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Zemyla posted:Speaking of nuclear isomers, we have Tantalum-180m, the only primordial and observationally-stable nuclear isomer, and the heaviest stable isotope with odd numbers of both protons and neutrons. (The next-heaviest is 18F, with 9 and 9.) That's not true, Fluorine-18 is unstable, Nitrogen-14 is the next heaviest stable odd-odd isotope. I even mentioned this in WildM's SpaceChem tournament which I know you saw, maybe that's where you got the original idea from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Even_and_odd_atomic_nuclei#Odd_proton.2C_odd_neutron
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May 15, 2016 00:33
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atomicthumbs posted:By mad jewelers, obviously. If you think a carbon diamond is beautiful, wait until you catch what will be your only glimpse of a nitrogen diamond! The reflected photons will reach your retina only moments before the blast wave, so don't blink!
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May 17, 2016 19:11
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LordSaturn posted:The reflected photons will reach your retina only moments before the blast wave, so don't blink! Unprecedented shine and luster.
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May 17, 2016 19:30
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It's really shaking the jeweling world up.
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May 17, 2016 20:52
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GuavaMoment posted:That's not true, Fluorine-18 is unstable, Nitrogen-14 is the next heaviest stable odd-odd isotope. I even mentioned this in WildM's SpaceChem tournament which I know you saw, maybe that's where you got the original idea from? Yeah, I misremembered, sorry.
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May 17, 2016 21:18
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I like how you folks are talking about crystals as if they're rare, even though almost all inorganic solids have a crystalline structure. And if not, you can make them crystalline with enough effort. The only way to get an X-ray diffraction image of a protein sample is by first turning it into a protein crystal.
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May 17, 2016 21:36
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It's the thing these madmen crystallized that's freaking us out, not the fact that they made a crystal at all. Crystals are pretty neat most of the time.
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May 17, 2016 22:10
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Yeah the issue is that they've managed to make a crystal of pure nitrogen at a level of bonds somewhere between run and pray to your maker.
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May 17, 2016 22:32
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Chemistry noob here -- "metastable" means "is at a local (but not global) minimum energy state", right? So it's stable unless and until it gets enough energy to escape the local minimum and make a run for some other, lower-energy configuration?
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May 17, 2016 22:46
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I'll go ahead and assume the minimum energy needed to make that jump is "dormouse nervous fart within 1 mile"
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May 17, 2016 22:48
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ToxicFrog posted:Chemistry noob here -- "metastable" means "is at a local (but not global) minimum energy state", right? So it's stable unless and until it gets enough energy to escape the local minimum and make a run for some other, lower-energy configuration? That's basically what it means in chemistry, yes. It means something different when dealing with radioactive material decay. If something is metastable below room temperature, do not let it heat up unless for some reason you need the decay products, which, in the case of the nitrogen crystal, is explosions and nitrogen.
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May 17, 2016 22:56
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atomicthumbs posted:By mad jewelers, obviously. If you think a carbon diamond is beautiful, wait until you catch what will be your only glimpse of a nitrogen diamond! Nitrogen diamonds are, in my opinion, the most beautiful joules.
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May 17, 2016 23:10
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Goddamnit
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May 17, 2016 23:29
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Its worth noting metastable isn't the most descriptive term to use about anything chemical outside of further context. And for the same reason it is a word that can be sort of abused and battered to make different points you are interested in. Huge swathes of what you see right now are chemically metastable: imagine what would be left if your house was set on fire. Calling something out as metastable is then often a shorthand to code into short abstracts the idea that you were able to make enough and get it to stick around long enough to measure before it fell apart or blew up the grad student.
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May 18, 2016 00:01
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Calling something “metastable” is damning it with faint praise. Sure, it’s true of a lot of things, but it’s revealing that it’s the descriptor they went with.
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May 18, 2016 04:44
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Cakefool posted:I'll go ahead and assume the minimum energy needed to make that jump is "dormouse nervous fart within 1 mile" Default Settings posted:At temperatures below 100K
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May 18, 2016 10:04
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No one cares about your mom's enormous gravitational field.
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May 18, 2016 10:23
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chrisoya posted:If it's sensitive enough to be triggered by the motion of Jupiter, do we owe the astrologers an apology? Horrorscope, ceiling is rising.
