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atmospherics

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Steve Smith

Re: Long Rides, Was: atmospherics

Doug -
> Re: slower vs faster when low on gas, I also have the urge to speed
> up. But on this bike I've got the computer that tells me my current
> MPG, and expected (moving average) range on remaining gas, so it was
> fairly easy to find the most economical speed that would get me there.
How *do* they measure that stuff? My Honda Insight's instantaneous MPG
thing is pretty specific, but I have to ask "how really can you know?"
I know it is a fuel-injected system so presumably the fuel being
injected can be measured very accurately as the speedo can be monitored
accurately too... but *really*... they do somehow manage to smooth the
results *somewhat*. I suppose with computers in every vehicle/device
these days they can
>
> The upright/pub food thing helped me gain 5 pounds, dammit.
so there WAS beer for breakfast! I knew it!
> We need to get together again to eat too much, and drink too much
> thereby getting the wives mad at us again.
Is that what it is about? I thought it was all the Schmack Talk we
indulge in! And the Cat Bowling...

- Steve
I do need to try a Manhattan... I just looked up the ingredients...
properly manly... before you mentioned it I always assumed it was a
girly-drink all filled with sugar and spice and not a single puppy dog
tail! Tonight!

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Nick Thompson

Re: atmospherics

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

SS wrote:

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

NST REPLIES:

Well I guess I am surprised by that. Whiskey (etc) is just a mixture of alcohol and water,no? I suspect that there is some sort of distinction lurking here between a “solution” of something and a “mixture” of something.

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 3:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics

Nick -

I think Bruce just gave a good calibration on this with his great description not only of why or why not to breathe Uranium Hexaflouride (cuz you will have to stand on your head to empty it from your lungs!) but also the relative density of the gasses in question.

Try the analogy of mixed drinks. Every good bartender knows that you put the alcohol into the glass first so that when you add the water-based stuff (tonic, seltzer, juice, etc.) the two mix naturally. If you pour the alcohol *over* the watery things, you risk the alcohol "floating" rather than mixing. We could go into the implications of low and high "proof" alcohol, etc.

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

AS I think Doug mentioned, thermal energy alone is a good mixer... even without the constant stirring of wind and convection...

- Steve

Sorry. Mixed up the weight of N and O. So my question should have been, Why don’t we wake up in a layer of oxygen on still nights?

Which brings us to your question about what would make me expect that a mixture would separate out into its lighter and heavier components. You tell me! Other things being equal, don’t heavier things tend to sink when mixed with lighter ones?

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 2:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics

Let's not ignore temperature: my farts are a good 20 degrees F above ambient (at present), and tend to rise before mixing into the unfortunate nearby environs. And, just in case you were wondering what the composition of a fart was:

The major components of the flatus, which are odorless, by percentage are:^[4]

§ Nitrogen: 20–90%

§ Hydrogen: 0–50%

§ Carbon dioxide: 10–30%

§ Oxygen: 0–10%

§ Methane: 0–10%

4. ^ "Human Digestive System". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2007-08-22.

--Doug

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick --

N2 weighs 28 gm/mole, O2 weighs 32 gm/mole, Ar weighs 40 gm/mole, CO2 weighs 44 gm/mole, and H2O weighs 18 gm/mole.

Why would anyone expect the lighter components of a mixture to fall down more than the heavier ones? If anything, you'd expect the heavier ones to concentrate toward the bottom.

And why would anyone expect a mixture to spontaneously separate into pure components? That happens in real life like where?

