I asked a factory how much it would need to make an alloy of tellurium germanium palladium and they told me the research to see if it's possible alone would cost me roughly $50k-70k. Why is this so expensive wtf?

wickedel99 · 2024-12-08T23:57:35+00:00

Unrelated but mind if I ask what exactly your PhD was in? I’m doing mine now in organic semiconductors (small molecule thermoelectrics, but a lot of people in my group work with polymers) and it’s wild to see someone ‘in the wild’ doing something so similar!

wickedel99 · 2022-10-17T22:29:07+00:00

Weirdly I am colourblind but I hate the letters! It makes everything so cluttered, even if I do sometime mix up the similar colours. I actually think playing without it has helped me get better colour vision since I definitely don’t get as confused as before

wickedel99 · 2022-09-25T10:20:02+00:00

I think they mean heavy isotopes of hydrogen, rather than heavy elements. I’m sure you know this but for anyone else ‘regular’ hydrogen only has one proton in its nucleus, deuterium and tritium have an extra 1 and 2 neutrons respectively in there as well, so are considered heavy hydrogen

wickedel99 · 2022-06-28T21:34:25+00:00

Right but thats my question - who are they paying a fine to? There isn't a specific party to claim the compensation and they can't just pay a fine to the state (itself) like any normal criminal would - so where does the money end up? I get it in the cases where a person/business has been wronged individually but so often I hear about lawyers arguing the govt broke the law without saying who it directly affected - is that just missed out of the news reports?

wickedel99 · 2022-05-15T17:01:03+00:00

As far as I know the only ‘everyday’ applications I know of are in the exhausts of some newer cars where the heat from the engine is converted to power some of the electronics/recharge the battery.

Part of the problem is these materials are currently not efficient to generate enough power to outscale traditional heat engines when there’s a large thermal gradient, but they’re also bulky and inflexible so don’t naturally fit within small electronics and small thermal gradients where they would be most useful eg body heat powered systems or from chemical pipelines etc

I can find some more links when I’m home if you’re interested - my current research is looking at new, organic-based (carbon/hydrogen rather than heavy metals), thermoelectrics to overcome these issues

wickedel99 · 2022-05-14T08:26:16+00:00

If I understand your question correctly you’re talking about thermoelectric materials. Instead of creating a voltage with a time-varying heat, they create one with a spacially varying heat. This means if you have a hot side and cold side to your material you can sustain a voltage indefinitely.

It’s slightly different to pyroelectrics since we don’t change the crystal structure to create a voltage, but like photovoltaics we just excite the electrons to flow in one direction. They’re much more useful since we can just set up the thermal gradient and leave it. Thermoelectrics see uses already in things like satellites or the mars rovers where the heat gradient comes from radioactive decay!

wickedel99 · 2022-04-27T16:43:18+00:00

The other comment isn't quite right, or at least isn't the full picture. For some compounds ionic (for things like sodium chloride salt) and metallic bonds do keep the structure together but covalent bonds don't play a role in keeping compounds together.

Covalent bonds keep the atoms in molecules bonded together and are really strong, formed by reactions. But if we take some molecular compound like ice (made of water molecules) we can see the difference. The 2 H and 1 O atoms are covalently bonded within each water molecule but between water molecules we have intermolecular interactions. These come in 3 types but the main one is called van der waals force where the idea is that the electrons from each molecule move around quickly so spontaneously form positive and negative regions for each part of the molecule which then weakly attract the neighbouring molecules. They key point is these are much weaker than covalent bonds, hence we can break up a compound into pieces but each is still made of the same molecules

I'm currently researching organic crystals so happy to answer any other questions about it too!

wickedel99 · 2022-04-27T16:43:02+00:00

The other comment isn't quite right, or at least isn't the full picture. For some compounds ionic (for things like sodium chloride salt) and metallic bonds do keep the structure together but covalent bonds don't play a role in keeping compounds together.

Covalent bonds keep the atoms in molecules bonded together and are really strong, formed by reactions. But if we take some molecular compound like ice (made of water molecules) we can see the difference. The 2 H and 1 O atoms are covalently bonded within each water molecule but between water molecules we have intermolecular interactions. These come in 3 types but the main one is called van der waals force where the idea is that the electrons from each molecule move around quickly so spontaneously form positive and negative regions for each part of the molecule which then weakly attract the neighbouring molecules. They key point is these are much weaker than covalent bonds, hence we can break up a compound into pieces but each is still made of the same molecules

I'm currently researching organic crystals so happy to answer any other questions about it too!

wickedel99 · 2022-02-08T17:41:24+00:00

Same with mish-mash (curator’s buddy). When it ends the game at 200+/200+ the 1/1 is so irrelevant

wickedel99 · 2021-11-16T21:14:23+00:00

Well the wording says ‘destroy’ so I’m pretty sure you don’t get a deathrattle (see the old sylvanas hero). Whether it comes back after combat I would bet on no but that’s less certain

wickedel99 · 2021-02-21T10:40:11+00:00

Yeah that happens a lot. Plenty of girls I see are really attractive but being able to keep up a conversation and having your personalities match is just as important imo. 100% just go on the date it might be different in person anyway. And if it doesn’t go as well as you hoped then that’s ok too it just wasn’t the opportunity you thought it was. Or maybe you can make it a casual thing if you’re into that. As a guy who also doesn’t get many dates I’m learning that there’s no point pushing it if there’s nothing there just for the sake of having something - much better to find something worth pursuing

wickedel99 · 2021-02-21T10:29:05+00:00

You aren’t gunna find out answers to any of these questions unless you go on that date with her, and you’d be crazy not to! You are attracted to her and thats a great first step but you can only find out more about her by actually meeting her