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May 18, 2016 14:59
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Yeah, diamond itself is metastable at standard surface conditions, Its a phrase that isn't useful on its own for characterizing a material. Still, though I only read the abstract, I think they are probably using the term rather loosely here. According to Default Settings, they're only making the claim for standard pressure when under 100K, so keep that in mind. A lot of the materials in this thread will sit around at a temperature like that... until something comes in contact with it or part of it starts to change phases. I am curious to hear more about its properties (The very high bulk modulus is neat, but I guess to be expected?) but not sure how much they could determine there. I am surprised no one has mentioned this article on any of the dangerous chemical blog things, and even more surprised to find it in the "Materials for energy" category... I mean I guess technically...
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May 19, 2016 00:41
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Platystemon posted:Calling something "metastable" is damning it with faint praise. Default Settings posted:At temperatures below 100K, though, which is just a bit higher as the boiling point of oxygen. *than itself at STP. Cf. H2 -- in air, touch a flame to it and it goes "pop!", in LOX it'll send you to the moon. Or charcoal, in air it can be burnt, and thus is technically metastable; in LOX, it burns really fast -- see the record for fastest charcoal grill lighting (excuse potato, this was shot digitally in 1995): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sab2Ltm1WcM Step 1. Put charcoal in grill. Step 2: drop a lit match on it. Step 3: pour a litre or two of liquid oxygen on it before the match goes out. Step 4:  Step 5: coals are ready for cooking in a second and a half.Minor drawback: the coals are now on the ground in a puddle of molten steel. Or iron, which burns in pure STP-ish (lil more P, lil less T bc abiabatic cooling from a pressurized tank, but they probably about balance out) O2 better than charcoal if you get it hot enough (e.g., cutting torch), I'd imagine it'd go like gangbusters if you gave the gas axe a shot of liquid rather than gaseous oxygen. Hell, iron burns in humid air, albeit very slowly. (Kinda the opposite of the point of this thread, but it's still amusing/amazing to me that rust is the same process as fire, just on a relatively glacial time scale, that sort of poo poo is why I took Chem 101 and 102 as my required science electives for my art degree in college.) Though even in the bath of LOX, the last panel of this comic instantly came to mind for the wack-assed nitrogen diamond in question:  **addendum: "... if you open the lid, the liquid helium keeping it cool will crawl out, and the building's windows aren't insured for being broken from the inside."
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May 19, 2016 02:48
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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MrAptronym posted:Yeah, diamond itself is metastable at standard surface conditions, Its a phrase that isn't useful on its own for characterizing a material. This made me think, I'm not completely sure about this but it looks like metastable is largely used to describe structural isomers of 'stable' compounds. These nitrogen crystals decompose into nitrogen molecules, which is still just nitrogen. Diamond is made of carbon and decomposes into coal, which is also carbon. Metastable ozone is O3 and decomposes into O2. High pressure crystal structures of water ice are H2O and return to regular ice when in atmospheric pressure, which is still H2O. When we're talking about a reaction with another compound, such as in a regular fire, descriptions like metastable don't really apply anymore. So, it's about things that fall apart by themselves without needing other chemicals, just a little push of energy. Also, the poster that said metastable means "do not open lid, it might explode" may not be aware that diamond does not normally decompose explosively. 
Carbon dioxide has a new favorite as of 06:04 on May 19, 2016 |
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May 19, 2016 06:02
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Oh, right, metastable means something slightly more specific in stereochemistry,. I think in that context it goes so far as to say that the required energy to knock it down a level is expected to be imparted by internal atomic movement at some point in the near or distant future. An important requirement or else the look around the room challenge still stands: imagine how much you can see right now that could be sun bleached and/or embrittled by UV cleavage of bonds, no extra chemicals needed. The mechanism for the following is closer to water chemistry than a crystal degrading itself but a more general look at metastable stereochemistry segues into a good thread candidate, thalidomide. Synthesize thalidomide and you get a 50/50 mixture of two optical isomers. One isomer is a potent immune system booster. The other is a potent teratogen that will cause pregnant women to miscarry or birth limbless babies. There are purification schemes to just get the one good isomer. Except the pair of isomers are racemic, over time any pure amount of thalidomide will spontaneously drift to a 50/50 mixture of both isomers. This molecule actively hates pregnant ladies, so obviously it was marketed as a morning sickness cure because pharma was still the wild west in the 50s.
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May 19, 2016 13:25
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Thalidomide is also one of the high points in the story of the FDA - demanding more studies before approving it shielded the US from that disaster. (A fair bit of that honor goes to Frances Kelsey personally, of course.)
