Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2009 December 8

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December 8

reaction of lead sulfate and sodium bicarbonate

While getting a new car battery, I watched them clean a lot of white, lead sulfate corrosion from the terminals by pouring some baking soda mixed with warm water on it. It foamed up quite a bit.

What did that reaction create? Elemental lead?

After, he just wiped it up with a shop towel. How badly contaminated is that towel? I wonder what they do with it. Ariel. (talk) 03:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The lead sulfate probably did nothing and was probably not there, but the sulfuric acid would have reacted with the bicarb, to release Carbon dioxide. After this neutralization the product would be safe to handle. Just sodium sulfate. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

No, it couldn't have been sulfuric acid - that's a liquid. These were soft white crystals. Maybe they were soaked with sulfuric acid? They did seem kind of wet looking. So they just stayed as lead sulfate? Ariel. (talk) 07:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There would be some sulfuric acid mixed in with the crystals, that is what makes the fizz. But there could also be copper sulfate from dissolving the copper wires, and calcium sulfate, from dissolving dirt. Any lead sulfate is pretty insoluble and stable.

Rendering a planet uninhabitable

How large would a single explosion need to be to render an Earth-like planet temporarily uninhabitable? Would 5.55×10²⁰ joules do it? Horselover Frost (talk) 04:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That would depend on a lot if things, and uninhabitable to whom? Chicxulub crater#Impact specifics says "estimated to have released 4×10²³ joules of energy". Many species survived that. PrimeHunter (talk) 05:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You would probably enjoy this website: how to destroy the earth. Ariel. (talk) 05:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Wierd. One of the most outrageous methods included in that website is attributed to myself. I can think of a situation where I would have contributed it, but have absolutely no memory of doing so (though I do remember visiting the site in the past). Feels wierd to see your name where you don't expect it, perhaps especially when you've got a fairly uncommon name -- I ain't no Bob Smith. Wierd. --203.202.43.54 (talk) 09:14, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

That's a humorous website - but some of his claims are a bit unscientific: "it may be possible to find or scrape together an approximately Earth-sized chunk of rock and simply to "flip" it all through a fourth spacial dimension, turning it all to antimatter at once.". Nimur (talk) 06:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

He knows. Read a little lower: "But since the proposed matter-to-antimatter flipping machine is probably complete science fiction....." Ariel. (talk) 08:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

(1) there is no point in providing 3 (three) significant digits of your energy output when neither the notion of an "Earth-like planet" is well defined; nor time-span, means, and area of the said 5.55×10²⁰ joules delivery are specified. (2) To be fair: Sun churns out about 1400 Joules of light per second per square meter of the Earth cross-section. Earth radius being about 6400 km, the said cross-section is approximately pi*6.4e6^2 ~= 1.3e14 m^2. That is, Earth receives about 2x10¹⁷ Joules of sunlight every second. That's 6x10²⁰ J in about an hour. If you deliver your energy over large area over large time (much longer than an hour), not much bad is gonna happen. (3) If you deliver it to the Earth core, no-one would even notice. Heat capacity of iron is about 500 J/kg/K, so 5.55×10²⁰ joules will increase the temperature of 1×10¹⁸ kg of iron by 1 K. Earth core weights many orders of magnitude more than 1×10¹⁸ kg, so forget it. (4) However, if you deliver your energy at a relatively shallow depth, it's going to produce a pretty nasty earthquake locally. Energy released in a magnitude 8 earthquake is about 4×10¹⁸ J; magnitude 9 is about 30 times more energy. Even if I assume energy conversion close to 100% (I don't think that's possible), 5.55×10²⁰ J is between magnitude 9 and 10. No global extinction. Sorry :) --Dr Dima (talk) 06:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The exactness of 5.55 indicates that there is some context to this. Would to you care to give us the source? SpinningSpark 09:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

After some calculation I estimate that 5.55*10^20 joules is equal to approximately 1 5.5 Gigaton nuclear explosion, or 5500 1 megaton explosions. Strategically placed, that could probably kill all humans, but it would be a stretch for a random event. Googlemeister (talk) 14:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

It depends ENTIRELY on how this energy is dispersed. For example, the sun dumps something like 1.3x10¹⁷ joules onto the surface of the earth every second...the same amount as your bomb about every hour of every day. A fairly small bomb (on this scale) could wipe out most land-dwelling life by producing a large enough tsunami to scour the continents clean - or by putting enough dust into the atmosphere to cause a 'nuclear winter'. It's hard to say - but knowing the raw energy alone isn't sufficient to allow for a meaningful answer. SteveBaker (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Right, to take it another way, according my my handy physics text, the same amount of energy to stop a typical pistol round is the same amount of energy to stop a baseball thrown at 90 mph. Because the baseball has an impact surface area that is something like 2 orders of magnitude larger, a baseball team will not regularly kill their catchers. Googlemeister (talk) 21:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Ok, context. I'm writing a military speculative fiction novel and trying to keep it fairly hard. The scenario I have in mind is a 1016 kg ceramic rod hitting a planet's surface at just short of the speed of light, with the goal of destroying the planet's ecosystem. Unless I dropped a zero somewhere that should have roughly 5.55×10²⁰ joules of kinetic energy on impact. Horselover Frost (talk · edits) 22:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

