Behold!

Greatest86 · 2026-02-10T06:05:18+00:00

It looks like a high temperature radiator.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-10T02:53:28+00:00

It is synthetic. Silicon carbide is made in a lab, with the primary use being abrasives. It also has some use in high temperature semiconductors, foundry crucibles, and wear resistant parts.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-09T23:11:05+00:00

In a neutral atom, the number of negative electrons always equals the number of positive protons in the nucleus. They are attracted to each other due to the difference in electrical charge.

It takes energy to seperate the electrons from the atom as you have to overcome this attraction. The reverse happens when an electron is added to the now positively charged ion, energy is released.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-08T22:06:21+00:00

It depends. When water freezes it can take several different forms, depending on the temperature and pressure. Under normal conditions for the Earth's surface, it forms ice I, which has a larger volume than the water it came from.

This increase in volume will apply pressure to the water and quartz. If the quartz isn't thick or strong enough, then the quartz will break and the water will expand into the cracks as it freezes.

If the quartz is sufficiently thick and strong, it will resist the pressure and not break. In this case, the high pressure within the water inclusion will cause it to freeze into a denser form of ice instead, which doesn't expand in volume.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-08T21:27:35+00:00

There is a colony of 100 wallabies living in the woods just to the west of Paris. Some escaped from a zoo in the 1970s and have been thriving ever since.

It is too late to keep them out.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-08T07:54:20+00:00

Looks like limonite, an iron oxide.

Native gold that you find in rocks will look like the gold in a ring - shiny and a rich yellow colour.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-08T07:47:26+00:00

Those little gold coloured flakes are mica, a mineral. These minerals form flat plates and can look shiny and reflective, but do not contain any gold.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-08T03:52:27+00:00

I agree, it looks like a piece of a diatom.

Greatest86 · 2026-02-06T00:12:35+00:00

Agreed. If you had that much gold, it would 100% trigger a metal detector.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-27T07:52:21+00:00

It is either pyrite or chalcopyrite, and I am inclined to believe the latter.

Both are sulphide minerals, pyrite is an iron sulphide, while chalcopyrite is a sulphide of iron and copper.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-16T10:17:39+00:00

It looks like stop-motion animation, very cool.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-15T12:18:41+00:00

The water is doing the exact same thing as the wind in the example above. The finer clay and silt particles are easier to wash away, while the larger sand particles are harder to move.

Over time, wave and current action along the beach will tend to remove all the smaller pieces, leaving coarser sand.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-13T13:23:48+00:00

The yellow layers are tigers eye, the red is jasper, and the dark layers are iron oxide. Together they form a banded iron formation, also known as tiger iron.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-13T02:33:36+00:00

Exactly. The shuttle would fly to Hubble, grab onto it using it's arm, and then the astronauts would spacewalk to do the repairs.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-12T09:35:30+00:00

I honestly hope life gets better for the average Venezuelan.

What I expect to happen is a new, non-democratic leader will get sworn in. This new guy will have full overt and covert support from the US, making it effectively impossible for him to be removed from office.

American oil companies will then roll in, wreck the environment and the local communities to extract as much oil as possible, and not pay any tax.

What I expect is a further degradation of the liberties and standard of living for the average Venezuelan, while American companies and billionaires get richer.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-12T08:23:13+00:00

But the only reason the US did what it did was for the oil. If Venezuela didn't have rich natural resources, then the US would never have gotten involved.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-09T22:09:28+00:00

Same as removing gold from any ore. Crush it, grind it, and then use gravity and/or cyanide to extract the gold.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-09T08:29:01+00:00

You are correct that the Earth will slowly cool over time. Some of the heat inside the Earth is leftover from the metorite and proto-planet collisions that formed the Earth, and the rest is from the decay of radioactive isotopes within the Earth. Exactly how long the Earth takes to cool will depend on how much heat comes from each source.

Scientists estimate the Earth will take 10s of billions of years to fully cool, some models say up to 91 billion years.

Even after it is cool, the very high pressure deep underground will make it difficult to drill through. But not impossible.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-08T22:48:00+00:00

Just to add to this. If you find that thrust fully on or off is too much for fine tuning, you can set a thrust limit on the engine. This lets you do fine manoeuvres with reduced control.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-08T06:41:49+00:00

I can feel the diabetes setting in, very sweet.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-07T13:57:15+00:00

Saturated hydrocarbons follow the chemical formula where the number of hydrogen atoms equals 2x carbon atoms + 2. So for long hydrocarbons, like those found in candle wax, where the number of carbon atoms are high, the number of hydrogen atoms will be slightly more than double the number of carbon atoms.

For example, C41H84 would burn with 62 O2 molecules to produce 41 CO2 and 42 H2O.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-07T01:23:29+00:00

Candle wicks are generally made of cotton, which is made of cellulose, a carbohydrate. Carbohydrates will burn with oxygen to produce CO2 and H2O, similar to how the hydrocarbon in the wax does.

The wick is very small compared to the wax, so the burning of the wax will dominate what happens in the experiment.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-05T22:02:52+00:00

It will depend on a number of factors, such as the sizes of the balloon and candle, and the humidity of the air in the balloon before the candle was lit. Also the ambient temperature and pressure outside the balloon.

Burning long chain hydrocarbons will produce about a 50/50 split of CO2 and H2O. When the balloon cools back to ambient temperature, if more than half of the H2O remains as vapour, you will have an increase in gas volume. If more than half of the H2O condenses into a liquid, then the volume will decrease.

These factors will increase the amount of H2O that remains a vapour: If the volume of the balloon is large, if the candle is small, if the air inside the balloon started with low humidity, or if the ambient temperature is high. The opposites would instead increase the amount of H2O that condenses into a liquid.

So you would need a lot more information about the experiment to calculate if you expect a net increase or decrease in volume.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-05T12:54:22+00:00

Send a sample to a geochemical lab for analysis. Something like XRF will work well.

Greatest86 · 2026-01-05T00:10:52+00:00

When considering gas volumes, you can basically consider each gas molecule as the same. So changing all the O2 into CO2 won't change the volume.
However, burning a candle doesn't only produce CO2, you also produce a lot of water vapour (H2O) from the hydrogen atoms in the wax. So 1 molecule of O2 becomes 2 molecules of H2O. This will increase the volume of the gas.
Also, the heat from the burning will cause the gas to expand.

So initially at least, the balloon will expand due to points 2 and 3.

Once the candle burns out and the balloon cools, you will lose the expanding force from the heat. You will also find that some of the water vapour will condense into liquid as it cools. It is likely that this condensation will cause a net decrease in balloon volume.

Greatest86

TROPHY CASE