Has there been an improved understanding of water ?

Discussion in 'Chemistry' started by river, Aug 16, 2013.

  1. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    River, there are plenty of studies of atomic hydrogen. For example, it is very important in astronomy, because in the vacuum between the stars, not only is hydrogen the most abundant element but the distance between adjacent atoms is enough to prevent atomic hydrogen all being converted into diatomic hydrogen via interatomic collisions. But, if they do not collide, they are not statistically at thermal equilibrium, and therefore bulk properties such as temperature and physical state are undefined.

    As to the study of how atomic hydrogen behaves, you are deluding yourself if you think this has not been studied. Below are 3 examples of papers, picked at random from the internet, on rate constants for the reaction of atomic hydrogen with various species:

    http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00905740#page-1

    http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02084201

    http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...id=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21102572841971

    Furthermore the spectrum and structure of atomic hydrogen is by far the best understood of any atom in the whole of physics and chemistry, as it is the only system for which Schrodinger's equation can be solved exactly.

    So if you want to make a new contribution in this crowded field, you are going to have to be far, far more specific as to what you think you are going to add to the sum of human knowledge.

    Vague notions of trapping individual atoms behind a barrier(unspecified) in order to study something or other (unspecified) are simply going to make people think you do not know what you are talking about - a conclusion that a number of readers are evidently already reaching..
     
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  3. river

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    For the barrier Mg ( magnesium ) seems so far in the right direction , used in hydrogen fuel storage , not pure

    Mixed with water it gives off H2 , yet can't any info. On whether Mg and H alone would react in anyway with each other

    Other than that I've been looking into biology as well , hydrogen barriers within the body
     
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  5. river

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    Perhaps plastic as a barrier

    The Solution: Powerballs


    Powerballs are small solid balls or pellets of sodium hydride that are coated with a waterproof plastic coating or skin. Powerballs are stored directly in water. They can remain in water for months with little or no change to the coatings. As soon as a Powerball is cut in half under water the sodium hydride inside can react with the water to produce hydrogen.

    NaH + H2O = NaOH + H2

    The sodium hydride/water reaction is very exothermic and fast. A solid sodium hydride ball (with a 1 inch diameter), when cut in half under water, will react to completion within 10 seconds. Sodium hydride Powerballs react with water to release hydrogen on demand.

    From

    http://members.tripod.com/water_engine/powerball.html
     
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  7. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, yes I get it. You have no clue and are bound and determined to remain dazed and confused. Carry on....
     
  8. river

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    17,307
    Actually you have no clue what I'm trying to understand

    The understanding of H and O is collective understanding

    What I want to know is what does the neutral H and O do at low temperatures

    I find nothing wrong with question
     
  9. arauca Banned Banned

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    4,564
    Question : why coat the Sodium hydride why not just live the powder without coating in a sealed container and then as you need hydrogen gas you drop some of the powder into water and you will have hydrogen to your desire.
     
  10. river

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    17,307
    Because the shuttle needed instant ignition
     
  11. river

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    But anyway the plastic they use , could be the answer to the barrier problem

    Along with this research

    http://www.rebresearch.com/H2perm2.htm

    The combination of both or a sandwich of them
     
  12. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    What barrier problem?
     
  13. river

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    17,307
    Once using homolytic fission to split H2 , into H - H , neutral atoms , that they don't come into contact with each other
     
  14. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    Have you been drinking or taking drugs tonight by chance? Are suggesting that we encase each H atom in plastic? You are really beginning to ramble....
     
  15. river

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    17,307
    Yes

    A plastic that does not react in anyway with H
     
  16. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    11,888
    OK then, I would say it is about time to send this to the cesspool.
     
  17. river

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    On what basis
     
  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    OK, I've done my best to keep this a discussion about sensible science. But you are so determined to talk ballocks that I have to concede I am defeated.
     
  19. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Depends on what you mean by neutral. The natural stable state would be H[sub]2[/sub] and O[sub]2[/sub]. Once ionized they are highly reactive. That's pretty easy to do with H[sub]2[/sub] which gave us the Hindenburg disaster. High concentrations of O[sub]2[/sub] are hazardous as well which is why you see all the warning signs around hospital oxygen supplies.

