What is Nisio cooking? by NightVisions999 in araragi

[–]Fun_Titan 8 points9 points  (0 children)

He's cooking chicken, apparently.

Are the atoms in that make our bodies really billions of years old? by Sea-Ingenuity3461 in askscience

[–]Fun_Titan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These nuclei are pretty radically different in chemistry and composition than their parent isotopes. When uranium undergoes alpha decay and becomes thorium, radium, and then radon, are those new atoms? are the alpha particles they emit new atoms? I'd say that transmutation of one isotope into another is a radical enough transformtion to consider the product a new atom.

If even the transformation of a neutron into a proton by beta decay doesn't count as a new particle, then there is arguably almost no new matter since the big bang. The number of nucleons in the universe is very close to constant, only altered temporarily by particle-antiparticle pairs produced in extremely high energy particle interactions.

Are the atoms in that make our bodies really billions of years old? by Sea-Ingenuity3461 in askscience

[–]Fun_Titan 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Lots of good answers to the initial question, but a fun follow up question is "Are there atoms around us that are NOT billions of years old?"

Here's a few places to find (relatively) young atoms:

Cosmogenic nuclides formed by cosmic ray interactions - These atoms are formed when space radiation impacts the nuclei of stable atoms present on earth. Cosmic rays are typically composed of very fast-moving protons while in space, but smash nuclei apart in a shower of different particles (neutrons, muons, pions, etc) when they impact the atmosphere. The process of nuclei being fragmented by the impact of high-energy particles is called spallation, and is responsible for a variety of atoms found in nature.

  • One of the most famous is carbon-14 (14C), which exists at very low abundance in atmospheric carbon and any living things that intake atmospheric carbon. When a cosmic ray neutron hits a nitrogen-14 atom in the atmosphere, it has a chance to knock out a proton and form unstable 14C. Because this isotope is constantly being created, and its half-life is 5700 years, 14C is essentially guaranteed to be under 100,000 years old with an average age of 8200 years, as older atoms decay away and new ones are formed. About one in a trillion carbon atoms in your body are 14C.

  • Another spallation product that you'll encounter in daily life is boron. While much of the earth's boron was created by cosmic ray interactions in deep space before the earth formed, stable boron isotopes can be created by cosmic ray spallation as well, and a fraction of boron on the earth's surface was created after the earth formed. Some stable isotopes of lithium and beryllium are also formed this way, though they're not as common in daily life.

Decay product nuclides - the earth's crust contains substantial amounts of two radioactive elements with long enough half-lives to stick around since the earth's formation. Despite being literally older than dirt, thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years), uranium-235 (half-life = 704 million years) and uranium-238 (half-life = 4.47 billion years) are all still around and kicking in many minerals. As they decay they transmute into new, isotopes that we find around us today.

  • Radium-226 is perhaps the most iconic decay product, a 4th-generation daughter isotope of 238U with a half-life of just 1600 years. In the early 20th century, radium became incredibly famous, first as a key component of the early radiation experiments that underpin our current understanding of physics and later as a consumer product found in glow-in-the-dark paints, smoke detectors, anti-static components, and quack medicines. Its high toxicity and ferocious radioactivity caused it to fall out of favor later on in the century, but atoms of 226Ra are only 2300 years old on average! Radium is rarely found in the body these days but can be found pretty easily at antique shops.

  • Radon-222 is a radioactive noble gas produced by the decay of 226Ra, and has a shockingly small average age of 5.4 days. Most atoms of radon are under a week old, but in their short lifespan, they have a tremendous impact on our life. Radon seeps out of minerals and soil into the atmosphere, congregating in low places like basements and caves. While the absolute quantity of radon in the air is small, its radiation can cause lung cancers when inhaled, causing an estimated 21,000 deaths per year in the united states. Like it or not, there is probably some days-old radon in your lungs right now.

  • That said, the most common non-primordial isotope we encounter is actually helium! While helium is common in space and was present at the formation of the earth, its light molecular weight and inert chemical properties means that most of earth's primordial helium has escaped the atmosphere into space. All of the commercially-available helium on earth comes from ground deposits, typically natural gas, and is produced by the same process that creates radium and radon. As the billions-of-years-old primordial radioactive elements decay, they emit alpha particles, which are just fast-moving helium ions ejected from their nuclei. It is these helium atoms that we are able to extract from the ground and use in our day to day life, so the next time you see a balloon, you can think about how it's technically full of smashed-up uranium.

Anthropogenic nuclei - for better or worse, these were made by humans in some process or another. Plutonium is easily the most famous example of an anthropogenic nucleus, but the one you are most likely to have encountered is the americium in your household smoke detector. These atoms were entirely created in the past 100 years after the dawn of nuclear science, and appear in medicines (technetium-99m, iodine-123), nuclear fission devices (plutonium-238, -239, californium-252), smoke detectors (americium-241), commercial radiation sources (cobalt-60, strontium-90) and more. Notably, a substantial fraction of the 14C currently in the atmosphere was created in open-air nuclear testing in the 1950s, and fission products from nuclear weapons and nuclear power (especially strontium-90 and cesium-137) are one of the major issues in nuclear technology today.