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May 19, 2016 15:22
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zedprime posted:Oh, right, metastable means something slightly more specific in stereochemistry,. I think in that context it goes so far as to say that the required energy to knock it down a level is expected to be imparted by internal atomic movement at some point in the near or distant future. An important requirement or else the look around the room challenge still stands: imagine how much you can see right now that could be sun bleached and/or embrittled by UV cleavage of bonds, no extra chemicals needed. tbf, causing a miscarriage does cure morning sickness.
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May 19, 2016 17:16
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zedprime posted:The mechanism for the following is closer to water chemistry than a crystal degrading itself but a more general look at metastable stereochemistry segues into a good thread candidate, thalidomide. Synthesize thalidomide and you get a 50/50 mixture of two optical isomers. One isomer is a potent immune system booster. The other is a potent teratogen that will cause pregnant women to miscarry or birth limbless babies. There are purification schemes to just get the one good isomer. Except the pair of isomers are racemic, over time any pure amount of thalidomide will spontaneously drift to a 50/50 mixture of both isomers. This molecule actively hates pregnant ladies, so obviously it was marketed as a morning sickness cure because pharma was still the wild west in the 50s. You're half-right. The research saying one stereoisomer is worse than the other was only true in mice. In humans, both stereoisomers are equally bad. Even if there was a difference, it doesn't matter because once you eat it it racemizes anyway. It was only marketed as a morning sickness cure in Europe because the FDA demanded further studies.
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May 19, 2016 19:47
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Soooo, Tumblr was discussing properties of malachite - it's kind of longish: http://imgur.com/mhZed85 (  for pictures of stalactite)
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May 19, 2016 20:01
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canis minor posted:Soooo, Tumblr was discussing properties of malachite - it's kind of longish: It started with people wanting to gently caress a phallic rock, and ended by teaching me why the Flint water crisis happened (also to not gently caress rocks). That was certainly a journey.
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May 19, 2016 20:50
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And now I know how stalactite can be nsfw.
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May 19, 2016 21:24
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I'm just glad the Steven Universe thread is no longer the only place having discussions about loving malachite
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May 20, 2016 01:48
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ol qwerty bastard posted:loving malachite Too bad there isn't an active Sailor Moon thread, they'd fit in just fine there.
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May 20, 2016 04:06
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ol qwerty bastard posted:I'm just glad the Steven Universe thread is no longer the only place having discussions about loving malachite To answer the inevitable followup question now: a cursory search indicates that quartz is probably relatively safe, and in fact one of the searches returned a commercial supplier of specifically rose quartz dildos. I'm sorry/you're welcome.
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May 20, 2016 14:57
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Keiya posted:To answer the inevitable followup question now: a cursory search indicates that quartz is probably relatively safe, and in fact one of the searches returned a commercial supplier of specifically rose quartz dildos. I'm sorry/you're welcome. It's silicon dioxide...It's about as inert a substance as you can get. Unless it's really sharp or molten (or ground up and ingested), it's not dangerous at all.
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May 20, 2016 16:49
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I was under the impression that having sand in your vagina was generally a bad thing.
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May 20, 2016 23:12
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Stick HF up there. It'll get rid of the sand quick.
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May 20, 2016 23:15
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Minarchist posted:It's silicon dioxide...It's about as inert a substance as you can get. Unless it's really sharp or molten (or ground up and ingested), it's not dangerous at all. Why would ground up quartz hurt you if you ingested it? http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/glass.asp
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May 21, 2016 00:29
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Eat enough sand and you'll probably have some purely mechanical bowel troubles.
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May 21, 2016 00:50
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Yeah it messes with peristalsis, but you have to eat a fair bit. Far more than you could accidentally ingest.
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May 21, 2016 00:52
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Tunicate posted:Eat enough sand and you'll probably have some purely mechanical bowel troubles. This is where you drink pure mercury and have it mechanically force out everything ahead of it 
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May 21, 2016 02:16
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Could you do that with less toxic amalgams? Like that one chemists would make as joke coffee spoons. Germanium based I think.
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May 21, 2016 06:53
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DemeaninDemon posted:Could you do that with less toxic amalgams? Like that one chemists would make as joke coffee spoons. Germanium based I think. I'm starting to see why the life expectancy of chemists is so low...
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May 21, 2016 13:16
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