As it happens, CO2 is the heaviest normal component and it does pool in confined spaces often enough that CO2 alarms are available in hardware stores. Propane, C3H8, weighs 44 gm/mole and is notorious for pooling in confined spaces and then exploding, often in the bilge of a boat and spectacularly.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So, somebody asked me, in my role as a weather nerd, how come the nitrogen in the atmosphere doesn’t all fall to the bottom on still nights and suffocate us all. I asked the question of stupid-answers-to-stupid-questions-asked-by-stupid-people.com and THEY said, well, there’s just too much going on. N molecules and the O molecules are just too busy, what with convection and windcurrents, and all, to separate, even on still nights. Now, that business doesn’t prevent cold molecules of Nitrogen and Oxygen to separate from warm ones, or wet ones (not sure what that means) to separate from dry ones. I was hoping that somebody on FRIAM could give some sort of a clue what kind of a mixture AIR is? It is suddenly seeming kinda special.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Douglas Roberts-2

Re: atmospherics

Chem 101, Nick. A solution is a liquid into which a solid has been dissolved. A mixture does not involve dissolution. Whiskey is a mixture of water, ethyl alcohol, and various aromatic hydrocarbon volatiles. In order for them to separate, they would have to be immiscible.

Which obviously, they are not.

And whiskey goes well with some mixers as well: bourbon and good Schwepps ginger ale, for example. Or bourbon and sweet red Martini & Rossi.

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

SS wrote:

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

NST REPLIES:

Well I guess I am surprised by that. Whiskey (etc) is just a mixture of alcohol and water,no? I suspect that there is some sort of distinction lurking here between a “solution” of something and a “mixture” of something.

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 3:45 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics
Nick -

I think Bruce just gave a good calibration on this with his great description not only of why or why not to breathe Uranium Hexaflouride (cuz you will have to stand on your head to empty it from your lungs!) but also the relative density of the gasses in question.

Try the analogy of mixed drinks. Every good bartender knows that you put the alcohol into the glass first so that when you add the water-based stuff (tonic, seltzer, juice, etc.) the two mix naturally. If you pour the alcohol *over* the watery things, you risk the alcohol "floating" rather than mixing. We could go into the implications of low and high "proof" alcohol, etc.

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

AS I think Doug mentioned, thermal energy alone is a good mixer... even without the constant stirring of wind and convection...

- Steve

Sorry. Mixed up the weight of N and O. So my question should have been, Why don’t we wake up in a layer of oxygen on still nights?

Which brings us to your question about what would make me expect that a mixture would separate out into its lighter and heavier components. You tell me! Other things being equal, don’t heavier things tend to sink when mixed with lighter ones?

N

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 2:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics

Let's not ignore temperature: my farts are a good 20 degrees F above ambient (at present), and tend to rise before mixing into the unfortunate nearby environs. And, just in case you were wondering what the composition of a fart was:

The major components of the flatus, which are odorless, by percentage are:^[4]

§ Nitrogen: 20–90%

§ Hydrogen: 0–50%

§ Carbon dioxide: 10–30%

§ Oxygen: 0–10%

§ Methane: 0–10%

4. ^ "Human Digestive System". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2007-08-22.

--Doug

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nick --

N2 weighs 28 gm/mole, O2 weighs 32 gm/mole, Ar weighs 40 gm/mole, CO2 weighs 44 gm/mole, and H2O weighs 18 gm/mole.

Why would anyone expect the lighter components of a mixture to fall down more than the heavier ones? If anything, you'd expect the heavier ones to concentrate toward the bottom.

And why would anyone expect a mixture to spontaneously separate into pure components? That happens in real life like where?

As it happens, CO2 is the heaviest normal component and it does pool in confined spaces often enough that CO2 alarms are available in hardware stores. Propane, C3H8, weighs 44 gm/mole and is notorious for pooling in confined spaces and then exploding, often in the bilge of a boat and spectacularly.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So, somebody asked me, in my role as a weather nerd, how come the nitrogen in the atmosphere doesn’t all fall to the bottom on still nights and suffocate us all. I asked the question of stupid-answers-to-stupid-questions-asked-by-stupid-people.com and THEY said, well, there’s just too much going on. N molecules and the O molecules are just too busy, what with convection and windcurrents, and all, to separate, even on still nights. Now, that business doesn’t prevent cold molecules of Nitrogen and Oxygen to separate from warm ones, or wet ones (not sure what that means) to separate from dry ones. I was hoping that somebody on FRIAM could give some sort of a clue what kind of a mixture AIR is? It is suddenly seeming kinda special.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]

http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

Steve Smith

Re: atmospherics

And what is the relation between "Imiscible" and "Irascable"?

