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The Cool Science Stuff Thread

islandman said:
Wear gloves!
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it was so boring... I wore gloves but nothing really exciting happened the whole reaction.

my synthesis of a diphos ligand was DEFINITELY more interesting. We had to condense gaseous ammonia and then add sodium metal, then dichloroethane and triphenylphosphine.

Colours went from clear to blue to red-orange to white.
 
C'mon, molten air? What isn't cool about that.

Molten air – a new class of battery

Scientists from the US have invented a new type of battery. The so-called ‘molten air batteries’ have among the highest electrical storage capacities of all battery types to date.

Inexpensive batteries with better energy storage densities are needed for many applications. For example, one barrier to the large-scale adoption of electric cars is the limited distance they can travel before their battery needs recharging.

Stuart Licht and his group at George Washington University think their molten air batteries could be the answer. They made three different versions of the battery using iron, carbon or vanadium boride as the molten electrolyte. Just like metal–air batteries, molten air batteries use oxygen from the air as the cathode material instead of an internal oxidiser, which makes them light. And similar to very high energy density vanadium boride–air batteries, molten air batteries can store many electrons per molecule.

Another important advantage of molten air batteries is that, unlike some other high energy batteries, the molten air battery is rechargeable. The high electrochemical activity of their molten electrolytes enables electrons to be stuffed back into the electron-storing material via unusual electrochemical pathways.

‘The high storage capacity of these batteries is extraordinary to observe,’ says Licht. He was also surprised by the stability of components made from steel and nickel foil in the diverse range of molten electrolytes.

‘This is the first report of a rechargeable high temperature air battery,’ says Derek Fray, a molten salts expert at the University of Cambridge in the UK. ‘It will be fascinating to follow the technical development of this important innovation.’

The group are now working on understanding and optimising the science and engineering of the new molten air batteries and think that their work will encourage others to research alternative molten air battery chemistries. Licht is optimistic: ‘the basic components – inorganic salts, nickel and steel – are readily available and inexpensive. Depending on the rate of scale-up, we might see molten air batteries used two years from now.’
 
Don't cross the streams!



Carbyne could be strongest material yet

A material called carbyne could be stronger even than graphene or diamond, according to researchers who have calculated its properties.

A team says carbyne could have a range of remarkable properties, if it can ever be made in bulk - and some experts have doubted whether this is possible.

They have published their findings in the journal ACS Nano.

Carbyne is a chain of carbon atoms held together by double or alternating single and triple chemical bonds.

In their paper, Boris Yakobson and colleagues from Rice University in Houston show that carbyne's tensile strength - the ability to withstand stretching - surpasses that of "any other known material" and is double that of graphene, the flat sheet of carbon atoms that is often held up as a "supermaterial".

Scientists have already calculated that it would take an elephant balancing on a pencil to break through a sheet of graphene.

They also calculated that carbyne has twice the tensile stiffness of graphene and carbon nanotubes and nearly three times that of diamond.

It should display a number of other useful properties say the researchers. For example, it could be turned into a magnetic semiconductor (these are materials with electrical conductivity between that of a metal and an insulator like glass) and could be used as a sensor to detect twisting.

Some scientists have reported synthesising small amounts of carbyne in the lab, but it was thought to be extremely unstable. And some chemists have suggested that two strands coming into contact could react explosively.

"Our intention was to put it all together, to construct a complete mechanical picture of carbyne as a material," said Vasilii Artyukhov, also from Rice University.

"The fact that it has been observed tells us it's stable under tension, at least, because otherwise it would just fall apart."
 
Phelia said:
Oh, awesome :heart: You posted a really cute one a little while back that broke down Olber's paradox, yes? I love Youtube. Except for the commenters. May they all burn.
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There's a wonderful one where Brian Cox explains Mars' retrograde orbit with a rock and a stick. This is why I studied physics.
 
Sean said:
There's a wonderful one where Brian Cox explains Mars' retrograde orbit with a rock and a stick. This is why I studied physics.
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Found it. That's fucking fantastic. Did you watch Connections? Saw the 1978 series for the first time a few months ago and powered through the whole thing. BBC gives good science.
 
Phelia said:
Found it. That's fucking fantastic. Did you watch Connections? Saw the 1978 series for the first time a few months ago and powered through the whole thing. BBC gives good science.
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Just saw it!?! Mon dieu! James Burke can take more than some credit for powering my childhood curiosity.
 
SkAoUt said:
Just saw it!?! Mon dieu! James Burke can take more than some credit for powering my childhood curiosity.
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I love him, but I was more a Bill Nye/DIY kind of kid growing up. NOVA, too. Aside from a few Dave Attenborough series ("The Private Life of Plants" :heart:) and the odd documentary narrated by John Cleese, there wasn't much BBC programming.

Also, 3-2-1 Contact. Yeah!
 
We're watching a NOVA program explaining quantum particles in quantum chemistry ... Every day he shows us 20 minutes or so of it... Gotta get the name and post it, GREAT series.
 
For those of us who are manned space flight geeks, be advised that six full hours of Apollo 13 Flight Director loop voice traffic have been uploaded to You Tube at this link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWfnY9cRXO4

I just discovered it tonight. It starts with the end of the TV broadcast about nine mutes before the infamous cryo stir.


http://d1jqu7g1y74ds1.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/apollo-13-oxygen-tank.gif http://www.spacepatchdatabase.com/sites/default/files/styles/large480x/public/apollo-13-unk-375.JPG?itok=67PrbEUy

Also found this excellent article detailing the whole story about how the oxygen tank was damaged before flight. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/33795822/Apollo-13-The-Successful-Failure
 
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