Forum: Ask the Experts

Ok, so I was a fool. I ordered 99.9% pure nicotine (20 grams)... not for entertainment, mind you... rather the complete opposite (long story which I am not going to share here). I am aware the stuff is highly poisonous and can kill even when you inhale enough of the it. I haven't got the proper equipment to handle it. I haven't got the proper equipment to store it. And I need help in getting rid of the stuff. Where should I go in order to have it disposed of properly? I am afraid and scared this might end up going completely wrong... Please help. It might arrive monday and I'd rather prevent it from arriving (it might be delivered to my neighbors). I'm looking for practical info, not religious zealotry, shouting matches or endless tails how dangerous the stuff is. I am well aware of that and I'd rather prevent innocent deaths (iincluding my own) or expensive cleanup operations.

x_{k+1} = A / x_{k}^{n-1} when x converges towards the n-th root of A?

What 'science' allows the earth's crust to be pushed into the mantle when the mantle is twice as dense as granite? It would seem to me that being under pressure the crust should buckle and move in the direction of least resistance, in this case skyward rather than downward. This is part of this theory BTW. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJfBSc6e7QQ

Okay, I'm being melodramatic, but what follows is NOT standard in the calculus classroom- although this was originally a part of calculus thought when it was first invented. The problem is that a more rigorous method of describing the calculus was figured out in the 1800s (the dreaded epsilon-delta method), and the more intuitive approach fell by the way side. Intuitively speaking, if you add an infinitesimal number to an integer, do you get a number that's any bigger in any significant way? No. 5 + 0.00000000000000000000001 is still about 5. If you add an integer to an infinitely large number, is there any significant change? Again, no. It turns out there is another way to think about calculus, and with this philosophy you can determine the slope of a curve at a given point without using a limit in your formalization or intuition. The definition of a limit is difficult for most beginners to understand, but the idea of an infinitesimal quantity is quite intuitive. This latter way of thinking...

relativity obtained from mixing the lever law with newton the 1st: (x2 - x1) = v t x2, t are variable while x1 and v are constants. at t = 1, x2 = x1 + v; at t = 2, x2 = x1 + 2 v at t = 3, x2 = x1 + 3 v... and so on.

I realize this is violating one of the axioms of being a good crackpot (i.e. the fear that my idea will be stolen and someone else will get the credit) .. but whatever. I need to speak to this to people who will understand before my head explodes. I'll break this post up into discrete sections, for easier reading. (Like Chapters?) Alright so .. before I jump into explaining my own theory, I suppose I should talk about General Relativity. It's an easy target for crackpot theories because, if true, then Dark Matter and the (entirely unrelated) Dark Energy really rather need to exist to fill in the gaps, and we have been unsuccessful in combining GR with Quantum Physics so far. From the outside, it seems difficult to understand why astrophysicists apparently cling to it unnecessarily. Now, from what I have come to understand (which may be flawed, so bear with me): there are a few massive points which imply that an alternative theory is highly unlikely. The first is obvious. GR builds off Special...

Ok I've got a theory I'm working on and need some help, but I really don't want to give out to many details without getting to the bottom, so I need some help with my math. I'm sure some of you guys we'll figure out were this is going, if you do I'll fill in the gaps for you. 9=0 8=x 7=x 6=x 5=x 4=x 3=3468 2=x

Hello folks, If you're coming to this thread for the first time, it's sort of a half-continuation from the thread "Theory of Gravity - I can't resist" You don't need to have read it to read this post, but some of my postulates here might make you curious, and that thread explains how I came up with the postulates. I'm finding this whole posting-to-public-forums thing to be very lethargic. I feel like the hot-potato-in-my-head is no longer burning me, and I'd like to continue. I promised in the "Gravity" post that I would explain why I no longer believe that time is a fundamental property of the universe, and is instead emergent. The old thread is long enough, and the subject of time is different enough that it deserves a new thread. Okay I lied; I'm going to talk about the Wave Relativity theory a little. I glossed over a wrong turn in the original article. Though it was a wrong turn, it led me down a path that was enlightening in its own right, before I was led back to what I now believe is the...

I'm getting back into studying physics (after a long break ... death in the family) and a question has occurred to me. I'm wondering if anyone here can answer the question or direct me to where I might find out (short of further study of Quantum Physics, which I'm doing anyway). The momentum of a photon is related to the energy, which is fixed to a discrete level. However, if we can measure the position of a photon to arbitrary precision, then by Heisenber'g UP, it should throw the momentum out of whack which clearly can't happen if the momentum is fixed. How, then, do we reconcile E = pc for a photon with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle?

