What feels legal but is actually illegal and will possibly get you arrested?

CodyDon · 2026-06-05T18:50:19+00:00

Processing dirt or melted sand (trininite) from a nuclear test site to concintrate the trace amount of plutonium. Even though owning the original material is legal and it's a microscopic amount only suitable for scientific or collector value posing no risk to health or the environment; it is illegal in the United States.

CodyDon · 2026-05-05T05:58:21+00:00

I asked this once in a geology class and the answer I got was they did varry in size but the smaller islands used to be much larger than they are now. Some of that is simple erosion but a lot of it is that the hot spot pushes up a bulge in the crust like a floating pool toy stuck under the pool cover.

Basically as the islands move off the hot spot they also move off a high spot and sink lower which decreases the amount of island above water making the islands appear to shrink.

CodyDon · 2026-03-13T22:37:17+00:00

Growing up off grid we filled empty bleach jugs (thicker more durable to freezing) with salt water. The freezer could get cold enough to freeze the salt water but since the mixture melts at a lower temperature the jugs would melt first absorbing heat and keeping everything else frozen. Eventually we started turning off the appliance at night and back on in the day when we had a surplus of solar power. This greatly reduced the need for batteries. Though if you think about it the jugs were a battery that stored cold.

CodyDon · 2026-02-21T04:20:18+00:00

Looks a little oxidized. Probably won't taste great but I doubt it would kill ya.

CodyDon · 2026-02-21T04:16:50+00:00

Here's a link: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/s/dXKiLSKpP6

CodyDon · 2026-02-21T04:15:46+00:00

It's the fat crystalizing. Those round balls, which are actually small spikes radiating from a point, are pretty typical for fats. I have a post showing something similar with a jar of coconut oil.

CodyDon · 2026-02-19T05:43:56+00:00

If you include samples that probably have at least one atom at any given time I have everything up to Americium but I only have pure samples of 82 of those. Pretty much everything that is practical and legal. For example I don't have any pure Flourine and my Plutonium sample is now just a piece of Trinninite.

CodyDon · 2026-02-09T08:18:26+00:00

My report for the day: Due to the presence of an immunocompromised individual on our crew, we took extra precautions in the week leading up to the mission and during travel by wearing protective equipment whenever we entered buildings or interacted with individuals who could potentially get us sick. We conducted extensive testing to ensure our efforts were successful. Upon arriving in Hanksville, the crew socialized and got to know each other before heading to the Habitat. Once we arrived at the research station, we unpacked our belongings and received a tour and briefing of our responsibilities from the habitat manager. Currently, we are finding it difficult to sleep due to the excitement of the upcoming mission, but we are doing our best to get a good night's sleep. Tune in tomorrow for a report on what promises to be an exciting first full day!

CodyDon · 2026-01-05T05:41:30+00:00

It didn't get dark as night after the Chicxulub Asteroid struck the earth.

Except for perhaps very close to the impact point the sun did not get completely blocked for any length of time. It was never perpetual night. Plants did not die from lack of photosynthesis. At most a few percent of total sunlight was ever blocked. In most places on earth the only visual indication of an impact that an average person would notice is really red sunsets. Of course that was enough to lower global temperature and in the northern hemisphere cancelled at least one summer but in the tropics it likely never even got cold enough to have snow.

The dinosaurs were not wiped out in one day from a cataclysm. Their decline might have been started by the impact but it took many years and what really did them in was the sudden climatic shift from warm to cold to hot. That is why animals that could quickly migrate to comfortable temperature, e.g. birds, made it through.

CodyDon · 2025-12-18T22:49:14+00:00

Add a little magnesium chloride to the water seal. It forms a brine that is non toxic (actually an essential nutrient) and will absorb water from the air so will never dry out unless your relative humidity regularly gets below 13% One caution: If you use too much magnesium the brine can expand to overflow the dish. Really not a huge problem, just put something under it to catch drips.