We have an article on that concept: Kinetic bombardment. If you haven't already read it, I suggest you do. --Tango (talk) 23:01, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've read it. The idea I'm using is closer to a relativistic kill vehicle. What I'm asking is if it's big enough to render a planet temporarily uninhabitable, and if it isn't how much bigger should it be. Horselover Frost (talk · edits) 23:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I do not know (and I do not know of anyone who has done research on) what the energy deposition curve looks like for a macroscopic relativistic projectile in the Earth magnetosphere, atmosphere, and crust. Does the energy deposition curve of such projectile in the Earth crust have a Bragg peak? What is the characteristic energy deposition depth scale? 100m? 1km? 10km? 100km? What is the primary stopping mechanism? What is the efficiency of projectile energy conversion into gamma radiation, into seismic waves, into kinetic and thermal energy of the debris? What kind of radioactive fallout to expect? How much dust will be kicked up into the stratosphere? Your guesses are as good as mine. Let me say this again: the problem is not just energy conversion. You need to know what the projectile kinetic energy is converted to, into what volume it is deposited, what kind of atmospheric and surface contamination it produces, and how that contamination spreads and decays. BTW, that should also depend on whether it hits ice/water, sand, or rock, and at what angle. --Dr Dima (talk) 00:08, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

For one, you can up the energy in the projectile as much as you want to by making it go a tiny faster. Given a single, compact one ton rest mass rod, I suspect the object will not have much of a chance of depositing energy into the ecosphere. It should go through the atmosphere so fast that there will not be much time for interaction, and the damage should be fairly localized. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 01:05, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah - you could imagine something with incredible local intensity - but by the time it hits the ground it'll just keep going - shedding most of it's energy FAR underground with little global consequence. I think a good place for our OP to start is with this handy gadget The Earth Impact Effects Program. You can play with parameters for earth-impactors and see how much damage they do. I'm not sure that the tool will be robust up to these crazy speeds though - the equations and assumptions might easily break down. But maybe you can come up with an Earth-destroyer with a more reasonable set of parameters. The PDF that they reference at the bottom of that page is a great tutorial on impact effects. SteveBaker (talk) 02:44, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. It accepted the numbers, but after playing with it for a while I think I'm going to have to scrap the idea. While trying various values the effects went from strictly local to obliterating the planet with very little in between. I guess I'll go back to my solar shade idea instead. Horselover Frost (talk · edits) 04:02, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

It would be all but impossible to destroy the ecosystem of the entire planet by hitting just one side of it. You could try to kick up some dust in the air, but that wouldn't destroy everything - many plants would manage with just a little light. You could never get full opacity - most dust will settle very fast, and lots of plants will survive. Also if you make your impactor very fast (and small) it would bury itself underground. You would need something large, but a little slower, for maximum impact.

If your goal is to kill the life, but not the planet itself? I would suggest a gamma ray burst, in particular Gamma ray burst#Rates_and_impacts_on_life. To make a gamma ray burst a matter/anti-matter bomb would do the trick. If you don't want to deal with the nitric oxide theory, just have a number bombs carefully spaced some hours apart, and at different latitudes. (Ask on the math desk for where to place the bombs for maximum coverage of a sphere.) I think 3, 8 hours apart ± 22.5 degrees from the equator would do it. Or maybe 5, 3 of them 8 hours apart at the equator, and one each at the poles. If you are shooting from far away, and above the ecliptic, you can overshoot the planet off to the side to get the opposite pole. Ariel. (talk) 10:41, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

BTW, a matter/anti-matter bomb is pretty hard to build - as soon as the edges come in contact it will explode, and very little of the mass of the bomb will react. Instead make a spray cannon, and just spray some anti-hydrogen at the earth. Not too much. You'll make a beautiful fireball at the edge of the atmosphere, and lots of gamma rays and other radiation that would do a great job of sterilizing the earth. Let me know if you like the idea. Ariel. (talk) 10:49, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes - but remember that half of the stuff that 'explodes' is still antimatter which immediately hits more matter (the air, the ground, etc), explodes some more - and so on. Given an essentially infinite supply of matter to combine with, unless your bomb goes off in a hard vacuum, all of the antimatter WILL get turned into energy in very little time. Your design can be just a ball of antimatter shot into the atmosphere at moderate speed. There was a while when that was one of the theories for the Tanguska event. SteveBaker (talk) 14:29, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't want to shoot the anti-matter bomb at the earth. That will make a big explosion - but what I want is a gamma ray bust, not an explosion. I want the matter/anti-matter to annihilate in space, leaving just gamma rays, with no explosion, and no residual radiation. Which is tough to do, so I suggested very very dilute anti-matter at the edge of the atmosphere. Ariel. (talk) 21:35, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Methods of Capital Punishment

So this guy in Ohio is set to get a single drug administered IV rather than the standard triple shot. [1] And the basis of his appeal is basically the bozos at the facility can't reliably find veins.

Which leads me to wonder why we even bother with lethal injection at all? American law insists on painless (or nearly so) executions, so what's wrong with putting a dude in a LazyBoy and slowly pumping all the oxygen out of the room over the course of an hour. Wouldn't the condemned just fall asleep/unconscious, and then eventually painlessly expire? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 05:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

