easily with the help of friends, and once that backfires which I think it will, it is important that he knows to go and get help even if he has tried once before. Going back to the advice you gave, like I said already dude the tips you gave probably won't be of any benefit if he actually has schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is an organic disease, not psychological and so your psychological tips probably won't help. Just to make that point clear the advice you are giving is something applies to psychological disorders, not organic disorders like schizophrenia. That said apologies if that came across as rude or iritated, but you should just never advise someone with symptoms potentially consistent with schizophrenia to get some r and r lol. Because it is organic in nature its like recommending the same treatment for cancer or something. And to the op, don't worry about anything I have said dude. If you feel that you really are psychic then set up a proper scientific experiment and prove or disprove it. There are a number of institutions that will give up to a million quid for any evidence of something like that (since there never has been ever before. If you don't pass the test though (and personally I think you should see the doctor again first) make sure to get medical help please.

Dude, I happen to think this is really bad advice, I have rarely seen worse if I'm honest. If you happen to be a medical doctor then I submit to your superior knowledge and apologise, but assuming this is not the case I am going to plead that the poster absolutely not listen to this. Do you have any idea what schizophrenia can actually be like? Voices in his could just be the first step, next could be totally imersing paranoid delusions which he will be unable to differentiate from reality. For most people with schizophrenia the voices they hear or the people they see and talk to appear to be completely real. You mentioned a beautiful mind, please please tell me that you are not basing your advice on a hollywood film. Since you have seen it then you know that it took that character decades of medical tratment to fully come to term with his delusions, during which time he came very close to hurting himself and those around him on a number of ocassions. He was also only able to begin to ignore his hallucinations when he came to genuinely believe that they were no longer real. Considering this guy is certain that he has telepathic powers I think it is safe to assume that this stage is still some way off. Even if a schizophrenic person were to overcome the paranoia, that absolutely does not mean that they will not still be a danger to themselves or others. There are a million different ways a person with complex hallucinations could hurt themselves or others without being paranoid. Remember too that john nash was undergoing treatment in the 50's or 60's more than likely, a very different time in terms of mental healthcare. If this dude does have schizophrenia then he absolutely needs to get to the doctors. Many modern anti-psychotics allow people with this disorder to leave normal lives.

So was I right in my understanding of what went wrong dude? Assuming that is the case, and apologies if this sounds silly,but what exactly is it you want me to explain. Is it just reson why the molarity has changed, or do you need something more in-depth which covers why the original titrations (performed after the week) will not aacrate. p.s I added this to both versions of the message, but shalll only respond here next time incase anyone else wants to read the answer too. Unless of course you would rather I didn't

Do you have anything to actually back up the claim that time passes at different rates at different points in the universe for reasons that can't be explained by gravity or velocity. When I thought about my first post again, it is definitely true that gravity affects that rate at which time passes, though I think the difference is negligible barring super gravitational effects. And then obviously the speed at which you are travelling will be a factor, so the person who is at the top of the mountain will be moving faster but will experience less gravitational effects. But of course these effects are entirely negligible, but then there will be some slightly different gravitational effect everywhere in the universe and maybe this is what was meant by your originl statement?

See a doctor asap mate and disclose everything. Without wanting to worry you further, what you are describing sounds very much like the symptoms a friend of mine experienced before being officially diagnosed as schizophrenic.

Yeah I am having the same problem in understanding the question. Did you check the molarity straight away when there was still undissolved solid? If that is the case (why on earth did you do that lol) then you will need to perform a new titration to find the new concentration since it has fully dissolved. Ooops, wait scratch that, I think I may understand. There are two completely different sets of titrations going on here. The first was before the solid was dissolved and it was titrated against an acid of known conc. to find the molarity of your NaOH? Now a week later you are using the NaOH for a second series of titrations but assuming you have NaOH of known conc. and working from there? If that is the case then unfortunately your solution is now more concentrated than you had been assuming for your experiments. Now I can't really say for certain what you should do without understanding in more detail what your work involves, but don't worry too much as this doesn't necessarily mean you have wasted all the previous experiments. If you titrate your NaOH again with an acid of known conc (so long as you are positive that it was all disolved at the time of beginning your work a week later) and then assume that this was the conc. you used for all the more recent experiments. Incase it isn't immediately obvious simply find the percentage concentration the old solution was of the new solution (boy thats an awful sentence haha) and extrapolate fromvthere. For example say you found the old one was 1moldm-3 and the fully dissolved one is 2moldm-3 you take the value of the titre (in moles) and divide it by 50 and then multiply it by 100 and unless I am being silly that should give you the actual number of moles involved in the reaction. Remember to do this with moles not ml haha.