I could probably go to a proper "Math Tutor" website but I'm lazy. I've recently gone WAY back to the beginning of my serious education in math. I eventually want to teach myself General Relativity and Quantum Physics, but even my earliest "serious" math skills have become hideously rusty. In particular, the following question from an intro chapter to my old textbook on differential equations has got me stumped: The goal is to determine if the given function y is a solution of the differential equation. The second term I can handle and I remember integration by parts, but it's the inside of the integral that throws me. I've forgotten how to integrate e to a non-trivial function (i.e. anything but s).

So much info on both sides as if they are in competition. Its enough with the economic woes. Where does the weight lay to ? HAS ANY BODY GOT A REAL GRASP? :confused:

hmmm... unless the intelligence of the lizard deduces the 'intelligence' of both predator and prey. Enroute to constructing the nexus of the home-HQ, the liz stops... and decides that this wall at this depth will be a prime spot to dig a 'diversion tunnel'. The lengths can vary. Some will consist of one right-angle turn, then end. Others twist-along for several metres before finis abruptus... Prey would be small-enough to turn-around, emerging into the main tunnel head-first. It'd be too dark for visible vertigo, therefore sensory vertigo is the desired effect, re-entering the main tunnel from a freshly alien point-of-view. Because chances are, another tunnel-mouth looms nearby, not 'sensed' from the original vantage-point. Predators would probably be too big to turn-around, and would generally grow tired from discovering dead-ends, then backing-out of them... or die trying. Via shuffling, scurrying, scuffling, or dying, the monitor-building-the-HQ has sensed the predator. It's outta...

can someone please help me to understand these theories or at least provide a site that would help me to better understand them with out getting too technical.

Hello folks, I'm interested in getting a much deeper understanding of symmetries and how they pretty much define the universe; e.g. translation symmetry in time = Conservation of Energy?? according to Wikipedia. I'm *extremely* interested in how symmetries lead to universal laws. My level of education is up to 3.5 years of Mathematics/Statistics in university.. I had to drop due to funding issues. I wasn't a spectacular student but I would have graduated. I learned some set theory, but by now my memories foggy. Can anyone recommend resources to study from? Online preferred for convenience, but I'm definitely willing to shell out for decent textbooks (preferred university level, since casual "Chapters-ish" books gloss over the real explanations). Thanks for any suggestions you may have! I'll take any and every one. :nana:

I cracked open my new Classical Mechanics text book and was slightly astonished to find a new connection between calculus I, Newton's laws, and the conservation of momentum. You can actually derive the Law of the Conservation of Momentum from Newton's 2nd and 3rd Laws. It never occurred to me to do this. In intro-physics, this was never covered. I don't understand why... Anyway, I thought I'd share this little tidbit. It would help if you have a tiny understanding of derivatives and integrals, but I will try to explain it all in the simplest terms possible. Don't worry if you can't do derivatives and integrals. You won't need to be able to. I will work out everything, and all we're interested in are the final results of each operation. If you can do basic algebra, you can follow. But don't let that stop you from learning just a little bit about calculus, too. :wink: So here is how you derive the conservation of momentum from Newton's 2nd and 3rd laws.

I need a math wizard. This is what I have. A rock....lol The rock weighs 38.4 grams. I put some water into a cup. The height of the water without the rock is 48.69 mm. With the rock it is 52.93 mm. If I understand this I need to convert mm to ml. This is what I'm trying to do. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Density Unusual density is one of meteorites' more characteristic features. It's not enough to say your rock is heavy. Density is how heavy a rock is for its size or compared with other rocks. Iron meteorites are 3.5 times as heavy as ordinary Earth rocks of the same size, while stony meteorites are about 1.5 times as heavy. Lumps or fragments of man-made materials, ore rocks, slag (the byproduct of industrial processes) and the iron oxides magnetite and hematite, are also common all throughout the world and are frequently dense and metallic. So this test is helpful but not definitive.

Hi folks, I'd like to try and *practically* demonstrate how the non-linearity of space changes the momentum of light (i.e. redshifts) with an experiment I can do myself (or possibly with buddies); has anyone ever heard of anything like this? I'm afraid I don't understand the mechanics of Einstein's Field Equations themselves, never having studied GR in university (and my mathematics education being cut off after 3rd year due to funding issues), so I'm not able to study the field equations themselves for inspiration. What I'm *hoping* for is an experiment that doesn't require me calculating how much light is bent around Mars; possibly something similar to the attempt by Michaelson and Morley to prove the existence of the aether (though it failed), or even something as simple as the placement of clocks on a tower to show time dilation. Is this even possible for General Relativity, or is the change in momentum of light simply much too small for anything practical? Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

I,m trying to find a number for the greatest amount of humans that could have been produced by one man and one woman in eight-thousand years. Is there some kind of formula that can work that out? And would you have to come up with all kinds of info like, gestation time, age of reproductive maturity, infant mortality rate, average life spans and all that?