That would be a humane way to execute a dog or cat, but I'm not sure that it would be as humane for a human that was aware of his fate. I think I'd prefer something quicker and more irrevocable. APL (talk) 06:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I've always wondered why they don't use Euthanasia. It makes much more sense than a series of shots that may or may not be humane. Falconus^{p t c} 06:07, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Euthanasia is a series of shots. For a variety of reasons, previous execution by lethal injection used multiple shots - a sedative and a muscle-relaxant, and finally potassium chloride. The new Ohio method uses a single barbiturate, without the sedatives or muscle relaxants. Ultimately, the argument boils down to legal definitions about "ethical" and "humane." Personally, I think these legal arguments are very different from a "common-sense based argument", for the same reason that legal claims always deviate from normal, rational, logical thought. Ethics tend to be subject to personal interpretation - so when the State makes an ethical claim, it's always subject to legalese bickering. My personal belief is that the execution would be more humane by certain other methods, such as firing squad or gas chamber, which are both still used in some countries. Lethal injection "pretends" to have a certain sterility and clean-ness which I feel is counter to the act of executing a criminal. If the guy deserves to die for his crimes, then he probably deserves to be shot for his crimes; otherwise, we have alternative corrections methods. Nimur (talk) 06:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• I always thought they did not use gas because of the reminder of the nazi gas chambers. Gassing prisoners to death just sounds bad. Ariel. (talk) 08:08, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I doubt it has anything to do with that—considering it was still used well into the early 1970s (and is still used a bit afterwards), and has a lot of differences from the Nazi gas chambers. Lethal injection is now practically the standard but I don't think the Nazis have anything to do with that. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

• Another problem with death by injection (apart from the general dumbassyness of the death penalty) is that it requires the attending physicians to violate their professional code, e.g. the Hippocratic Oath or modern equivalents. See e.g. [2]. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:32, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that there are no attending physicians, which is why you get people who can't find a vein in fifteen tries... 218.25.32.210 (talk) 09:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, according to the linked JAMA article, in 2007 17 of the 38 states with death penalty required a physician, while 18 more allowed a physician's participation. I suspect the problem of medical incompetency primarily arises in the states that do not require a physician and fail to find one willing and competent to do the deed. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Is it actually something doctors are usually good at? At least from TV shows (hardly a good source I know) my impression is that even though it's a skill doctors are supposed to be good at, in reality it tends to be the nurses that do the job most of the time and so they are the ones who are usually good at it not doctors Nil Einne (talk) 18:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I think this depends. If I remember right (in this case, that's a large if!), in Germany nurses are allowed to administer intramuscular and subcutaneous injections, but intravenous ones are restricted to licensed physicians. This used to be different in the GDR, and one of the smaller problems of reunification has been that the job profile of nurses has changed - we have a number of nurses qualified, trained, and experienced in procedures they are not allowed to do anymore. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:42, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Surely the most humane way of putting someone to death is nitrogen poisoning. Death occurs in about 15 minutes, but during that time you enter a state of euphoria. Michael Portillo did a documentary for the BBC about the death penalty in which he entered a partial state of nitrogen poisoning, but was pulled out before he died. No doctor needed, no straps, no wounds. --TammyMoet (talk) 10:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have heard that proposed. One reason for rejecting it is that some people feel dying in a state of euphoria isn't appropriate for a criminal. --Tango (talk) 14:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

...and some people probably think beating them to death with a truncheon would be inappropriately gentle too. Portillo concluded that there was no method that fulfilled the conflicting criteria. --Dweller (talk) 16:36, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

It would seem to me that the two contradictory goals of an execution (killing the prisoner without pain, but make the victim's relatives think the prisoner suffered) could be accomplished by destroying the prisoner's brain completely and rapidly with a pneumatic hammer or explosives. Horselover Frost (talk · edits) 00:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

So the question of what kinds of technologies are legally permissible is a tough one, and hard to change, because if you end up on the wrong side of the Eight Amendment, then you have a legal fiasco on your hands. See also Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States#Methods. For a really interesting film on a related topic, see Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The sudden imposition of a "short sharp shock" in the French style would seem to satisfy the mostly painless requirement but I don't believe has ever been used in the U.S. But would the victims' families still fill the galleries to watch that execution? Perhaps the choice of method is not entirely dictated by the rights of the condemned. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 16:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is significant evidence that the heads remain conscious for up to 30 seconds after being separated from the bodies. I don't know whether they are actually able to feel pain during those seconds, but I would need convincing that it didn't cause significant suffering. --Tango (talk) 16:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

. Come on, this is the Reference Desk. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Guillotine#Living_heads is a good overview of the fact and fiction surrounding this. Nimur (talk) 18:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Actually I watched a documentary where a guy did a pretty good study of execution methods and the one he came up with which was most humane was similar to what the OP suggested, Hypoxia_(medical). It's extremely cheap, doesn't take very long, quite impossible to stuff up and very humane, in fact, it even gives the person a little bit of a high before they die. The presenter actually submitted himself to an experiment to experience hypoxia and was taken pretty close to passing out, it was extremely interesting. In fact in the experiment, there is a big red button right in front of him and at ANY time when he feels him self in any danger he can press the red button to stop the experiment, but for the entire time he thinks he is completely fine and does not press the button, he had to be rescued. When he watches the footage back, he's quite shocked to see how delirious and close he was to passing out he was, he thought he was doing fine the whole time. Would you believe, when he got his data and petitioned some people, politicians and prison wardens and stuff, regarding this method of execution, guess what the reaction was? Everyone vehemently opposed his idea, on the grounds that people who are executed should feel a bit of fear and remorse when they die, it's not enough of a punishment if they go out on a high. I don't remember the name of the doco. Vespine (talk) 21:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I just realised that everything i said is already covered in a couple of posts above.. I only skimmed them the 1st time and missed it.. sorry.. Vespine (talk) 23:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There are usually four reasons for using punishment of any kind - and capital punishment only relates to three of them:

1. It removes the criminal from society - thereby preventing them from reoffending.
2. It is a kind of revenge for the victims - perhaps easing their mental state.
3. It serves as a deterrent to others.
4. It provides a means to try to rehabilitate the criminal (in non-capital punishment situations - obviously).

So of the first three of those things: which gain benefit from a more brutal approach? Clearly, so long as the criminal dies - you've scored on the first criterion.