I'm not a physicist mate, so I am probably wrong, but as far as I know that is not true. Well I dunno maybe gravity somehow affects the rate at which time pases relative to an observer, but even if that is the case it doesn't mean that time moves differently because you are simply in another place, that is just a coincidence.

I guess this explains the Catholic Church's apparent disinterest in protecting the children left in theircare lol. I feel the need to point out this is just a joke btw (since I am not know here for the most part) as I wouldn't want anyone to interpret this as a slur against catholics in general.

I finished my BSc chemistry last year and I'm currently about half way through an MSc in Chemical Research (which means I have to do about the same amount of lab work as the PhD students in my group, if anything more at the moment as it is an intense 1 year lol) and all I can say to the op, who I think suggested we might be overstating the difficulty involved here, all I can say is that I really wouldn't fancy having to do something like this at my current level even with all the support you get as a PG student in a Uni lab. It will probably take years to get a finished project I mean even just the very most basic things like how do you expect to isolate your compound from the other impurities (that's assuming that you can even get that far. Doesn't sound like you know anything about it's chemical properties, which is (sad but true) essential if you want to get anything like a pure extraction. Do you know about basic stuff like enantiomers and the devestating effect the wrong one can have on a biological system. Theory aside the everyday lab apparatus will be complicated and costly too I think. I don't want it to seem like I am giving you a hard time just for the sake of it, I'd be well happy for you if you successful here, but at the same time I'd hate to see you ruin yourself financially or hurt yourself . Have you considered actualy just going to uni?

Wish I could friend, but she's down with that kind of thing in the bedroom. Frightens me at times. And to the OP, if I could salvage one single good thing from your posts in this thread it is that for all your naivety you don't seem to be filled with the same anger and self loathing that drives most of the other 'religious' folks of your ilk. I really hope that lasts for you. With regards to the actual content of your message, sorry but it is horribly filled with contradictions and errors, and you have fundamentally failed to follow any sort of logical progression of thought despite implying otherwise. Following your logic I think I could make a real case for the existence of Batman in real life. Just like in the comics his dark visage strikes fear into the heart of criminals the world over, though he is known to ply his trade primarily in Gotham City, which incidentally explains why we have never seen him on the news. Like your god, gotham city is invisible. Thankfully you do not require any sort of burden of proof before accepting something as true, so I take my bow and leave safe in the knowledge that you are now most greatful to me for opening your eyes to this lost wonder, no doubt on a par with the recent discovery of the taj mahal 2.0 in the sea of tranquility. EDIT Just wanted to point out that this post was meant to be taken a entirely 'tongue in cheek' lol, in reality I haven't beaten my wife (or mother) for years at least, and I am certainly not (quite) as arrogant as the tone in the latter section might suggest lol.

My bad dude, I had intended to put a brief explanation in, it would actually have explained some of your queries from the above post lol. Like I said before this is the MO diagram for dioxygen. Basically the way it works is that the arrows (which represent electrons) to the left and right of the diagram correspond to one atomic oxygen. So the electron configuration of oxygen is 1s2 2s2 2p4 (the blue ones are the two s-orbitals and the red one is the pi-orbital. The arrows in the middle show what happens to the electrons once they have joined to form molecular oxygen. So basically you start at the bottom and work your way towards the top obeying hunds rule as you go, and when you have the electrons all put in their proper place you can predict stuff like how strong the bond might be, how long it might be, the potential magnetic character of the molecule, whether it will be a good conductor of electricity and probably many other things too. Coming back to something a little more relevant to what we had been discussing, yes you are sort of along the right tracks when discussing the proton stuff actually mate, I was wrong to dismiss it out of hand now that I think about it lol. In covalent compounds it is a property called electronegativity that dictates the strength of the bond, but it isn't just the number of protons in an atom that dictates how electronegative it is, it is actually to do with the number of electrons vs. the number of protons, but the shells in which the electrons are held is also important. The general trend is that EN increases from left to right and from top to bottom across the periodic table. That said the problem with trying to look at the atoms in this way is that it isn't really representative of what an atom actually looks like, which is why we represent them as MO diagrams and the like. The MO-diagram explains in qunatum mechanical terms why some bonds are stronger than others. Apologies I was half falling asleep writing the second half of that post. I'll finish it tomorrow when it makes more sense to me lol.