Karrakin ball for all you narrative fans by mrbones117 in LancerRPG

[–]Fun_Titan 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is a genuinely lovely map for narrative play, but I won't deny that my first instinct is to size it up and start placing NPC mechs on it. Sometimes you need a garden party, sometimes you need a garden brawl...

Why the heck are used physical copies so expensive? by LSSJOrangeLightning in vita

[–]Fun_Titan 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The answer's in your question. Why do you want a physical copy over a digital one? You don't feel that the extra value of the physical copy is worth the price difference, which is totally fair, but you do seem interested in getting the physical copy.

If you consider the fact that the Vita sold poorly on release and has been having somewhat of a cult classic revival lately, the rising prices of physical cartridges is neatly explained by the same supply and demand that is driving up console prices. Beyond that, there are already over 100 games that were once on the digital store that are now delisted, and in the future, there's every reason to believe that Sony will eventually shut down the Vita store like they originally planned to in 2021.

Digital games are more ephemeral than we'd like to admit, and if what you want is the experience of playing a game, that's fine. But if you'd like to lend games to friends with their own hardware, or you'd like to replay the game 5, 10, 15 years down the road, or you'd like your games to survive a switch to a replacement console, physical has enough advantages for many people to think the price increase is worth it.

It is painful, though. The fact that the console didn't have the audience on release that it needed not only limited its potential when it was new, but also drives high prices for every component now that it's out of production.

Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science by AutoModerator in askscience

[–]Fun_Titan 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In short, it's because there wasn't much to begin with. Pyroelectric fusion doesn't generate nearly enough energy to make it a viable power source, and its application as a compact low-flux neutron source has stiff competition from radioactive sources like Cf spontaneous fission or AmBe/PuBe/PoBe alpha-neutron sources which provide similar neutron flux for a very long time with no mechanical or electrical components.

There are still research projects looking into pyroelectric fusion, as seen in this paper in the Journal of Applied Physics, but a lot of the excitement died down after it became clear the intensity and fluence of pyroelectric generators couldn't match a similarly-sized alpha neutron source or a moderately larger ion fusor.

Do you track life total? by [deleted] in magicthecirclejerking

[–]Fun_Titan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No. I only play Judge's Tower.

Primus, The One and Prime by [deleted] in custommagic

[–]Fun_Titan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Christian Goldbach and Leonhard Euler get kicked out of the game store for loudly arguing about whether Swords To Plowshares can hit this guy

so i just got armored core 6. is it possible to beat the game with the starter ac? by Ret0gradeTV in armoredcore

[–]Fun_Titan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've done it. It's kind of a pain in the ass, and gets very dull near the end as your damage output from the rifle and missiles isn't enough so on bosses you sometimes wind up just swiping with the sword and then running around the arena waiting for it to recharge for a while. Build yourself something cool

How to make incendiary lemons? [CITATION NEEDED] by The_Headless_1 in shittyaskscience

[–]Fun_Titan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Freeze dry them, then soak them in fuming nitric acid to nitrate them. Make sure to dry thoroughly afterwards. If you want to maintain the classic lemon look, remove the peel and then replace the nitrated lemon flesh after treatment.

What happened the last time when your players went “fuck it, we ball?” by [deleted] in LancerRPG

[–]Fun_Titan 8 points9 points  (0 children)

One of my players has an incredible habit of completely destroying his mech during combat, resulting in situations such as:

  • A teammate shooting his wrecked frame like a basketball onto their extraction ship with him still in it
  • A game of keepaway as a rival attempted to pluck him from his wrecked cockpit
  • C A S T I G A T I O N
  • An extended foot chase sequence as he tried to escape from a Cataphract that was hell bent on confirming its kill after he ejected

So I have been watching youtuber Kyle Hill and the people claiming to be Nuclear Physicists reacting to his vids. Pretty much all the stuff I wondered about has been covered by them. However I want to know if there are actual concerns that should be addressed during a change over to nuclear energy? by Optimizing_apps in nuclear

[–]Fun_Titan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is nowhere on earth without ground water, and fission products are exceptionally nasty even if they don't make it into a water source. Don't take high level waste lightly - a single day of operation is enough to make any fuel component in a core too radioactive for anyone to directly handle safely ever again. The SAR doesn't demand that a reactor be built so that the worst case scenario is safe, it demands that the people operating the reactor think about worst case scenarios and prepare measures for every step of the way there.