For the second reason - I'm not sure it really helps the victims to have the criminal die painfully - although they may claim it does - at the very least, if we truly believe that this is the reason - we should be asking the victims whether a more or less humane death is required to make them feel better. I'd worry that perhaps the horrible death of the criminal might weigh on their conscience later. But I don't think it helps much.

Perhaps in the third case it makes a difference - but since whatever method is used is generally proclaimed as "humane" (whether it actually is or not), it probably doesn't matter here either. But I doubt that criminals really consider too carefully the precise details of the punishment when the commit crimes - because clearly, if they were thinking coherently, they wouldn't do such a serious thing anyway. I might imagine a criminal weighing the balance between stealing some money and a few years in jail - but I can't imagine anything worth the risk of dying over. So it can only be that they don't believe they'll get caught...hence changing small details of the execution method probably won't make the slightest difference to the rate that these super-serious crimes are committed.

There is of course another option - don't execute the prisoner at all. I think it's worth knowing (and I wish I could come up with a reference - but I don't recall where I read it) that keeping someone in prison for their entire life is actually cheaper in raw dollar terms than administering the death penalty. The extra mandatory appeals and the cost of the actual execution is higher than the cost of jail time...on average. I find that surprising - but I understand it to be true. It's also worth pointing out that sometimes people are later found not to be guilty after all - and the death penalty is really a bit too final. Most of all - I think it's actually easier on the criminal to get a quick death than to languish in the prison system for 30 years. I don't think we're actually dissuading anyone from committing crimes this way - and perhaps the 30-year long grinding horror of life imprisonment without any hope of parole is an even less humane solution. The idea that you'll never have anything nice to look forward to - never have any freedom ever again - that's way more depressing than a fairly quick, relatively painless death...IMHO.

SteveBaker (talk) 00:14, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Steve, how old are you expecting these criminals to be when they're caught given you expect the remainder of "their entire life" to be 30 years? 50? --203.202.43.54 (talk) 08:11, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

I was trying to express how bad it could be. 30 years is on the low end of how bad it could be...the exact number doesn't matter. SteveBaker (talk) 14:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Of course, the prisoners for life can have hope. They might escape, or they might somehow get a pardon. In the US I have heard costs to incarcerate prisoners quoted at $25,000-$35,000 a year. Googlemeister (talk) 16:50, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Air versus Marine Propeller Design

Why do airplane propellers use a twisted airfoil shape for their blades while marine propellers use more of a screw shape? Can the force of lift produced by a rotating airfoil be considered analogous to thrust? Thanks in advance —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.213.50.137 (talk) 06:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Please allow me to add a rider sub-question to your question - would it be reasonable to say that air propellers pull while marine propellers push? Or is there really no distinction? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 06:06, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Air propellers do not pull. Only push. Newtons second law. Plus some fun stuff about change in air pressure before after. Hmm, I suppose that given that water is incompressible, and air is compressible, some effects might be different. But I bet they are minor. Don't know for sure though. And actually, with water you have to avoid cavitation if you go too fast, which is a result of water not being compressible. With air you don't have to worry about that. But I would definitely not simplify it to pull/push. Ariel. (talk) 08:06, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Water and air have different viscosity and different density. Primarily for these reasons, the optimal shape of a propeller for most efficient thrust generation is different. The distinction between "pulling" or "pushing" are fairly artificial for this context- I wouldn't use that as a part of any explanation for the different shapes. Our propeller article is really a great overview of the qualitative differences between air and marine propellers. It also provides some equations and numeric parameters, so you can calculate the efficiency and other parameters for standard shapes yourself. Nimur (talk) 07:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Although most propeller airplanes have the props in front, there have been plenty of designs with them at the back, where they are known as pusher propellers. See that page for discussion of why one or the other design is used. There have even been a few planes with propellers in both places, like the NC-4 and the Rutan Voyager.

If you think of the size of typical boat propellers in comparison with the size of the boat, you will see that if the propeller was in front, the entire stream of water pushed backward by it would hit the front of the boat and tend to slow it down. This is not such an issue with airplanes because the props are larger and the stream of air can flow around the airplane easily, especially in the case of props mounted on the wings. --Anonymous, 08:38 UTC, December 8, 2009.

Fixed your link. --Sean 14:06, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Oops, thanks. I meant to check whether it'd work the way I had it before before saving, but forgot to. --Anon, 23:32 UTC, Dec. 8.