Yeah dude, definitely don't try and include nuclear forces when you are considering chemical reactions, it won't help you in any way. I'd imagine there is some force felt but it would be absolutely negligible. The nucleus is only a tiny wee thing at the centre of an atom, and then like you mention there is a large amount of shielding from the electrons. There are also the neutrons in there too, and I wonder if perhaps the strong force plays some small role here too. Actually having a full shell and stuff like that is what you are taught at secondary school level, but it isn't what is taught at higher levels. The best models we have to describe reactions in chemistry are all based on quantum mechanics, something I wish I was a little better at lol. You perhaps already know this but rather than using stuff like 'comparison to the nearest noble gas' or 'filled shells' to predict how reactions will proceed (these are sort of like introductory tricks which will often give the right answer but not reallly for the right reasons) the two main methods used by normal chemists these days would be valence bond theory and molecular orbital theory. Both theories are based on quantum mechanical calculations involving the schrodinger equation, but thankfully other people have done the really hard parts and there is like a little short hand way you can draw out a diagram (called a molecular orbital diagram) and by filling in the electrons you canwork out whether reactions will proceed as well as being able to tell a whole load of other factors too. Here is the basic outline for the MO diagram of dioxygen including all the molecular orbitals and the electrons that go into them. You can tell a whole lot of stuff just from filling it in accurately.

Yeah that is what I meant, would definitely make exams more difficult if you don't know what the different groups are called. It is certainly worthwhile learning those names, but to be honest I think that if you learn the chemistry of different atoms in the way that I had talked about earlier the names will just stick in the process. Nah I'd say that it is actually pretty easy to get an intuitive feel for how reactions will proceed. The first key to doing this is actually to get to know your periodic table. The trends you see in the periodic table correspond to quantum mechanical properties of the elements and provide significant insight into how certain elements will react. There are a handful of basic theories (electronegativity, atomic radius, HSAB theory and molecular orbital theory all spring to mind) that once learned will immediately make the issue of chemical bonding/reactions a lot clearer, and to apply any of those things all you need is a little bit of knowledge and your periodic table lol. Well a pen too perhaps. You see the main problem is that there are just too many possible functional groups to really consider it, plus where do you draw the line for one group ending the next beginning? You could say that the elements are like digital and functional groups are like analogue signals. With the elements we know exactly where one element ends and the next begins, we just keep adding a proton at a time. Each element is distinct from the next. With functional groups that isn't the case, there are a million little tiny changes that you could make. It wouldn't really be all that useful is just the point I am making, it would be a huge textbook not a little table. I mean the reason the periodic table works so well is that there is a steady, constant change in as you move from one element to the next. You need only know a few rules to help you predict That isn't the case with molecules. Like if I had one group that was alcohols, for a start there is about 1000 different reactions you might need to learn just to cover the basic alcohols. But then what if you were to throw a halogen into the mix. The chemistry of your molecule is now fundamentally altered, so do you start another group. But then what if we stick an amine in there somewhere too, we changed it all again. Plus functional groups don't tend to react via a simple movement of electrons like is the case when a pure element reacts. The mechanisms are another thing that needs to be learned and they are quite often complex, involving the movement of electrons in several different atoms. I would say that you are pretty close to being bang on their mate, the stuff about groups breaking apart in certain places is accurate (this is generally related to the electronegativity of the atoms, some hold onto the electrons better than others so come away with them at the end of the reaction. The only thing I would disagree with is the looking at atoms from a physicists perspective. In chemistry you can certainly analyse functional groups by looking at their constituent atoms (this is where the periodic table pays off lol) but it doesn't help to look at the atoms themselves in terms of their constituent parts like that. In chemistry you can look at atoms purely in terms of their electron orbitals lots of the time, neutrons and protons can often be firgotten about since it is the electrons that dictate what reactions will take place.

Unfortunately dude, I don't think that is how batteries or magnets work. I'm not seeing any reason that forcing magnets together would do anything like what you are suggesting, it is the fields of magnets that repel one another, not the actual electrons. The electrons will always remain inside the material, it is only the force that they exert which extends beyond the surface. ATP is fundamentally different in that it (by the sounds of things, I don't know much biology lol) is like some sort of bio battery which converts chemical energy into electrical energy for our needs. Unless I am missing something, the molecule is probably liberating an electron from some other fuel molecule, which is different from the magnets where the electrons stay firmly in their original atoms. You are sort of on the right track though. For a start little bateries do work just like this too. There is a chemical fuel inside that acts as a source of electrons which we use to power our phones and stuff. And it is also actually possible to create an electric current in a wire using a magnet. The process is called electromagnetic induction, you were beaten to it though, this technology is used in about a billion different things lol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction

How do you know about this chemical but have no idea what it is? This was the plot to a recent episode of Fringe too, you aren't planning to start killing are you lol? And yeah as others have mentioned this is an ambitious project for someone with access to a full lab and analytical services as well as years of training in both biology and chemistry. But seriously, it doesn't even sound like you are sure that this creature exists, let alone that it secretes this chemical. Hope it goes well for you all the same though.