The Toasty One

So, zou maz notice that something about this looks a little bit different.  When I first got to Germanz, I bought a cheap kezboard because I find it reallz uncomfortable to use mz laptop’s kezboard.  Being in Germanz, I naturallz bought one with a German lazout. Although the German kezboard shares manz commonalities with the American lazout, it definitelz has its differences, one of which is that the z and y kezs are swapped in position.  To avoid annozing us all too badlz, Iäm (ä is also where ‘ is on an American kezboard) going to go ahead and switch back into the American lazout. Just an editorial note for those not in the know: the layout of a keyboard can be changed in Windows to match that of whatever language you want.  The letters on the face of the keys are obviously not different, but what comes out when you hit the key is changed according to what language you have selected.

I learned most of the differences between the two pretty easily, since my brain interpreted so many of them as “new”, meaning I didn’t have to first unlearn and then relearn things, just acquire new things.  What has driven me to madness though, is this whole y and z thing.  When trying to type in English with a German keyboard, I constantly had to go back and replace the z with a y in pretty much every case.  For example, I want to type the sentence “Hey what are you doing?”  In the German layout, it comes out like this, “Hez what are zou doingÄ”.

Continue reading ‘Descent into Insanitz Because of a Kezboard’

Suppose we wanted to develop a new catalyst to solve our energy problems. All it needs to do is take water and split it into hydrogen and oxygen, then we can burn those products and use it to power things. This process is endothermic, so the energy will have to come from *somewhere*. Well, why can’t it come from the air around our system, for example? We just make the air colder, and with global warming, that is something we don’t mind at all!

Energy + 2 H₂O_(g) –> 2 H₂ +O₂

The reason for this ultimately doesn’t have anything to do with catalysis. A catalyst reduces the activation energy of the process, but it *cannot* make any non-spontaneous process into a spontaneous one, meaning a catalyst cannot affect the value of the equilibrium constant of a system. Catalysis affects nothing but the RATE of how quickly a system reaches equilibrium. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activation_energy for details)

Based on the concept of Gibbs free energy, the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen at 298K is a non-spontaneous process because the ΔG_rxn is positive.

2 H₂O_{(g) –>} 2 H₂ + O₂

The Gibbs equation:

ΔG_rxn = ΔH_rxn - TΔS_rxn

ΔH_f for water = -241.8 kJ/mol

ΔH_f for H₂ = 0 kJ/mol

ΔH_f for O₂ = 0 kJ/mol

ΔSfor water = 188.7 J/mol·K

ΔS for H₂ = 130.6J/mol·K

ΔS for O₂ = 205J/mol·K

ΔG_rxn = ΔH_rxn - TΔS_rxn

ΔG_rxn = ((0+0)-(-483.6kJ/mol)) –298K·((205+2·130.6)-(188.7))J/mol·K

ΔG_rxn = 400.9kJ/mol

Since ΔG_rxn is positive, the reaction is not spontaneous under those conditions, meaning energy must be forced into the system. However, since the ΔS_rxn component is positive, increasing the temperature will eventually cause the process to become spontaneous as the entropic effects become dominant over the enthalpic effects. For this process, one could expect to see that occur at around a temperature of 1740K. So, if we made an oven that hot, we could do this process, theoretically. The problem, however, is that we have to heat the oven, something which requires a lot of energy. At best, the efficiency of the process breaks even exactly (speaking theoretically, within the bounds of thermodynamics). Realistically, this would be insanely useless.

The ultimate answer to this question is then, there cannot be a catalyst which simply “makes” water turn into hydrogen and oxygen under these conditions because that process is thermodynamically unfavorable. The equilibrium is the controlling factor, not catalysis. It is this reason why the process cannot simply draw energy from the air to make it happen. In short, the answer for this question is basically the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics.

After writing this post, I feel it is safe to say: Science. It works, bitches.

Note: for any of you who don’t find your way here from Reddit, here is why I wrote this post: http://www.reddit.com/info/6nct8/comments/

…just haven’t felt like writing recently.

One delicious tidbit of info I’ll allow you: I’ve 69ed the plans for an English degree and am going to stay 2 more years at school and finish my chemistry degree.  It is what I have wanted ever since I dropped it as my major.  The word regret comes to mind, in some senses.  Starting Fall 2008 I will be back at it full force, though.

….when it’s painfully obvious that you are not from Germany.  At the end of a guest lecture, when the rest of the class starts knocking on their desks as one would knock on a door, you’re the only one clapping. /facepalm

I have found the ultimate in music suited to the Insufferable Music Snob (IMS): Icelandic indie post-electrorock. I think….I think I can stop looking for new bands now.

h/t to whomever coined the phrase IMS, btw. Amanda Marcotte, maybe?