I don't think there is an actual qualitative difference between water propellors and air propellors. They can both be 'pushers' or 'pullers' - they can each have different numbers of blades - and they both work by 'screwing' through the air (an old fashioned name for aircraft propellors is "airscrew"). Think of them like a wood screw being driven into a plank. The differences are quantitative - the angle of the blade to the 'fluid', the amount of curvature (they are like little airplane wings in cross-section), the amount of pitch and the length-to-chord ratio. In that sense, they are like little wings - they have an angle of attack, a length and a chord-width - and those numbers are determined by the rate of rotation and the density of the medium through which they are travelling. All of the ideas behind airfoils and wings apply here. Increasing the pitch makes for more thrust - but also more drag. If you make the pitch too steep, an airplane wing will be said to "stall" - where a propellor might be said to "cavitate" - it's the same thing. Notice how different kinds of plane have different wing shapes - things like gliders have long, thin wings - supersonic jets have very deep, triangular wings (think "Concord") - these design differences come about in exactly the same way that propellors come out differently when you optimise them for a dense fluid like water or a thin one like air. Detailed differences appear because some are designed for speed where others are designed for fuel efficiency or some other design criterion. SteveBaker (talk) 18:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Going to have to disagree a bit with you Steve. While a propeller is very much like a screw for boats, on an airplane, the propeller is far more akin to a wing spinning in a circle very quickly. The same aerodynamic forces on the wings are on the propeller, only in this case, the lift is in the forward direction. If you were to have the same size propeller on the airplane and it was flat in cross section as a boat's propeller is, it would be far less efficient, even to the point of not providing enough thrust to get the plane off of the ground. The forces from the lift are far greater then that of the corkscrewing motion. In a non-compressible (or rather barely compressible) fluid like water, the aerodynamic lift forces are much smaller and the majority of your thrust will come from the actual corkscrew motion. Googlemeister (talk) 21:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Wings get almost all of their lift from the angle of attack they have to the airflow. The nonsense put about about the Bernoulli principle creating the majority of the lift is easily dispelled by making a model plane with a rectangular cross-section wing and demonstrating that it flies just fine (my father once did that to win a bet - and he was right - the plane flew pretty well considering the drag it had from the vertical leading edge!)...so the angle of attack is key - and whether you consider that as a rotating wing or an 'air screw' is entirely a matter of which words you want to use because the angle of attack is what makes (for example) a wood screw go into wood. You can get screws for screwing into metal with a choice of finer and steeper pitches - and the amount of torque you need to screw them in - and the speed at which they go in - changes just like changing the pitch on a variable-pitch propellor on an aircraft changes the amount of thrust you get as a function of speed. It's exactly the same thing. SteveBaker (talk) 23:52, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not really. The Bernoulli principle is placed into the calculation of lift by being mathematically described as the lift coefficient. A sheet of plywood, at a 0 degree angle of attack (as well as a symmetrical airfoil), will have a lift coefficient of 0 at 0 deg alpha and thus will not generate any lift. A cambered airfoil on the other hand, (say an SM701 shaped airfoil) will have a lift coefficient of something like 0.5 or 0.6 at 0 angle of attack. Now without knowing the wing area or the air density or velocity it is not possible to give the actual amount of lift this generates, it is blatantly obvious that the Bernoulli contribution to lift is not something that you can just ignore. For A380 in steady level flight, this lift would be on the order of several hundred thousand pounds, at 0 angle of attack. Now I will not say you can not build an airplane with a symmetric airfoil, but such a craft will be more difficult to control, and will have a worse lift to drag ratio then a cambered airfoil as your flat winged craft would need to maintain a positive angle of attack to maintain steady level flight. Googlemeister (talk) 22:09, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Dreams

I've been having bad dreams for the past couple of weeks. What's a way of combatting bad dreams? jc iindyysgvxc (my contributions) 11:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Not sleeping? No Cheese before bedtime? Sorry, i'm not aware of any thing you can do to change you dreams - my understanding is they're not something you can influence. 194.221.133.226 (talk) 11:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

We can influence our dreams. See tetris effect. --Mark PEA (talk) 18:19, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

We can't give medical advice, I'm afraid. If you feel the need for help with them then you should get professional help from a doctor or therapist. --Tango (talk) 11:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

We can however point you to Nightmare. Dmcq (talk) 12:54, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

And Lucid dreaming. Fences&Windows 17:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The thing about dreams is that you are quite unaware of them unless you happen to wake up during one of them. It seems very likely that they are merely the brains' way of "defragging it's hard drive" to put it in computer terms. Memories are shuffled around and reorganized - and while that's happening, things get a bit crazy. So the trick here is to not wake up during them. You can't stop them from happening - nor would that be particularly desirable. So try to get as comfortable as possible - make sure the room is quiet - try to sleep for longer without alarm clocks forcing you to wake up before the "defragging" is complete. Anything that lets you get your "REM" sleep done without interruption is going to prevent you from being consciously aware of the bad dream. Better sleep means fewer dreams - bad or good. SteveBaker (talk) 18:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

And if you do wake up during a bad dream, I find it is often helpful to get up, turn the light on, empty your bladder, have a small drink of water, and generally interrupt the thought process, blow the dream out of your mind (they're usually quite 'fragile'), before going back to bed. This dream dispersed, you'll likely have a completely different dream in the next go around. And, unhelpful as it might sound, try not to worry too much about it! Dreams seem to bring up the things you've been thinking and worrying about: the less you worry, the less you'll dream about the worrying thing in a bad way.

Sometimes, of course, a dream is a helpful message that you are worried about something. When I have a specific sort of bad dream about my family, that generally tells me it's time to visit again: I've drifted out of touch. 86.166.148.95 (talk) 19:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Before going to bed pick a topic you want to dream about, and think, and imagine about it extensively. Not just a fleeting thought, but really think about it. You'll probably dream about it. Another thing to do is if you do get a bad dream, modify it. If you are being chased by a monster, imagine a bite proof suit and a weapon for yourself. It's OK to do that after you wake up. If you imagine it hard enough (write a whole script and story in your mind after), you can change your memory of the event. You will also, over time, train yourself to do it while sleeping. Ariel. (talk) 20:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there is ANY evidence for that - there is an enormous amount of nonsense said about dreams and very little of it is true. Show me some citations please. The evidence we do have is that they happen during REM sleep - and if you don't wake up during REM - you don't remember them at all. So undisturbed sleep is the key here. Many people claim that the horrible dream woke them up - but the evidence is that the reverse is the case - you woke up for some other reason - and therefore remember the dream. Dreaming is clearly something the brain needs to do - and by far the most reasonable explanation is that it's reshuffling memories around to improve organisation and recall. Even if you could influence what happens - it would probably be injurious to your mental state because you'd be preventing the optimal rearrangement of memories. SteveBaker (talk) 23:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of nonsense, you often mention "defragging the hard drive", but I can't imagine what it really means in terms of human memories. I read in hypnagogia that "suppression of REM sleep due to antidepressants and lesions to the brainstem has not been found to produce detrimental effects on cognition". So REM sleep might not in fact do anything much. The REM sleep article states that it helps with creativity, but without the involvement of memory. (Though memory is a nebulous concept, admittedly.) 213.122.50.56 (talk) 14:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Steve, maybe your dreams are not influenced by what you were thinking about or imagining. Perhaps you never have dreams you can influence (in as much as you have any free will over anything you think or do). Perhaps you never fight your way out of a bad dream, and never wake at the exact same point in a recurring dream many many times. Perhaps your dreams only feature things you've actually experienced (and hence have memories of), shuffled up (how boring that would be). But in that case your dreams are entirely unlike my dreams, or the dreams of my siblings, or the dreams of my friends. Certainly there is a lot of nonsense said about dreams, and much of it would be dispelled by simply comparing the theory to people's experience. Your description of dreams doesn't match the things I have been calling dreams all my life. 86.166.148.95 (talk) 20:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Body, spinal cord and partial brain transplant?

