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TSA rail security proposal to include freight engineers and conductors

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RME
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Posted by RME on Thursday, December 22, 2016 11:41 AM

carnej1
BaltACD

dihydrogen monoxide - a killer

The more common scientific Name for H2O is Hydrogen Oxide, looks like you're going to have to get re-certified :)....

I see you are behind the times.

http://www.dhmo.org/

 

(While we are on the general subject of 'popular' misunderstanding of chemical danger, does anyone have the actual source for the "we demand a pH of ZERO!" that was attributed to the Naderites in the '70s?)

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Posted by zardoz on Thursday, December 22, 2016 1:08 PM

carnej1

 

 
BaltACD

dihydrogen monoxide - a killer

 

 

 

The more common scientific Name for H2O is Hydrogen Oxide, looks like you're going to have to get re-certified :)....

 

regarding the need for re-certification:

H2O is two hydrogen and one oxygen. Hydrogen dioxide does not make sense as that would be HO2. Water has been called dihydrogen oxide which is correct, but overkill since water is a so well-known name! H20 is actually called DihydrogenMonoxide (water), not Hydrogen Dioxide.

There's a difference between water and dihydrogen monoxide. Water is H20 but is covalentDihydrogen monoxide is ionic. Oxide is O2-, which means it gives two electrons to two hydrogen atoms, then giving 2H+.

Perhaps we all need to be re-certified.Smile, Wink & Grin

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Posted by tree68 on Thursday, December 22, 2016 1:34 PM

Johnny was a chemist's son, but Johnny is no more. For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4...

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Posted by Deggesty on Thursday, December 22, 2016 2:12 PM

RME

 

 
carnej1
BaltACD

dihydrogen monoxide - a killer

The more common scientific Name for H2O is Hydrogen Oxide, looks like you're going to have to get re-certified :)....

 

I see you are behind the times.

http://www.dhmo.org/

 

(While we are on the general subject of 'popular' misunderstanding of chemical danger, does anyone have the actual source for the "we demand a pH of ZERO!" that was attributed to the Naderites in the '70s?)

 

I just caught this one. Since pH has been defined as the negative common logarithm of the hydrogen ion concentration, with 7 being the dividing line between alkaline (>7) and acid (<7). Thus, a pH of 0 is a very strong acid. The Naderites (if they are the ones) wanted a pH of 0, they, in their ignorance, wanted a very high acidity.

For further detail, ask your computer to search for pH.

Johnny

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Posted by Deggesty on Thursday, December 22, 2016 2:16 PM

tree68

Johnny was a chemist's son, but Johnny is no more. For what he thought was H2O was H2SO4...

 

Not this Johnny.Smile The worst I ever did was run a little water into an "empty" sulfuric acid bottle--there was a nice clean break completely around the bottle at the water level, caused by the heat of reaction of the acid with the fresh water. I was rinsing bottles to ship them back to the supplier, in college.

Johnny

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Posted by Paul of Covington on Thursday, December 22, 2016 2:26 PM

zardoz
Oxide is O2

  Wait a minute--isn't O2 oxygen?

   I've been accused of having an odd sense of humor.  When I worked at a navy computer site, distilled water was used as a coolant for the processors, but we used it also to clean some of the parts in tape drives.   I put some in a small squeeze bottle and printed a label for it.   I went through the argument in my mind about the use of the "di-" and "mono-" prefixes and decided that H2O was the normal combination, and the prefixes implied something that deviated from the normal.   Anyway, to avoid controversy I labelled it "RE-PRECIPITATED OXIDE OF HYDROGEN."   The XO saw it during a routine safety inspection and wanted to know why it wasn't in a hazardous material locker.

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Posted by Deggesty on Thursday, December 22, 2016 2:34 PM

Paul of Covington

 

 
zardoz
Oxide is O2

 

  Wait a minute--isn't O2 oxygen?

   I've been accused of having an odd sense of humor.  When I worked at a navy computer site, distilled water was used as a coolant for the processors, but we used it also to clean some of the parts in tape drives.   I put some in a small squeeze bottle and printed a label for it.   I went through the argument in my mind about the use of the "di-" and "mono-" prefixes and decided that H2O was the normal combination, and the prefixes implied something that deviated from the normal.   Anyway, to avoid controversy I labelled it "RE-PRECIPITATED OXIDE OF HYDROGEN."   The XO saw it during a routine safety inspection and wanted to know why it wasn't in a hazardous material locker.

 

Your poor XO (it took me a moment to figure that abbreviation out); he certainly was confused.

Incidentally, I ran a still the last year and a half that I was in college--with the chemistry professor's approval. No, the product stayed on campus, in the Science Hall.

