Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: Professor Gaarder on 23/02/2008 23:37:15
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I have a new website. It will be up soon enough, but just hear me out for now.
It is a website about my research in chemistry. The catch phrase is "I learn=you learn". Put simply, everytime I learn something, I post it.
Problem is, how do I learn it? A silly question, yes, but it is a problem in the long run.
So, now, I need help: if you could, can you give me either the atomic weight to the most powerful decimal you can find, the m/p, the b/p, the origin of the name, or the date of discovery/discoverer of any element you can?
Thanks. I will post a link to the site in a few days.
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Isn't the Internet already full of such information, aimed at all levels knowledge and ability?
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Yes, but not readily avaialble. My webpage will be easy to sift through based on my own organizational system, so you won't have to read 20 paragraphs about how carbon is used in fuels just so that you can find its melting point.
Also, I am recording my own lectures on chemistry, and posting them on the site.
It will be like a moderated wiki. People send me stuff, and I sift through what I put on the website.
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"Also, I am recording my own lectures on chemistry"
That could be interesting.
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These lectures, are they just to camera or with an audience? Are they Chistmas lecture style or university style. I'm a Science presenter you see and go around from place to place spreading my love of science hither and thither. Granted my audience tends to be adults with there kids or just kids but I'm always keen to see other peoples styles and ideas for getting points accross. Perhaps a site that just had lectures on would be good. I'd certainly contribute. By the way, I'm also a chemist, do you think we must all have a thing about filming ourselves?
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They're webnerd style, except I put a digital camera on the top of my bedstand and sit on a stool for my lecture. So far, I have done the following lectures, in this order:
1. Chemistry 101 (the basic need-to-know about chemistry)
2. Minerals 101 (natural occurences of minerals, and how sulfur is unfavorable solo but amazing when paired with a metal)
3. Atomic 101 (the basic structures of atoms and how they bond)
4. Chemistry Safety (basic safety precautions of chemistry, and what you should never do no matter how protected you are)
Also, simply because I would like the viewers to get familiar with the environment, I prefer all videos to be filmed with real-life friends of mine. That allows all the lectures to be filmed in the same place.
Also, it won't be ONLY lecutres. The main part is the actual database, wherein I would show people photographs taken by me of the different elements and compounds. I would also have a "do you know this . . .?" page where I would show people misc rocks I find and ask what they are. (kudos to AndrewJ for the idea-I enjoy reading his "Can anyone tell me what this is?" topic!)
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A large part of the world's sulphur is mined as free sulphur (the Frasch process http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frasch_process
if you want to look it up).
What's unfavourable about it being solo?
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Are we supposed to post the info about our favorite element?
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Just anything you know.
I only have a page for copper, and that doesn't even have that much info on it yet. It's not that I don't have the information, I just need to interact with people in order to determine the differences in a stat (for example, one person may say that hydrogen condenses at 252.87 C, while someone else may have another statistic).
Also, sulfer is bad in both terms of health and favorability. It is unfavorable because it smells terrible, and it is unhealthy because large amounts of the smell can be toxic.
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Also, the lectures are fairly long.
-Chemistry 101 is 3:10 minutes.
-Minerals 101 is 8:00 minutes even.
-Atomic 101 is 7:06 minutes.
-Chemistry Safety is 7:52
-Just for the hell of it, I recorded a video of myself playing Magic Bus by The Who on my acoustic guitar. I try to work music into my lectures so that whoever happens to watch doesn't see me as just some computer nerd who can't look away from the screen.
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The website is almost up. Freewebs doesn't let you go over 750 kb or so for the first seven days, but you can check in Tuesday morning and it should be up.
http://mgschemdb.webs.com/
I should be updating every moday and friday (minus tomorrow), but it could vary a bit.
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Isn't the Internet already full of such information, aimed at all levels knowledge and ability?
also, it is nice to put a face to the content, just because.
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"Also, sulfer is bad in both terms of health and favorability. It is unfavorable because it smells terrible, and it is unhealthy because large amounts of the smell can be toxic."
Sulphur (or sulfur if you want the US spelling but not sulfer) is a yellow solid at normal temperatures. It is not volatile and, therefore, it doesn't smell.