Head transplants suffer from the problem that there is no means of re-attaching the spinal cord, leaving the subject with paralysis. However, supposing the donor body, spinal cord and its associated brain structures were transplanted into a recipient brain along with nerve growth factors-would the recipient brain be able to wire itself in to the donor? P.S. I have no intention of carrying out this experiment.Trevor Loughlin (talk) 11:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have a sneaking suspicion that if I answer your question, you will actually perform this -- nonetheless, I will let the next editor mark this as a violation of appropriateness. :)

Brain transplants are problematic because the brain is not only a physical organ as is the kidney, but also the source of a patient's sense of self. Consider it analogous to a situation in which your monitor snaps off your laptop while still under warranty and you send it back to the company. The tech transfers all your data to a new laptop so that you now possess a "new computer" in the sense of a body but the "same computer" in the sense of all of your previous data (files, uploads, etc.) -- in a sense, your organ recipient here will likely take on the identity of the donor, rather than resume his or her previous status. That being said, it's been a classic "rule" in physiology that the central nervous system either cannot, does not or is completely inadequate/unpredictable in it ability to regenerate. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 14:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

See head transplant and brain transplant.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is the question as to how to keep the body alive while the nerves regrow, if that is even possible. Googlemeister (talk) 14:42, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

"While the nerves regrow" This is the nub of the whole problem. If there was an easy way - or any way - to get the spinal cord to regrow and reconnect then millions of paraplegic patients would be jumping up and down, and I mean that literally. Of course it would be a big downer for the Paralympic Games. Caesar's Daddy (talk) 14:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The brain and spinal cord cannot regenerate, but peripheral nerves can. It takes a long time, though. If fibers connecting the spine to the hand are destroyed, it takes months for them to regrow, and there are various issues that may cause the regrowth to fail. Also, this scenario of introducing foreign tissue into the body and requiring it to extend projections through every part creates rejection issues that are just about as nasty as it is possible to imagine. But if you could somehow keep the body alive for months in the absence of any neural control over the lungs, digestive system, etc, I don't see anything in principle that would absolutely prohibit the operation. Looie496 (talk) 16:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You don't just need to keep the body alive, you need to keep the brain alive. For most organs you have a few hours to carry out the transplant. For the brain you would have a few minutes before irreparable brain damage was caused. I don't think you could remove the brain from one body and get it into the other and connected up to blood vessels fast enough. --Tango (talk) 17:02, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You could hook the donor brain to a machine that would be responsible for perfusion prior to completely severing its connection to the donor body and allow that vascular supply to remain until after the recipient vasculature is connected. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 17:56, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Neuroregeneration is relevant to this. Fences&Windows 17:41, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think any of you doubters bothered to read the head transplant article. Supposedly a monkey survived this dubious experiment for a while. There are inline citations but I still don't believe it. Comet Tuttle (talk) 17:51, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

All the cases described in that article seem to be about transplanting a head onto a body that still has its original head - that makes it much easier. The original brain controls all the bodies systems so the transplanted head can be severely brain damaged without killing it. --Tango (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Valence electron counts

Carbon prefers a total valence electron count of 8, whereas many transition metal complexes prefer a total valence electron count of 18. Why is this? Alaphent (talk) 12:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Carbon isn't a transition metal, first off. Second, Carbon is in period 2, so its electronic configuration only involves 1s, 2s, and 2p. To get 18 you need the third energy level. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 13:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

So to answer your question more directly yet with a spin (pun intended), it's not that carbon has an affinity towards having 8 electrons in its valence for any mystical reason other than conforming to the general phenomenon that all atoms have an affinity for having their valence shell full. Carbon, as mentioned above, has the potential for 8 electrons in its valence but possesses only 6 electrons -- 2 in its first shell and 4 in its second (with room for 4 more to make 8, which is why carbon generally bonds with four other atoms in the form of single bonds, two other atoms with double bonds, or a double and two singles). Because organic compounds and creatures involves lots of reactions between the COHNS atoms (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulfer), people tend to focus on valences of 8, but really, atoms in higher periods will fill their respective shells. The concept is the same, though, and halides will need one electron to complete their valence shells, regardless of the total electron count. DRosenbach ^{(Talk | Contribs)} 14:28, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

See also detailed discussion under 18-electron rule. –Henning Makholm (talk) 00:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Anesthesia

How does it work?Accdude92 (talk to me!) (sign) 14:17, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Have you read our article on anesthesia?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 14:39, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