I ordered a Manhattan tonight... it disappointed me... do you know "Brooklyn Cocktail"?

And Nick... I don't know that we've determined "your" drink yet. When do you return from the swampy hot places that turn to frigid cold places?

- S

Chem 101, Nick. A solution is a liquid into which a solid has been dissolved. A mixture does not involve dissolution. Whiskey is a mixture of water, ethyl alcohol, and various aromatic hydrocarbon volatiles. In order for them to separate, they would have to be immiscible.
Which obviously, they are not.

And whiskey goes well with some mixers as well: bourbon and good Schwepps ginger ale, for example. Or bourbon and sweet red Martini & Rossi.
On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
SS wrote:

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

NST REPLIES:

Well I guess I am surprised by that. Whiskey (etc) is just a mixture of alcohol and water,no? I suspect that there is some sort of distinction lurking here between a “solution” of something and a “mixture” of something.

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 3:45 PM

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics
Nick -

I think Bruce just gave a good calibration on this with his great description not only of why or why not to breathe Uranium Hexaflouride (cuz you will have to stand on your head to empty it from your lungs!) but also the relative density of the gasses in question.

Try the analogy of mixed drinks. Every good bartender knows that you put the alcohol into the glass first so that when you add the water-based stuff (tonic, seltzer, juice, etc.) the two mix naturally. If you pour the alcohol *over* the watery things, you risk the alcohol "floating" rather than mixing. We could go into the implications of low and high "proof" alcohol, etc.

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

AS I think Doug mentioned, thermal energy alone is a good mixer... even without the constant stirring of wind and convection...

- Steve

Sorry. Mixed up the weight of N and O. So my question should have been, Why don’t we wake up in a layer of oxygen on still nights?

Which brings us to your question about what would make me expect that a mixture would separate out into its lighter and heavier components. You tell me! Other things being equal, don’t heavier things tend to sink when mixed with lighter ones?

N

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 2:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics

Let's not ignore temperature: my farts are a good 20 degrees F above ambient (at present), and tend to rise before mixing into the unfortunate nearby environs. And, just in case you were wondering what the composition of a fart was:

The major components of the flatus, which are odorless, by percentage are:^[4]

§ Nitrogen: 20–90%

§ Hydrogen: 0–50%

§ Carbon dioxide: 10–30%

§ Oxygen: 0–10%

§ Methane: 0–10%

4. ^ "Human Digestive System". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2007-08-22.

--Doug

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick --

N2 weighs 28 gm/mole, O2 weighs 32 gm/mole, Ar weighs 40 gm/mole, CO2 weighs 44 gm/mole, and H2O weighs 18 gm/mole.

Why would anyone expect the lighter components of a mixture to fall down more than the heavier ones? If anything, you'd expect the heavier ones to concentrate toward the bottom.

And why would anyone expect a mixture to spontaneously separate into pure components? That happens in real life like where?

As it happens, CO2 is the heaviest normal component and it does pool in confined spaces often enough that CO2 alarms are available in hardware stores. Propane, C3H8, weighs 44 gm/mole and is notorious for pooling in confined spaces and then exploding, often in the bilge of a boat and spectacularly.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So, somebody asked me, in my role as a weather nerd, how come the nitrogen in the atmosphere doesn’t all fall to the bottom on still nights and suffocate us all. I asked the question of stupid-answers-to-stupid-questions-asked-by-stupid-people.com and THEY said, well, there’s just too much going on. N molecules and the O molecules are just too busy, what with convection and windcurrents, and all, to separate, even on still nights. Now, that business doesn’t prevent cold molecules of Nitrogen and Oxygen to separate from warm ones, or wet ones (not sure what that means) to separate from dry ones. I was hoping that somebody on FRIAM could give some sort of a clue what kind of a mixture AIR is? It is suddenly seeming kinda special.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
--
Doug Roberts
[hidden email]
[hidden email]
http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins

505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Carl Tollander

Re: atmospherics

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

On 6/12/12 5:43 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

And whiskey goes well with some mixers as well:

I must now go atone to the whiskey gods and undergo a number of purification rituals for having read that.