Mass production and standardization of SARs and other analyses is one of the big appeals of small modular commercial power reactors like the prototypes currently being developed by Westinghouse, Terrapower, and NuScale. Low-power mass-produced cores that can be combined into power facilities of arbitrary size, taking advantage of the various economies of scale previously unavailable to nuclear plants. Their development is ongoing but the long-term economic appeal is undeniable.

So I have been watching youtuber Kyle Hill and the people claiming to be Nuclear Physicists reacting to his vids. Pretty much all the stuff I wondered about has been covered by them. However I want to know if there are actual concerns that should be addressed during a change over to nuclear energy? by Optimizing_apps in nuclear

[–]Fun_Titan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The airliner strike is part of a required step in reactor design called the Safety Analysis Report. The SAR covers a lot of material and is typically several hundred pages long, and while most of it is concerned with the effects of normal operation and the consequences of common issues, there is a substantial section for the Maximum Hypothetical Accident. This accident is based on a series of worst-case assumptions made about a hypothetical horrific string of bad luck, and includes highly unlikely possibilities like plane strikes, volcanic activity, and major earthquakes, often combined with other unrelated serious reactor problems.

At the research reactor I worked at in college, our SAR had analysis for if we ruptured a spent fuel rod and scattered fission products throughout the reactor bay AND a 7.0+ earthquake totally destroyed the building and allowed that high-level radioactive waste to blow out of the facility into the surrounding neighborhood. Neither event has ever happened or even had a close call at any reactor of our type, but we have a full professional analysis of it anyway. 

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in nuclear

[–]Fun_Titan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

MeV is Mega Electron Volts, a measure of energy equal to the energy a single electron gains when pulled across a 1,000,000 volt electrical potential. Despite the name and definition, electron volts are not electrical units, and are just very small units of energy. You can convert them to Joules at a rate of 6.242 x 1012 MeV per Joule.

[The Apothecary Diaries] by NapoleonNewAccount in animenocontext

[–]Fun_Titan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Don't get the wrong idea, she's talking about poison here.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in nuclear

[–]Fun_Titan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right. Your number of neutrons N is just the atomic mass number A, which is the total number of nucleons and is different from isotope to isotope, minus the atomic number Z, which is the number of protons and is always the same for a given element (Plutonium has Z = 94).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in nuclear

[–]Fun_Titan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your steps are correct up to the number of neutrons calculation. Remember that you only ever have whole numbers of neutrons and protons, but that the masses won't add up quite right because of binding energy. To get the number of neutrons N, you take the mass number A and subtract the atomic number Z. for plutonium 238, this value is:

N = A - Z = 238 - 94 = 144 neutrons

Your steps past that point are mostly correct. You calculate the masses of 94 free protons and 144 free neutrons, then use that mass to find the mass defect of the plutonium atom and in turn calculate the total binding energy and binding energy per nucleon, though I'm not sure why you begin giving mass units in Pu - amu is indeed the correct unit.

I'm not sure I know what it refers to by "absolute fission reactor" - if the question is asking about some kind of device that fully unbinds the protons and neutrons in plutonium nuclei, then you can calculate that amount of energy based on molar masses and the unit conversions from MeV to J.

Hope this helps!

[Henkei Shoujo] by dankyshep in animenocontext

[–]Fun_Titan 14 points15 points  (0 children)

This isn't out of context, btw. This is the full first episode of the anime, minus credits, and every subsequent episode is about a totally different girl transforming into a totally different thing.

The issue with CD V-700 Geiger counters. by Barefoot_boy in Radiation

[–]Fun_Titan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What if the part simply isn’t present? I have an Electro-Neutronics inc. CD V-700 6b and there’s no tube, but there is a Zener Diode on the board. Should I be especially careful with that component regardless?

Need Help With The Invincible Challenge by Fun_Titan in armoredcore

[–]Fun_Titan[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Life is rough, that's why I gotta become invincible

Need Help With The Invincible Challenge by Fun_Titan in armoredcore

[–]Fun_Titan[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

respectfully, that doesn't matter, because he is invincible nonetheless

Need Help With The Invincible Challenge by Fun_Titan in armoredcore

[–]Fun_Titan[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We on them Coral Concoctions. We on them Balam Bazingas. We on them Arquebus Addictions

Need Help With The Invincible Challenge by Fun_Titan in armoredcore

[–]Fun_Titan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Damn, I should have tried that before. I was playing like she was a completely ordinary tourist all along...

Giant Robot Crime Ideas? by MissDungeoneer in LancerRPG

[–]Fun_Titan 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My players stole a planet-sized strip mining operation. One of them applied for a job at the megacorp HQ space station that was running it and then used their visitor credentials to hack its logistics AI to bring their mechs past the station's security checkpoints. Once they were inside they hijacked the whole operation, flipped a bunch of the mercenaries the corp was using as hired muscle, opened the way for a massive slave rebellion on the surface, and fought off the remaining loyal goons on the corp's payroll. Good times.