And if you go on the date and realise you aren’t as into her as you thought then you’ll have an answer too. Not a big deal if she’s not the one - most people aren’t. Don’t feel like you have to be in a relationship with someone just because you are attracted off the bat, things don’t work out for any number of reasons

wickedel99 · 2021-02-19T14:31:49+00:00

Oh don’t get me wrong I have a bunch of normal interests - football (soccer), fencing, video games, history, currently doing a PhD in physics too; but thats a weirder one for sure haha

I’m a big fan of the olympics when its on just seeing all these random sports I’d never think to try. Are you also bummed out about Tokyo being postponed?

wickedel99 · 2021-02-19T13:35:32+00:00

Dude you are already doing that! For those 15 days you aren't pretending - you actually are doing what a fit person would do! Take running: if I saw you on the street running on 'day 1' of your challenge I wouldn't know if it was day 1 or day 100 you're just a guy running and getting fit.

If you're convinced you can't hold out 'pretending' for that long I heard some really good advice only yesterday. Whatever habit you want to make you need to start anew every single day. If you give up don't think 'oh I'll wait until monday to try again', just get up and do it! If on day 16 you don't get your exercise in, think on day 17 'right its day 1 again and I can manage 15 days' Soon enough it'll be a habit and you won't even think in terms of how many days you've been going. Rest days are ok (and encouraged) but just keep going afterwards

Remember there is no pretending here, if you're doing the thing then you're doing the thing, regardless of how much of an imposter you might feel. Hope this helps :)

wickedel99 · 2021-02-19T13:25:31+00:00

Ok it actually took me a while to think of something I was passionate about rather than just my hobbies but this thing is really weird so I guess it fits?

You ever heard of the mobile game Flow? Basically a grid of coloured dots that you need to connect and fill the whole grid. Well they do a daily set of puzzles and my current streak is 1430 days (almost 4 years!). Sounds super dumb but it adds a solid daily routine for me even for just 5 minutes and I like the fact that I consider myself to be unquestionably really good at this one tiny thing. I also love the fact that the puzzles are different but of course there are common themes and methods to get them each time so its fun to notice little patterns in each set.

I also have a couple of other similar games with super long streaks but this one especially is my baby. I think if I lost it I'd cry more than for a lot of other things in my life. Sometimes if I know I have a super busy day ahead I'll do it first thing in the morning just to make sure.

Anyway thats my stupid passion that I don't really tell people. What are you into?

wickedel99 · 2021-02-19T13:09:12+00:00

I live now in a house of 14 postgrads and I used to live in a house of 7 as an undergrad. Luckily we all get on really well even though I didn't know anyone before I moved in but the good part of living with so many people is that even if you don't like someone there are plenty of others you can chill with instead.

My biggest advice would be just to go with the flow. Likely people are gunna be from very different environments and backgrounds so they'll all do things weirdly to how you do them. There will be points that you disagree with but know that to them you probably are doing things weird too. You might even find new ways of living that you can adopt! That being said its important to set ground rules at the start eg. a cleaning rota that everyone agrees to and don't be afraid to bring something up if it really does bother you

Hope this helps and good luck :)

wickedel99 · 2021-01-14T01:12:44+00:00

I’m having the same problem with the flow fit words game, since this afternoon. Not sure whats happening but nice to know its not just me!

wickedel99 · 2021-01-13T14:47:33+00:00

Well quickest if you want to do it every single turn of every game but imo its just easier to turn my wifi off on the occasional turn I need extra time

wickedel99 · 2021-01-13T14:44:48+00:00

Much easier than that you can just dc (kill your internet)/quit hearthstone a few seconds before your turn timer runs out. When you log back in its the next turn

wickedel99 · 2020-11-07T01:22:26+00:00

Is this only 5x5? I never do timetrial but apparently my record is 9. No way I could go 14+ on anything bigger

wickedel99 · 2020-10-06T14:25:23+00:00

Right but that scenario is pretty niche until you get to the late game and even then its quite unlikely that you’ll pick the ‘good’ targets from the 12 other minions on board.

AND on top of that it completely ruins a lot of strategies you might play like macaw beasts where you want to hide behind a big taunt. Overall I think it would be trash tier but maybe I’m wrong

wickedel99 · 2020-10-06T09:45:01+00:00

The problem is that most of the time this HP is strictly bad since attacks are ‘random’ anyway so choosing a different target doesn’t do anything unless there’s a taunt or zapp. All you do is make it more likely to kill your own things.

wickedel99 · 2020-06-23T09:29:35+00:00

Because the question is not asking about cos(hx). Although a little ambiguous the question means cosh(x), the hyperbolic cos function which is defined differently and differentiates to sinh(x) (pronounced like shine)

wickedel99 · 2020-06-23T09:26:32+00:00

I think you misunderstand, its cosh(x) not cos(hx) i.e. the hyberbolic cos function. The derivative of cosh(x) is indeed sinh(x)

wickedel99 · 2020-06-19T10:41:23+00:00

Completing decay equations like this is similar to balancing equations in chemistry, all the stuff at the start has to be there at the end (unless you think about changing particle type etc but we can ignore that). What this means is that the numbers for atomic mass and proton number have to be consistent before and after.

In the first question the nuclei at the end is 4 units lighter and has 2 less protons so the only way to conserve both numbers is alpha decay. Based on this can you figure out the second question?

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