Many compounds of sulphur do smell, some of them are unpleasant, some aren't.
Without sulphur in the body you would die instantly.
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EEEK! why? (stuffs matches into mouth and starts chewing.)
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ooookaaaay.
nyway, that's not what this is about. I could have a page up on sulfur soon, but that's not my objective.
freewebs, apparently, won't let you post large files until you've had the account for seven days, so thus, I can't post any huge pictures.
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I note from your profile that you claim that you are 14 years old and I am pleased to see such enthusiasm. You have not included the website address where we can see your videos. Chemistry can be a very exciting subject particularly as you learn about the amazing properties of some of the elements and the relationships between the properties of the different elements as shown in the periodic table. Just asking people to post up information is not necessarily the best approach. Take a tip from these pages you will find some people asking questions that produce answers that help you to learn. Try asking more specific questions and look up the answers elsewhere and if you don't get a good answer post up your own better one some time later.
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Actually, if you check back a few posts . . .
Well, I'll post it again, then:
http://mgchemdb.webs.com/
Remember, the videos aren't up yet, wait 'til tuesday and I can have them up.
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Also, I am learning more about atoms and I am actually adapting the Periodic table to have the data of the most common isotopes instead of averaging them out.
I am still saving up for a chemistry kit so if anyone could help me on this list:
1. Density of Lithium
2. Density of Carbon (one piece of data for each form)
3. Density of Sodium
4. Density of Magnesium
5. Density of Aluminum
6. Density of Silicon
7. Density of Sulfur
8. Density of Potassium
9. Density of Calcium
All are at room temperature.
I will do my best to eliminate some items on this list myself, but I will also be adding items as the list depletes. Whether you link to this data or just have it on a scrap of paper somewhere I don't really care as long as you can guarantee its authenticity.
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Just for the recod, like carbon, sulphur has 2 forms with different densities. Only one of them is stable though. Equally importantly, because of variations in the ratios of the 2 isotopes of sulphutr it's density is somewhat variable.
Make It Lady,
there's enough sulphur in food to not need to worry about eating enough of it. Sulphur is present in quite a lot of the enzymes etc that the body needs to work properly. Without it you wouldn't live.
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Oh, thanks Bored C, I didn't realise sulphur was needed for enzymes. Expand please. The match thing was just a joke but I'm still licking coal just because I can.
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You will find the information you need here
http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/periodic-table/phys.html
there are lots of other similar sites.
I am curious to know why you are so interested in the densities of elements
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I'm not really interested in the densities, it's just the most varying info I can find and I thought it was a good place to start.
also, Bored C, I don't really need to know about the unstable isotopes. I will eventually single out some of the information as "experts only" for safety reasons, but for now I just need the most common.
and with carbon what I meant by forms was the difference in graphite, charcoal, and diamond.
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Come to think of it, my computer is REEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLYYYYYYYY slow, so I may not be able to post all five videos in one day.
But garunteed before friday.
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"I don't really need to know about the unstable isotopes."
Indeed not, but perhaps you might want to know about the 4 stable isotopes of sulphur. (2 of them are present in very small quantities so they don't make much difference to the mass.)
http://s-sulphur.info/isotopes.html
" The match thing was just a joke but I'm still licking coal just because I can. "
It's good to have a hobby.
The shapes in 3 dimensions of some proteins (including enzymes) are held together by "disulphide" bonds. Also, at least part of the toxic nature of the "heavy metals" lead, mercury etc is due to the fact that these metals produce relatively strong bonds to sulphides. If those sulphides are part of an important enzyme you are in trouble.
Hair is largely held together by disulphide bonds; these can be disrupted temporarily which is how permanent wave hairdos are created. This also explains why charred hair stinks.
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I prefer to ignore the synthetically created elements like tritium (H-3) and the majority of the actinide series just to set limitations. only so many elements can actually be discovered.
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NEWS-I am building clay ball-and-stick models for different compounds to be listed on the website. However, I will need to find different hosting as freewebs is SUPER SLOW and SUPER UNCOMPATABLE with safari, which is the only browser my friend has. I can't update from home.