WHAT IS A VITRIOL? Simply put, a vitriol is a metallic sulfate compound, often but not always hydrated. The crystals of most vitriols are glassy and all are soluble in water, making solutions containing sulfuric acid. In fact, the very word vitriol has its origin in the Latin word for glass, vitrum. Out of the ten or so vitriol compounds, one is common and occurs along faults and oxidized zones in metallic mineral deposits: green vitriol, better known to geologists and miners as…
Today’s article may be the last of the “Science Lite” posts since by this time next week, we may be unpacked enough to resume normal life after the moving across the country. | Everyone knows there’s a problem with little kids eating paint chips because of the danger of lead poisoning. The real culprit is not even the main lead-based white pigment but rather a lead-based contaminant found in lower-quality paints. The antiquaited name for this contaminant was sugar of lead….
By the time you read this, we’re either on the road or unpacking after moving across the country. Moving is almost over but for this week at least, the science lite blog posts will continue. This week’s offering is a short piece on education for careers in applied quantum physics from the podcast site called impromptucast.com. Playtime is approximately 1 minute. WARNING: put all food and drink down now, and you may want to sit down… Don’t listen to this at work….
We’re in the panic stage of packing and cleaning because we’re leaving…in theory…in a few days. So the science lite blog posts continue. This week’s offering is a short piece on psychoactive drugs from the podcast site called impromptucast.com. Playtime is approximately 1 minute. WARNING: put all food and drink down now, and you may want to sit down… Don’t listen to this at work. CREDITS Pumpkin Spice Chloropromazine is by Sean Clark, who might be married to me, 2017, CC…
We’re still packing up to move so short “science lite” posts will continue until we get settled in on the other side of the country. Today’s post is about something you’ve all been wanting to know about: human fart gas! HUMAN FART GAS Have you ever been kept from sleeping at night pondering what farts were made of? Ponder no longer. You can now sleep well at night because the knowledge you seek is here at hand! Strangely enough, fart gas…
The above image is a photo of the mangled insides of the SL-1 reactor after its criticality excursion accident. We’re still in science-lite mode here until the move across the country is done. Writing to maximize SEO is still disabled. Packing and moving is not my idea of a good time. Today’s science-lite offering is a video made by the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission about the SL-1 Reactor accident in 1961. Playtime is approximately 40 minutes: The video includes footage…
My blog posts are going to continue to be science-lite until we’re done with our move from Maine to Idaho, sometime in mid-October. This week’s science-lite offering is our newest element, the element 188, which was officially named just last year as Oganesson, after physicist Yuri Oganessian, who headed the joint Russian-American team that made the discovery of the element in 2006. They collided atoms of California-249 and Calcium-48 to produce three – and maybe even four – atoms of…
My blog posts are going to be science-lite until we’re done with our move from Maine to Idaho. This week’s offering is the most elegant periodic table every drafted. It is a thing a beauty, stacking the elements by the number of orbitals and arranging them geometrically by type and reactivity. If you grok physical chemistry, you will really be blown away. If you don’t grok physical chemistry, then please just appreciate the geometry beauty inherit in the order of…
My blog posts are going to be science-lite until we’re done with our move from Maine to Idaho. This week’s offering is the Rozel Point SW Utah 7.5 minute topo map. I discovered this topo while working on a project involving the Rozel Point Oil Field, which is mostly under the Great Salt Lake. Anyway, I believe that just by looking at this topo, you will discover the great humor and awesomeness of it. Words often fail to describe this…
CORPSE GAS 101 At the dawn of the 21st century, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation promoted research into quantitative methods of measuring corpse gasses as an adjunct or possible replacement for cadaver dogs. They funded a joint project with the University of Tennessee body farm and a soil gas group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A body farm is just what it sounds like: it’s a plot of land where researchers plant corpses in order to study the…