From memory (and without reading the anaesthesia article, the answer (for general anaesthetics) is we really don't know. --203.202.43.54 (talk) 08:31, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

ref:HEAT MODELLING

Actually that code has come as derivation of a fourier heat equation with a heat generation term and the transient part kept alive.When solving the code for 5 points .i m getting 4 solutions plots and one y=0 solution.all solutions are homogeneous(pass through origin).what can be the physical significance of the y=0 solution? is solution already optimized? SCI-hunter 220.225.98.251 (talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by SCI-hunter (talk • contribs) 17:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not have an article called Heat modelling. Can you point out which code you mean? Cuddlyable3 (talk) 18:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

i am referring to code discussed on 5th dec,article 2.3 in this page only.#REDIRECT [[3]]f> —Preceding unsigned comment added by SCI-hunter (talk • contribs) 01:27, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Stop. You have posted the same problem at the Mathematics desk and Science desk. I suggest the latter discussion is the place for you to add any follow-on comments rather than spreading your problem over 3 sections. Please read carefully the responses you have received. Please sign your posts by typing four tildes at the end. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 17:17, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

How quickly does caffeine evaporate or decompose?

I hate the taste and smell of all coffee, so I make it infrequently in large pots and keep it in the fridge, mixing it with warm milk and chocolate later. Old coffee tastes the same (equally bad) to me as freshly brewed. My only goal here is to dose myself with the stimulant caffeine.

Should I be stoppering the coffeepot and/or make it more frequently? In particular: How long does it take for half of the caffeine to evaporate away? Does it decompose in solution? Thank you for your kind attention to my artificial mental alertness. 99.56.137.179 (talk) 18:40, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think caffeine in coffee evaporates or decomposes to a significant degree. If it did, decaffeination wouldn't be such hard work. However, there are plenty of other sources of caffeine you could try. Tea, coke, energy drinks, caffeine pills, etc., etc.. --Tango (talk) 19:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The only bad thing that happens when you keep coffee sitting around, in my experience, is that eventually mold grows on it, even in the refrigerator. Stoppering it will probably prevent that. Looie496 (talk) 19:04, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Skip the coffee - if all you want is caffeine, go buy a bottle of "Nodoz" caffeine pills - or go to www.thinkgeek.com and buy some penguin-brand caffeinated mints. One of those has about the same caffeine as three cups of coffee or about a dozen cans of Coke. SteveBaker (talk) 19:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, but I am not sure of the economics of that. More importantly, I like the ability to titrate on an as-needed basis by sipping from a cup. Pills wouldn't allow that kind of control. 99.56.137.179 (talk) 19:50, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Try tea. Do not make the mistake of brewing it for too long - remove the tea/bag within one or two minutes of pouring hot water into the teapot. Another and better alternative it to give up caffeine completely: after suffering withdrawal for one or two weeks, you will feel alert all the time as if you had just drunk a cup of coffee, and sleep much better and wake up feeling alert and refreshed. 78.149.206.42 (talk) 20:15, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

There is certainly a build-up of tolerance to caffeine if you use it all the time. The trick is to not have high doses of the stuff every single day - because it basically stops working after a while. It's most effective when you use it for a couple of days - then stop for at least a week or so. You don't get withdrawal symptome and you don't build up that tolerance that forces you to have to take more and more of it to produce the desired effect. Caffeine is an exceedingly well-studied drug. There are LOTS of details about effective doses and tolerance issues in our article - you can easily take advantage of what it says and get the benefits of an occasional boost without the issues of a build-up of tolerance. SteveBaker (talk) 23:37, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Oddly, I don't find any of this to be true from personal experience. I've been drinking tea constantly for 20 years or so and it hasn't stopped working. Recently I gave up for a month out of curiosity, and the only effect was that I spent the month feeling as if I hadn't just had a cup of tea. I neither had withdrawal symptoms nor a special holy buzz of natural purity, just the absence of the buzz of a cup of tea. Oh, and 1 to 2 minutes is pathetic (the packets generally recommend 5 minutes, but sometimes I leave the bag in, doesn't seem to make much difference). Maybe 1 to 2 minutes for a total tea n00b who's still acquiring the taste, though. Have it with milk, obviously, or it's nasty. 213.122.50.56 (talk) 15:26, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Ew! Stewed tea! Unless you're using some type of tea with a slower brew time, 5 minutes is pushing it. 'Everyday' teabags like PG tips only take a couple of minutes. Leaving it in = stewed and bitter. A nice cup of tea isn't bitter: it tastes tasty and almost meaty. Builder's tea has its place, but isn't some sort of 'grownup' 'ultimate' version. Leaving the teabag in past proper brewing time doesn't lead to a stronger version of the nice tea taste: it leads to stewed tea with a completely different flavour profile. Just like removing a cake from the oven once it's cooked doesn't make you a cake n00b: burnt cake tastes burnt and bitter. I can only assume that people who leave the bag in don't really like the taste of tea, so don't notice the difference when it's stewed. Sugar and loads of milk will cover the taste anyway. If that's what you want. 86.166.148.95 (talk) 20:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

• If you want to have caffeine, why not drink cola instead. It adds lots of sugar, but you get rid of the bitter coffee taste. I also discovered flat paper like energy products (they have similar chewing gum) filled with caffeine. - Mgm|^(talk) 12:13, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Obviously it's up to you what you do, but I would recommend thinking it through before you start using lots of caffeine, and possibly develop a dependence on it. Sorry, I know that's not what you were asking. Falconus^{p t c} 12:21, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