Carl

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Steve Smith

Re: atmospherics

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick -

I'd like to interject here that your original question about the mixing (or not) of atmospheric components was a very legitimate question...

I hope (many) of the responses you got (Bruce's in particular) helped dispel the mystery of what we all know circumstantially (though I'm not sure most of us would notice if the O2 levels were elevated after a quiet, still night?).

While I may personally have some specific experience (as anecdotally described) with the formalities of these problems I think it is assumed that most of us here do not!

The innocence of many of your questions as posed should be more overtly valued... many of us are busy asking (quietly) similar or related questions.

Don't let the unregulated banter that follows some of your questions be mistaken for anything but what it is, a good excuse for banter... Doug and I perhaps being the worst of the crowd for that.

So... I say let the discussion of mixtures and solutions and miscibility continue... I have to admit that I have a "working" knowledge of miscibility but not enough understanding of it's foundations!

- Steve

SS wrote:

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

NST REPLIES:

Well I guess I am surprised by that. Whiskey (etc) is just a mixture of alcohol and water,no? I suspect that there is some sort of distinction lurking here between a “solution” of something and a “mixture” of something.

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 3:45 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics

Nick -

I think Bruce just gave a good calibration on this with his great description not only of why or why not to breathe Uranium Hexaflouride (cuz you will have to stand on your head to empty it from your lungs!) but also the relative density of the gasses in question.

Try the analogy of mixed drinks. Every good bartender knows that you put the alcohol into the glass first so that when you add the water-based stuff (tonic, seltzer, juice, etc.) the two mix naturally. If you pour the alcohol *over* the watery things, you risk the alcohol "floating" rather than mixing. We could go into the implications of low and high "proof" alcohol, etc.

But are you surprised that your bottle of wine, beer, or hard liquor hasn't seperated before you even get to pour it?

AS I think Doug mentioned, thermal energy alone is a good mixer... even without the constant stirring of wind and convection...

- Steve

Sorry. Mixed up the weight of N and O. So my question should have been, Why don’t we wake up in a layer of oxygen on still nights?

Which brings us to your question about what would make me expect that a mixture would separate out into its lighter and heavier components. You tell me! Other things being equal, don’t heavier things tend to sink when mixed with lighter ones?

N

From: [hidden email] [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 2:43 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] atmospherics

Let's not ignore temperature: my farts are a good 20 degrees F above ambient (at present), and tend to rise before mixing into the unfortunate nearby environs. And, just in case you were wondering what the composition of a fart was:

The major components of the flatus, which are odorless, by percentage are:^[4]

§ Nitrogen: 20–90%

§ Hydrogen: 0–50%

§ Carbon dioxide: 10–30%

§ Oxygen: 0–10%

§ Methane: 0–10%

4. ^ "Human Digestive System". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2007-08-22.

--Doug

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick --

N2 weighs 28 gm/mole, O2 weighs 32 gm/mole, Ar weighs 40 gm/mole, CO2 weighs 44 gm/mole, and H2O weighs 18 gm/mole.

Why would anyone expect the lighter components of a mixture to fall down more than the heavier ones? If anything, you'd expect the heavier ones to concentrate toward the bottom.

And why would anyone expect a mixture to spontaneously separate into pure components? That happens in real life like where?

As it happens, CO2 is the heaviest normal component and it does pool in confined spaces often enough that CO2 alarms are available in hardware stores. Propane, C3H8, weighs 44 gm/mole and is notorious for pooling in confined spaces and then exploding, often in the bilge of a boat and spectacularly.