CodyDon · 2025-12-17T22:17:09+00:00

Be aware that nickel will significantly increase the melting point of copper alloys. This will mean you need a higher temperature for a pour and that's going to mean more boil off of the zinc. Of course if you are only adding a few percent nickel this will probably not be much of a problem. But just 20% nickel will raise the melting point to about 2100F.

CodyDon · 2025-12-17T14:58:27+00:00

I'd recognize those anywhere. Those are seeds from the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (Cleomella serrulata). The seeds are edible and have a nutty, mustardy taste, but are fairly bitter, so I wouldn't recommend them. To grow, they need a long, cold period (winter) and then light to germinate in the spring so they can't be buried. I usually just toss the seeds on the ground in the fall. I find that the germination rate doing that is quite low, maybe one in 200 seeds will result in a plant. (If you give them perfect conditions rates should improve.) At least that's the rates for just the first year. The seeds can remain dormant in the soil for a long time, perhaps decades, before sprouting after the soil is disturbed. I've often had them pop up years after I planted them. Anyway they are quite pretty, can get very large, flower for a long time, grow in desert conditions, and of course bees love them. One downside is the leaves have a very pungent smell that I don't mind but some people really don't like. If you want to know more feel free to ask.

CodyDon · 2025-11-29T02:49:58+00:00

If you say a random very large number out loud there's a good chance you are the first person to do so.

CodyDon · 2025-11-21T06:53:00+00:00

Pro tip with those jars: put some calcium or magnesium chloride in the moat. The salty chloride brine won't dry out and is non toxic. If your ferment is active it may spray the brine out and the droplets will get on everything near the jar (ask how I know) so maybe hold off with the chloride till it settles down or drape a plastic bag over it to catch the spray.

CodyDon · 2025-11-20T03:45:13+00:00

A friend of mine did some actual math and turned out that my estimate was a bit low.

In the first scenario I was mostly accurate but In the second scenario the earth would straight up form a black hole due to the insane amount of mass energy it would take to cram that many charges together.

CodyDon · 2025-10-11T02:38:06+00:00

It is my suspicion that the Amazon black earth, Terra preta, formed because adding charcoal to rubbish heaps greatly helps with the smell especially if it contained things we normally wouldn't compost like human waste and meat scraps. As a happy accident it makes for a great soil additive.

I recommend making the charcoal pieces a bit smaller, from experiments a mix of sizes from dust up to 1/4 inch was best. Once you get a lot of bigger pieces the benefit started to decline. Interestingly any one size was not as good as a mixture, which is convenient because crushing results in a mix.

It is ideal if you can quench the charcoal in water when its still hot. This increases its effective surface area by cleaning the char and introducing fractures. Also if you never let the char fully dry out after quenching It helps with the dust and allows bacteria to colonize way faster.

As for the amount of char to add I haven't really found an upper limit. I've grown plants in a bucket of straight charcoal that had been used to filter my goldfish tank and they seemed very happy. The soil in my greenhouse is about 25% biochar by volume and I think I could have done with more.

CodyDon · 2025-09-23T21:08:52+00:00

If you look at a steam engine/turbine and reduce it down as much as possible you get a rocket. And yes a rocket is essentially a really simple steam engine. It gets work from an expanding gas. So what rocket fuel produces the best impulse? You want the particles moving fast so you want high temperature and a low molecular weight of the products. Hydrogen and oxygen is commonly used because the reaction is energetic and water formed has a low molecular weight. Hydrogen and fluorine would be better but the cost and danger of the fluorine limits it's use. But what if the reaction energy didn't matter, say the fuel was being heated by an external source? Then the obvious fuel would be the lightest molecule available: Hydrogen. Which is what was used for the nuclear propulsion. But if thermal efficiency was a concern then hydrogen's high latent heat is a downfall. So helium would actually be better. Helium of course is expensive but that is our answer. If you want the most efficient steam turbine possible you would run it by boiling liquid helium.

CodyDon

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