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Misterspork

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Eat Uranium

Eat Uranium

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* Uranium - 238 is the heaviest known stable isotope.

Only if you are speaking relative to some arbitrary time-scale. Uranium-238 alpha decays with a 4.468×109yr halflife. The heaviest isotope that has had no observed decay is lead-208, and the heaviest theoretically stable isotope is zirconium-92.

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Misterspork

Misterspork

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You\'re doing derivatives and limits in pre-algebra?

No, I mean dividing anything by zero is undefined. They didn\'t explain it in the way it is explained in calculus, they just said 'You can\'t multiply zero by anything to equal any number' though the explanation doesn\'t explain why 0/0 is still undefined.

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Agamemnon

Agamemnon

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@Agamemnon

Well essentially atoms of elements don\'t look anything like the images used to portray them, they are only used to aid understanding. But in order to have seperate elements, there needs to be a different number of electrons, which means to balance it there must be a different number of protons and neutrons in the nucleus, which greatly increases the 'gravity' of the nucleus, causing it to pull on the orbiting electrons more which should cause them to speed up to remain in orbit. I\'m not sure if this is right but I take it that some argue the number is higher because once an element reaches 8 electrons in an orbiting level, it has to form a new level further away from the nucleus, which would decrease the pull on the electrons.

okay :) first thanks for replay, then few my points :)

yes, i am aware they dont look as portraied... what i know about quantum physics, then nothing like electrons orbiting nucleus exists (at least in the way it is portraied)...

to have different elements you need different number of protons in nucleus, not different number of electrons

i am not sure gravity is that significant in atoms - it is very weak force - more significant in atoms are strong interaction and weak interaction (both in nucleus) and electromagnetic force (in a whole atom)

then, electrons can orbit only on given energy levels - it can be calculated, of course, what they are... each energy level can have only specific number of electrons - the number depends of the level...

well, something like this :) long time ago was my uni physics course :)

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Hypocee

Hypocee

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The fun part about orbitals is that they\'re shaped as if the electron was always orbiting at lightspeed, and constructively and destructively interfering with its own wavefunction. So yeah, I can believe that at a certain electric field strength you\'d generate an orbital longer than any simple harmonic of the electron.

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Lordherrmann

Lordherrmann

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- The highest temperature produced in a laboratory was 920,000,000 F (511,000,000 C) at the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in Princeton, NJ, USA.

Not true:

The highest temperature produced in a laboratory was over 1,000,000,000 Kelvin at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico archieved by the Z-Machine.

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Kryten

Kryten

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The highest temperature produced in a laboratory was over 1,000,000,000 Kelvin at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico archieved by the Z-Machine.

That isn\'t quite the highest either; the LHC produces temperatures of around 12 trillion (12,000,000,000,000) kelvin in its highest-energy collisions.

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Johno

Johno

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Electrons have mass, in reality, but in all chemical calculations we ignore it. The reason is that electrons\' mass is insanely small; a good comparison (not to scale, but useful in grasping the idea) is to imagine an elephant. Got it? Good. Now put your elephant on a scale. You may need an extremely high power electric prod, so imagine one of those too. Good. Your elephant is being weighed. Now imagine a flea jumps down off something above the elephant and lands on its back. Will the reading on the scales change? No - any scale with the ability to measure an elephant has too little sensitivity to detect the flea. And in a school science laboratory (or even an undergraduate lab at a university) you simply don\'t have any equipment sensitive enough to detect the mass of electrons.

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DonLorenzo

DonLorenzo

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Radioactive decay does not occur if the substance is being observed in a laboratory.

The saturn V rockets had over a million distinct components. At a 99,9% estimated reliability rate per part that\'s still a 1000 expected part failures in any given launch.

If you dip your hand in water you can stick it in molten lead (briefly) with no ill effect; the water flash boils to steam, briefly insulating your hand.

A man was recently cured of AIDS. He received complete bone marrow irradiation and subsequent grafts from a donor to treat his cancer. This procedure also removed the AIDS from his system. Its a procedure that\'s arguably worse than just living it out on retroviral suppressants, but still.

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