Johnny

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Friday, December 23, 2016 6:48 AM

What's the fun in that??Laugh

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by Shadow the Cats owner on Friday, December 23, 2016 8:23 AM

I looked online on youtube and found multiple videos of people signing petitons to ban Dihydrogen Monooxide from exsistence as they were told it is a Greenhouse gas.  So these people most of them college students signed right away.  The look in their eyes when they where told what that compound is was priceless. 

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Posted by Deggesty on Friday, December 23, 2016 1:37 PM

Shadow the Cats owner

I looked online on youtube and found multiple videos of people signing petitons to ban Dihydrogen Monooxide from exsistence as they were told it is a Greenhouse gas.  So these people most of them college students signed right away.  The look in their eyes when they where told what that compound is was priceless. 

 

Yes, to simply mention "greenhouse gas" to some people sets them off, especially if they do not understand the value of the most prevalent greenhouse gas.

Johnny

RME
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Posted by RME on Saturday, December 24, 2016 11:15 PM

Paul of Covington
zardoz

  Wait a minute--isn't O2 oxygen?

Not what he said.  You got fouled up by the lack of subscript formatting; see the little minus sign?  He meant O-double-minus (the valence of free oxygen being -2). 

He also forgot or did not mention that the H* associates with one of the H2Os in solution to give the hydronium ion, H3O+, and this is the thing that a solution with a pH of "zero" has ten million more of per mole (molecular weight in grams) than distilled water at pH 7 does.

We can take up the joys of hydrogen bonding if there is interest.  My guess is that the situation is otherwise.

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Posted by Paul of Covington on Sunday, December 25, 2016 12:06 PM

RME

 

 
Paul of Covington
zardoz

  Wait a minute--isn't O2 oxygen?

 

Not what he said.  You got fouled up by the lack of subscript formatting; see the little minus sign?  He meant O-double-minus (the valence of free oxygen being -2). 

He also forgot or did not mention that the H* associates with one of the H2Os in solution to give the hydronium ion, H3O+, and this is the thing that a solution with a pH of "zero" has ten million more of per mole (molecular weight in grams) than distilled water at pH 7 does.

We can take up the joys of hydrogen bonding if there is interest.  My guess is that the situation is otherwise.

 

   I see what you're saying, RME, I did miss the "-".

   Now I want to bring up something else in the realm of hair-splitting.   Isn't H2O actually the water vapor molecule?   It's vague in my old memory, but I seem to remember that liquid water is actually a multiple of 2 and 1.   I don't have even a close recollection of what the numbers are, but I'll throw out H16O8 as an example.   I'll let someone who knows handle this (or someone who is not as lazy as I am to look it up).

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Posted by Deggesty on Sunday, December 25, 2016 1:39 PM

Well, considering that the so-called hydrogen (actually oxygen) bonds between molecules of water are easily broken as the molecules move about until they are cooled to about +3.96 (as I recall) degrees Celcius, it is rather difficult to specify how many individual molecules make up a gross molecule. However, at that temperature the strength of the bonds becomes greater than the kinetic energy that breaks the bonds--and you move towards getting ice as the water temperature reaches 0 Celcius. And, of course the distance between molecules of frozen water is greater than that of liquid water, so ice floats.

Oxygen is the second most electronegative element. Fluorine is the most electronegative element.

Johnny

RME
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Posted by RME on Sunday, December 25, 2016 7:01 PM

Paul of Covington
I seem to remember that liquid water is actually a multiple of 2 and 1. I don't have even a close recollection of what the numbers are, but I'll throw out H16O8 as an example.

I think you're thinking of that triumph of Russian (pseudo)science 'polywater' (which among other things posited that groups of molecules formed persistent, stable associations in liquid phase).  This idea survives, lucratively, in "Penta water" from your friendly neighborhood Whole Foods emporium.

You might also be thinking of different forms of ordered ice, as developed by Percy Bridgman, but here again the molecular composition remains 2H to one O, with the relationships between the molecules as the intermolecular bonding strengthens in the phase change being the difference.  Ice-X in particular has the characteristic of a supermolecule of 2H and O, but of course in solid phase under somewhat unusual conditions.

If you think of a water molecule as being a bit like a solid model of Mickey Mouse, with the 'ears' at about 104.5 degrees to each other, you'll recognize that there is a net dipole moment between the positive charge of the two adjacent hydrogens and the "rear end" of the larger oxygen atom they're bonded to.  That makes the positive end of one water molecule and the negative end of an adjacent one attract each other ... this is hydrogen bonding in water.  There is also van der Waals force due to the inherent dipole moment in the molecule.   This page is a good elementary introduction to these, complete with a useful interactive calculator for van der Waals forces up to 100 molecules.

A good thing ice-IX is different from Vonnegut's ice-nine, which is one thing you might get if polywater stabilization were energetically preferred.  Shudder.

<shakes head> ... how did we get here from discussing the TSA?

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