-- rec --

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

So, somebody asked me, in my role as a weather nerd, how come the nitrogen in the atmosphere doesn’t all fall to the bottom on still nights and suffocate us all. I asked the question of stupid-answers-to-stupid-questions-asked-by-stupid-people.com and THEY said, well, there’s just too much going on. N molecules and the O molecules are just too busy, what with convection and windcurrents, and all, to separate, even on still nights. Now, that business doesn’t prevent cold molecules of Nitrogen and Oxygen to separate from warm ones, or wet ones (not sure what that means) to separate from dry ones. I was hoping that somebody on FRIAM could give some sort of a clue what kind of a mixture AIR is? It is suddenly seeming kinda special.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Arlo Barnes

Re: atmospherics

The innocence of many of your questions as posed should be more overtly valued... many of us are busy asking (quietly) similar or related questions.

Amen!

A thing to think about re: mixing of alcohol and water is that both are polar molecules, and thus mutually attracted, which no doubt helps keep them from separating. However, since they are also equally attracted to themselves, they could conceivably settle out were it not for the aforementioned phenomena such as convection, et cetera. A solution however (and I think no distinction is made about the states of the materials [for example, the gas CO2 can dissolve in water to form carbonic acid, the burning sensation felt when consuming carbonated drinks], although it is hard to imagine a solid dissolving in a solid) would need to be electrolytically separated, is my understanding of the difference in definitions. The reason for this is, taking the example of salt in water, is that the salt separates into it's ionic components (for reasons unknown to me pending further reading) which then would repel each other...or only the like-charged ones would. Hm, I guess that too is pending further reading.

-Arlo James Barnes

Steve Smith

Down the Rabbit Hole: atmospherics

Arlo -

The reason for this is, taking the example of salt in water, is that the salt separates into it's ionic components (for reasons unknown to me pending further reading) which then would repel each other...or only the like-charged ones would. Hm, I guess that too is pending further reading.

-Arlo James Barnes

Welcome to my world! *everything* seems to be "pending further investigation". I suspect most folks here have a similar story to tell.

From an early age, it was the damned dictionary and thesaurus, then later when I had access to encyclopedias, they consumed me with branching questions, leading naturally to yet-more.   At about 12, I moved to a town where there was a "real library" and my mother would occasionally let me hang out there for entire afternoons.   It had high ceilings, the sun streamed through the windows to excite the dust motes always hanging (despite very little activity), while I wandered from stack to stack following the leads and questions that kept multiplying.

High School took some of the wind out of my self-directed curiosity sails, with all that *directed* learning they tried to run my down with.   But before I got out of that rat race I'd found ways to satisfy the "proof of directed learning" fairly efficiently and returned to slaking my addiction otherweis named curiosity.

I discovered the infinite rabbit hole of networked computers toward the end of my university time as time sharing systems started adding at least rudimentary networking (UUnet in particular).   In my early career, I had access to a fantabulous scientific library (LANL) and by mid-career, even before WWW, the internet "proper" had emerged and as clunky as it was, the volumes of information online was overwhelming and sometimes even indexed. WAIS was "before it's time" but long before Google emerged to win the "search/index" wars, there were plenty of ways to bash around looking for information on the early Wild Wild Web.

On a philosophical note, I wonder at the difference between roughly "three types of people"... 1) Those who came enough before the indexed, online world who have not been able to effectively learn to use it for more than maybe a little shopping, accessing their bank account, or reading scholarly papers or gossip rags that others have referenced for them. 2) Those who came before (like myself) but who are now prone to an obsessive compulsive self-directed wandering in Luis Borges' "Garden of Many Forking Paths". 3) Those born somewhat into the era of ubiquitous indexed online information, probably such as yourself, who hardly know any other way... who might find it hard to imagine having to "order" a manual, wait weeks for it's arrival, etc. to merely answer a few mundane technical questions about some "made thing", etc..

I also have a (bad) feeling about the risks of "local" knowledge pursuit obscuring any quality "global" knowledge or context or dare I say "wisdom"?   Perhaps an astute young man such as yourself might be able to see out from within the trees of your own forest to speculate about such questions? Do you perhaps feel a *qualitative* difference between the perspective on knowledge (and ahem... wisdom) of your own peer generation and that of most of the rest of us here?   I don't know the distribution of ages on this list, but I am pretty sure you are near the low end, and I (at 55) am roughly near the median.   If I had to guess, an important inflection point in the age curve is probably those who came of age (12-18?) with the public Internet (1992-1998)... such that it is roughly a divide between those under 30 and and those above (Logan's run anyone?)