And WCF! WOOT!

Toothpaste for Dinner: National Organization for Men

See, Drew gets it.

(also, I’d embed it, but it’s too wide. Curse you, narrow theme! )

So I’m back to Germany today (technically yesterday, but I was too tired to do anything but flop over and sleep), and after going to the supermarket, I sort of re-realized just how much American language and culture permeate Germany (and Europe in general). A large percentage of packing cartons for products in supermarkets have English instructions or shipping labels, “look” and “image” have both entered the standard German vocabulary (mostly in ads), C&A sells a shirt with “Eat me, baby” on it (with pictures of apples on it, too), and a large number of “hip” businesses have English words in their slogans and in many cases consist entirely of English. Examples: Forever19, Terracotta-arts and pots, and my favorite brand of peanut butter, “Real American Crunchy Style Peanut Butter” or something. Sadly I don’t have any of it at the moment, so I can’t be sure of the actual exact name.

On a cold morning in February, while waiting for the bus to the train station at about 6am, a man with luggage came up next to me, out of breath, sort of looked at me a for a bit, then looked at the schedules for a while, then back at me again. He began to speak, hesitated, then went on in very excellent English, “Have I missed the bus to the train station already?” I started laughing, simply because I hadn’t at all expected it to be English. Turns out he was a researcher from Puerto Rico working at the Max Planck Institut and was going to a conference of some sort. I find it, however, very interesting that his chances of finding a person who could speak English were really quite high. In my experience so far, I have not met even a single student (German student, I should clarify) at Universität des Saarlandes who could not speak at least reasonably good English.

Continue reading ‘English as a Unifying Language’

Jon Stewart on Jim Cramer (and other stuff)

4:40 to 6:00 pretty much proves to me what I’ve long thought: most people on TV are not that well-informed.

To commemorate the passing of Gary Gygax, co-creator of D and D, this week will feature my favorite tribute comic, courtesy of xkcd. I was never a D and D guy, but I appreciate what he did for geekery.

And on a separate note, I’ve recently been seeing even more misogyny in WoW than normal, with the brunt of it from a particular incident in one of the world’s top raiding guilds. With a post on the website of the guild Death and Taxes titled “The cunt that broke the web,” you know this is gonna be a bad.

Additionally, I have bonus comics this week:

This beauty from Such Rubbish and another gem from Penny Arcade.

Also, actual content is in the works…I have about 5 partway finished posts, none very close to completion, sadly.

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Now playing: Múm - Faraway Swimmingpool
via FoxyTunes

I’ve got a number of (imo, interesting) posts floating around in my head, but sadly no time to develop them–yet.  I’m headed to California to visit my brother and will be back the first week of March.  Until then, I’m out. Depending on how bored I get while he works, I may poke my head in.

One of the highlights of my early childhood was taking roadtrips around the American West with my family. On one particular trip, I think when I had just turned five, my dad and brother and I were driving to Winnemucca, Nevada (or as I always said, Winneschmucka. No offense to any Winnemuccans out there, naturally.) while on the way farther south. We had just stopped in at a C-store to get some child-pacifying devices, what normal people would call candy, and were back on our way through the southern Idaho dessert in our 12-year old blue Chevrolet Cavalier, which spit sand out of the air conditioner¹, which had an exposed spring poking out of the back left seat, which cut me once getting out of the car going to Chuck E. Cheese’s.

I had of course stuffed 4 pieces of gum into my mouth and was happily smacking away loudly. I had selected my all-time favorite gum, “the Zebra gum” (Fruit Stripe Gum) and my brother had picked out his all-time favorite, a package of Nik-L-Nip (incidentally, this was discontinued last month– I’m sure my brother is crushed). After the wad of gum I had been working over lost its flavor, which considering it was the Zebra gum, was about 3 minutes, I started to bug my older brother to give me one of his Nik-L-Nips. Naturally, this was met with the fiercest of resistance. There was simply no way my brother was going to give me anything, after all, 1 “bottle” was an entire 20% of his package. No way a little brother deserves that kind of royal treatment. “But I’ll give you some gum, Brian!” I exclaimed, trying not to sound whiny. What I didn’t realize at the time is that the Zebra gum is awful. Like, horrid awful. No one would trade anything for some of that. Thus, it was time for the big guns.

“Brian, give me one!” I threatened, “or…or I’ll turn you into pencil sticks!” There was no way you could say no to such a grave threat.

“Hah, I’d like to see you try, Eric.” my brother cockily replied.

“Oh yeah!? Well, I’ll…turn you into toast then!” was my reply, which at the time, sounded pretty damn ominous,”You’re toast, Brian!”

Continue reading ‘Childhood Threats and the Name of the Blog’