Recent content by James Demers

As I noted above, you need to heat to about 500°F to remove all of the water of hydration.

MgSO4 is not volatile at all. The anhydrous salt is a white powder that is quite hygroscopic - chemists routinely use it to remove water from organic solvents. Epsom salts tend to LOSE water at the drop of a hat. Best strategy is to dry it in a pre-weighed glass dish, cover it while it cools...

This is a bit of an over-simplification, but essentially you have 18 variables: 3 bodies x (3 velocity vectors + 3 coordinates). Newton's equations of motion give you ten integrals, so you have more variables than you have equations. No amount of monkeying around with coordinate systems and...

In reply to JT Smith: Most of the time, a chemist will be making up a solution having a desired concentration. This involves weighing out the proper mass of solute, dissolving it, and in the final step, diluting to reach the appropriate volume. Any water of hydration is automatically taken...

The OP's question, I think, calls for a hypothetical envelope of volume V and mass M that is perfectly rigid and thus maintains constant volume. Fill this vehicle with one atm. of helium at sea level, and turn it loose. As it rises, the external pressure drops. Releasing helium will indeed...

I have a project that calls for activating a passive RFID tag by applying a few volts, and a PIN diode seems to be what I need. I can insert it into the antenna loop, where it would prevent an RF signal from being sent unless a forward DC voltage was present. I only know enough about...

Make friends with the village priest. People will listen to him, not to you. Public health would be the issue where you'd have the greatest impact, but you wouldn't have much in the way of technology to work with. (You're not about to chlorinate the water supply.) You might invent soap, if...

Organic chemist here. All of these contaminants would partition into the oil phase if you added water. They are however more polar than the gasoline or diesel, and would be selectively retained if you filtered the fuel through a column of activated alumina or silica powder. At some point...

This drove me nuts when I used PCs. Literally, one of the reasons I now use Macs. (I can run Windows in a virtual machine on the rare occasions that I need to . . . but guess what? 🙄) Your best defense might be to turn off your Wi-FI (or router) before booting up, and turn it back on only...

Here are pics of a replacement installation: https://iainorthamerica.com/iai-replaces-the-pickle-fork-frame-fittings-for-b737-800/ Not sure what magic is used to run stringers through the new piece, but they evidently have their ways. It appears that they apply an extra coat of paint to the...

Disney's "Let It Go" from "Frozen" I'll spare you the Cartoon Princess version; here's a Metal Queen's rocked-up version (turns out it's a pretty good song after all):

Abba's "Dancing Queen" - but a very different take. Same lyrics, different message.

Almost every sodium ion will have an anion not too far away, so electrostatic repulsion won't be much of a force. Diffusion can be analyzed in several ways, all of them inter-related. As chemist, I'm accustomed to the Second Law explanation: free energy tends to decrease, and entropy tends...

Do you have any references? What you "doubt" is not helpful. Props to Bandersnatch for answering the question. A binary will look like that when one star is large enough to fill its Roche lobe, and starts transferring mass to the other star. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_lobe