This "dependance" thing is very overrated. I drink coffee at work - and regularly give it up for a week or two when I'm on vacation and over holidays. The withdrawal symptoms are WAY overrated by the anti-caffeine fanatics. A mild headache once in a while for maybe a day - easily fixed with an asperin. Drinking a can of Coke or Pepsi specifically to get a shot of caffeine is also kinda silly - there is only about a quarter of the amount of caffeine in a can of coke compared to a cup of regular filter coffee (Coke: 34mg, Filter coffee 115 to 175mg)...or to put it another way, a couple of cups of DECAFFEINATED coffee have the same amount of caffeine as a can of Coke! (Yes, you holier-than-thou folks who swig back the decaff...it's not zero caffeine...you could be getting as much as 15mg per cup...that's a US standard cup - not an industry-standard-mug of the stuff!) SteveBaker (talk) 14:17, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

One or two people have said that they feel little different when giving up caffeine, which may be because they do not drink much tea or coffee during the day. But the OP seems like a serious addict taking in large doses of something they say they do not like. I think the OPs caffeine consumption has got out of hand and would urge them, for their psycholigical health and probably their physiological health, to at least reduce it. There is I believe less caffeine in tea than coffee, so a switch to tea would be a good idea. As stated above, do not let the tea stew as it becomes bitter. Darjeeling is said by some to be the best tea, although myself I favour loose-leaf China tea. 89.243.39.175 (talk) 10:35, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Medical advice is inappropriate. SinglePurpose393 (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Modelling sound in a breeze

I'm wondering how to mathematically model how the intensity of sound diminishes from its source, with the added complication of a steady breeze. The breeze would make the sound travel further in some directions. The breeze is gentle enough not to add any further noise. Does anyone have any idea how to do this please? 78.149.206.42 (talk) 20:09, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Such a breeze is equivalent to the source (and any stationary observers) moving with the opposite velocity in still air. Does that help? --Tardis (talk) 20:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Got a formula for that please? I'm perplexed by what happens upwind of the noise source, since you can still hear a noise-source when standing upwind of it. 78.149.206.42 (talk) 21:48, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Unless the breeze were blowing at faster than the speed of sound you will always hear the noise source. --Jayron32 22:11, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The article Doppler effect explains what happens. Looie496 (talk) 23:03, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

In terms of distance - imagine that the air is standing still and the world is moving past it - because from the point of view of the sound wave, that's exactly what's happening. You're going to get some doppler shift because of the way the air moves past the sound source and destination - but that won't affect the distance much. So in still air, it is roughly true to say that the intensity of the sound decreases as the square of the range - which (for constant speed-of-sound) means that it decreases as the square of the time it takes to get somewhere. When there is a wind blowing, that doesn't change - so the intensity of the sound at a given distance is greater down-wind than it is up-wind because the downwind sound is moving at the speed of sound in still air plus the wind-speed - and on the upwind side, it's the speed of sound in still air MINUS the wind speed. Given that the speed of sound is somewhere around 700mph (depending on a lot of variables) then a gentle 7mph wind will alter the time it takes to get somewhere by plus or minus 1% - and the effect that has on the intensity (which is the inverse square of that time) will therefore vary depending on how far away you are. There is a second order effect - the inverse-range-squared thing is only an approximation because frictional forces in the air are absorbing some of the sound...that wouldn't matter much except that - because of the doppler effect - the frequency of the sound will also change slightly because of the wind. The attenuation of sound in air varies with frequency - the higher frequencies being more strongly attenuated than the lower frequencies. This makes the quality of the sound change as the higher frequencies become inaudible faster than the lower frequencies. The effect of this on overall "intensity" gets complicated to estimate because it depends on the frequency components of the sound in the first place. SteveBaker (talk) 23:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The Steady breeze model may be unreal. It will move faster with height, and real air will probably have turbulence. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:33, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

How do you think I should modify the standard one over distance squared formula to include the breeze? 84.13.190.195 (talk) 11:09, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps like this:

 Intensity =             K
             -------------------------
             (d ( 1 - v cos(ø) / V ) )²

where K = constant
      d = distance source to receiver
      v = breeze speed
      ø = angle between sound path and breeze
      V = speed of sound

Cuddlyable3 (talk) 17:53, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I suppose I ought to kick my lazy brain to get it to work out my own version of the formula and compare it with yours. What would the K be please? 89.242.147.237 (talk) 22:54, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

K depends on the source, and on the frequency involved (if it's a contrabassoon that's out in a breeze, its intensity at high pitches will be very small even if it's played loudly and you're nearby and downwind). It has units of watts, if that helps. --Tardis (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Wouldnt K have to be the sound intensity at the source of the sound? 92.29.113.54 (talk) 20:15, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Vision acuity measurements

Could visions be measure as any other numbers between 20/x or 6/x. I thought 6/20 or 6/12 is Metric and 20/70 and 20/40 is customary wise. Do some people calculate by 4/15 or 4/8?--209.129.85.4 (talk) 20:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The reason for the x/20 or x/6 is that the measurements are based on the ability to see features on an eye chart at a distance of 20 feet (in imperial units) or 6 meters (about the same distance in metric units). For a lot more detail, you'll want to have a look at our article: Visual acuity#Visual acuity expression. Apparently in some countries it is an accepted practice to reduce the value to a decimal (that is, 10/20 vision can be written as 0.50). TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:58, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Careful - the 20 (or 6) goes first. 20/10 is vision twice as good as "normal", and would be 2.00 in decimal. 0.50 would be 20/40. --Tango (talk) 21:23, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

And you could say 20/40, for example, as "this person can see at 20' what a 'normal' person can see at 40'" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.202.43.54 (talk) 08:39, 9 December 2009 (UTC)