- Steve

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Robert J. Cordingley

Re: atmospherics

In reply to this post by Arlo Barnes

I think a solid 'dissolved' in another solid is an alloy, e.g. steel (Fe and C), brass (Zn and Cu) tho' they have to be melted first. BTW something funny happens with ethanol and water since they can't ultimately be separated by distillation (let alone gravity fields) because of the formation of an azeotrope.

Robert C

On 7/8/12 6:59 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:

The innocence of many of your questions as posed should be more overtly valued... many of us are busy asking (quietly) similar or related questions.

Amen!

A thing to think about re: mixing of alcohol and water is that both are polar molecules, and thus mutually attracted, which no doubt helps keep them from separating. However, since they are also equally attracted to themselves, they could conceivably settle out were it not for the aforementioned phenomena such as convection, et cetera. A solution however (and I think no distinction is made about the states of the materials [for example, the gas CO2 can dissolve in water to form carbonic acid, the burning sensation felt when consuming carbonated drinks], although it is hard to imagine a solid dissolving in a solid) would need to be electrolytically separated, is my understanding of the difference in definitions. The reason for this is, taking the example of salt in water, is that the salt separates into it's ionic components (for reasons unknown to me pending further reading) which then would repel each other...or only the like-charged ones would. Hm, I guess that too is pending further reading.

-Arlo James Barnes
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Steve Smith

Alloys and amalgams was: atmospherics

A couple of branches down this particular rabbit hole:

I believe there is technique for dating artifacts made from multiple metals (e.g. gold or silver filigree?) which depends on the mixing, or alloying over long periods of time, while still in the solid phase.

There is a technique known as "ion beam alloying" which involves bombarding the interface between to metals with an ion beam, deliberately causing the atoms of each metal to be dislocated into the other metal. The result being a bimetal becoming a trimetal (with a thin sandwich layer of said alloy between purer versions of the other metals)

I've also seen descriptions of this kind of mixing in the context of molecular dynamics modeling and materials science, trying to understand the degree and nature of such "spontaneous" mixing. Naturally the mixing is much faster when in the materials are in a fluid state, but apparently both crystalline and amorphous materials will mix spontaneously over sufficient time when in contact (not surprising really?).

And then there is the Amalgam which is technically an alloy, but I think the key difference is that the alloy is formed when one material is in the liquid state (commonly mercury) and the other in a solid state (aluminum inadvertently usually and silver intentionally for dental fillings).

I think I see a few more branches down these side passages, but I'll leave them alone for the moment.

- Steve

I think a solid 'dissolved' in another solid is an alloy, e.g. steel (Fe and C), brass (Zn and Cu) tho' they have to be melted first. BTW something funny happens with ethanol and water since they can't ultimately be separated by distillation (let alone gravity fields) because of the formation of an azeotrope.

Robert C

On 7/8/12 6:59 PM, Arlo Barnes wrote:
The innocence of many of your questions as posed should be more overtly valued... many of us are busy asking (quietly) similar or related questions.

Amen!

A thing to think about re: mixing of alcohol and water is that both are polar molecules, and thus mutually attracted, which no doubt helps keep them from separating. However, since they are also equally attracted to themselves, they could conceivably settle out were it not for the aforementioned phenomena such as convection, et cetera. A solution however (and I think no distinction is made about the states of the materials [for example, the gas CO2 can dissolve in water to form carbonic acid, the burning sensation felt when consuming carbonated drinks], although it is hard to imagine a solid dissolving in a solid) would need to be electrolytically separated, is my understanding of the difference in definitions. The reason for this is, taking the example of salt in water, is that the salt separates into it's ionic components (for reasons unknown to me pending further reading) which then would repel each other...or only the like-charged ones would. Hm, I guess that too is pending further reading.

-Arlo James Barnes
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Arlo Barnes

Re: Down the Rabbit Hole: atmospherics

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Composition of Reply in Progress

(should have put that up when you first sent this)

-Arlo James Barnes