    The idea is that it takes a small amount of energy to ionize a small quantity of H[sub]2[/sub] and O[sub]2[/sub]. But once that's happened, you produce H[sub]2[/sub]O with all of the energy back, which is sufficient to ionize another group, which explodes and releases the energy back, and so on. So you're guaranteed to get an uncontrollable chain reaction unless great care is taken to do this in a reactor, metering the reactants in a controlled manner. Or if you're NASA you do this in 10 story tanks with high temp alloys at the nozzle by delivering it according to some high reliability methods for preventing the tanks from failing and exploding. But then that's to achieve orbital velocity (17,500 mph) which burns half a million gallons of fuel and takes you 80 miles high.

    The point I think that's relevant here is that a lot of chemicals do not readily exist in their elemental form. Elemental hydrogen and elemental oxygen are in that category. They are highly reactive so you can't isolate them into their elemental form. They will just double up into stable diatomic molecules.

    Not sure sure what you mean by collective understanding. This is just basic chemistry. As for what they do at low temps? They achieve the liquid state (at most 33K for H[sub]2[/sub]) and then take it lower and they solidify (14 K for H[sub]2[/sub]).
     
  20. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    You are the nth person to have pointed this, but it seems to be water off a duck's back to our friend, who now thinks you can encase an individual, isolated atom in plastic (apparently unaware that most plastics are molecules made mostly of - wait for it - yes, HYDROGEN atoms), in order to study it at leisure. I'm beginning to wonder if the whole thread is just a wind-up, to be honest.
     
  21. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    6,152
    I now see I missed a big chunk of the thread when I read back through it.

    Ah well maybe river is catching on.
     
  22. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Well at least the original notion of water being poorly understood seemed to have been tacitly abandoned, which is progress of a sort, I suppose.

    I'm all for people who do not know much science to come here and discuss things. It's dogged persistence in absurdities, AFTER the problems with them have been explained, that defeats me.
     
  23. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    6,152
    river was pretty unconvinced of the state of science with that notion.

    Yeah it's a valid question - why don't raw elements normally exist in nature. You can just about build a whole chapter of science out of a question like that. But clearly a very old question which lead to a ton of discovery since at least the time of Pascal. In fact we might have fun trying to scope out how the founders of early chemistry thought of this or who would likely to have been the first one to pose the question river is asking. And then that second one, about partitioning the atoms - it's hard to say whether or not that's ever been conceived of in the literature quite in that way, since it presupposes knowledge of atoms which was part of the mystery the early chemists were trying to solve.

    I think most people would defer to the knowledge of chemistry that folks like you, Origin and arauca demonstrate with your answers. There are plenty of free sources on the web to verify what you guys say. I think river is struggling with some basic principles and couldn't find a reason to take wisdom at face value, although I suspect it's beginning to dawn on him.

    Early in life I became interested in the names of the elements and wondered why they were only mostly available in compounds. At one time I had a small collection - some lead from fishing weights, a tube of mercury (probably unaware of the toxicity of either), some metal powders I'd refined by electrolysis, coins of various compositions, various metal foils, powders of sulfur and carbon, some small tungsten and neon bulbs - that kind of thing - and as I discovered I could not build a collection of raw elements it became apparent to me that they simply don't occur in nature. Reading the chemical formulas of various rocks I collected pretty much clued me in to the fact that this is simply not how nature works. I suppose I was ready to accept the answers I got by the time I took high school chemistry. I don't recall being so sure that people who took science classes more advanced than mine were likely to be wrong - just that I had all the facilities at my disposal to research my own questions and there was always way too much information out there for me to possibly absorb. I did get a chance or two in some academic papers to kind of challenge an idea here or there but it had more to do with expanding on something rather than undermining it. While everyone's experience is different I think my forays into science are probably similar to most of the stuff kids were exposed to at the time. I think a lot of this is universal. The more you learn, the more you respect the scope of work that's already been done.
     

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