Which Chemical Element defines you?

[Dsanders 5,742]

I'd say that iron would be the best element to represent me. By itself, iron rusts when it exposed to the elements, which reminds me of how I have gone through my own "rusting" over the years from unpleasant past experiences mentally and spiritually. Iron was also one of the most popular industrial elements from the late 1800s to up to the mid 1900s. I myself, am an old fashion guy and I would love to go back to those times in which iron was so immensely appreciated. Overall, I like simplicity, iron is a very simple metal, and therefore I feel that iron would fit me best.

[SasQ 1,355]

@@Dsanders, well, I miss the times of industrial revolution and steam engines, too. It was the time when people started making machines to work for them, to set themselves free from working. It was a great dream.

 

Now we live in times where we have all this high-tech, and we still work hard and waste a lot of time on trying to make those stupid computers do what they're supposed to do. Where did we failed? Why aren't those machines actually help us? Why do we still need to work at all? Seems that someone is fooling us royally by making us still work to get money for our lives, and they exploit us as they did before industrial revolution, because nothing has changed in terms of debt money and working for our pharaohs.

 

What's more, people are dumbed down more and more. We have all those hi-tech microchips, lasers & stuff, but those are just toys which has been given to us by someone smarter. Ask anybody if he knows how they work, or can he build one, and he would definitely deny. In 19th century, people at least knew how to build an electromagnet or an electrostatic machine. Nowadays, they rarely know how to make fire without matches! not to mention producing electricity they know nothing about.

 

So mark my words, these times will return someday. And if you'd be able to use iron to build a steam engine all by yourself, then you'll be a Great Maggi. Not to mention if you know where to find iron ores and smelt them to get pure iron out of them ;J How many people you know who could do that? I know none... :/

Edited November 20, 2014 by SasQ

[sweetolebob18 724]

A few more facts about Hydrogen.  It was originally called Phlogistan (the essence of fire, because of how readily it burns)  The stars get most of their energy from combining 4 H into 1 Helium. There are a bunch of other reactions that occur late in a star's life but this yields more energy than all the others combined.  (over 90%, if my memory serves -which it usually doesn't).  H is the only element listed twice on the periodic table (At least, in my day it was once as a metal & once with the nonmetals.  You kids might have changed it when I wasn't looking).  Finally, carbon & hydrogen are the only 2 elements that don't have to be specifically named when doing chemical diagrams.

 

Oh yeah, you could describe all the matter in the universe as a mixture of Hydrogen & Helium with trace impurities.  Of course, you could also describe most of the universe as empty space at 3K temp & I disremember how many light years from even 1 atom of matter.

[SasQ 1,355]

sweetolebob18, on 20 Nov 2014 - 02:18 AM, said:

A few more facts about Hydrogen. It was originally called Phlogistan (the essence of fire, because of how readily it burns)

Nope. First, it was Phlogiston, not Phlogisten. Second, it was oxygen, not hydrogen.

 

sweetolebob18, on 20 Nov 2014 - 02:18 AM, said:

The stars get most of their energy from combining 4 H into 1 Helium.

Nope again. Count your protons and neutrons, dude!

Hydrogen has just one proton and no neutrons. Deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) has one proton and one neutron, and tritium (another isotope) has one proton and two neutrons.

Helium, on the other hand, has two protons.

 

If you combined four hydrogens, you would not get helium (which has two protons) but beryllium (which has four protons). To get helium, you need to combine two hydrogens to get one proton from each of them. Actually, you need to combine the two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium, because you also need to get two neutrons from somewhere. And you need one neutron to go off to ignite the next reaction in the chain.

 

Keep your calculations balanced, dude. In Nature, nothing can be lost of come out of nowhere.

 

sweetolebob18, on 20 Nov 2014 - 02:18 AM, said:

H is the only element listed twice on the periodic table

Huh?! o.O

 

How could it be mentioned twice if it has only one possible electron configuration and the atomic number?

 

sweetolebob18, on 20 Nov 2014 - 02:18 AM, said:

(At least, in my day it was once as a metal & once with the nonmetals.

It definitely cannot be metal, because it doesn't fit the definition of metal.

Look at the electron configurations of metals: they all have electrons in the "d" orbital configuration, which can be thought of as a "reservoir of electrons" for other orbitals, since theoretically it is in a higher energetic state, but due to its geometry relative to other electrons in a multi-electron atom, its energy is actually less, so it is filled before other orbitals in that period. This makes metals to use those other orbitals for bonding with other atoms, but they still have those electrons on the "d" orbital which can freely move and transfer electric charge throughout the metallic "monoatom". Metals create a crystalline structure which has a "sea of electrons" which can freely move and conduct electricity. I doubt that hydrogen could ever do that, since it has only one electron, and it is not in the "d" orbital configuration, just "s". Whatever molecules hydrogen participates in, this electron is always used already for creating the bond, so there are no more electrons which could conduct electricity or heat, nor to produce the sea of electrons in a molecule, so hydrogen cannot have metallic properties.

 

sweetolebob18, on 20 Nov 2014 - 02:18 AM, said:

Finally, carbon & hydrogen are the only 2 elements that don't have to be specifically named when doing chemical diagrams.

That's true. But it doesn't come from any special properties of these two elements, but from the fact that most organic molecules use carbon for their structural skeletons, and hydrogens are just hanging around there, and can be deduced from the valence of carbon-carbon bonds. It's a shorthand in notation, not something special about these elements.

 

sweetolebob18, on 20 Nov 2014 - 02:18 AM, said:

Oh yeah, you could describe all the matter in the universe as a mixture of Hydrogen & Helium with trace impurities.

??

 

In conclusion: If you plan to share any "facts" with others, make sure to get them straight first.

[cuteycindyhoney 13,283]

Anything transuranic, because I'm very energetic and HOT!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Wyzecat 350]

Hydrogen A noble gas that you cant live without 

Hydrogen isn't a noble gas.

 

I'd say Helium for myself.  It's potentially valuable but used mainly for pointless things.

[Venomous 18,813]

I took a quiz and i'm apparently most like Phosphorous.

[Overdrive 5,366]

According to some quiz I took a while ago, I'm Helium.

[Tameless 979]

I am Titanium! Ti

 

 

I had to lol

[paradoxical 1,735]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/kellyoakes/which-chemical-element-are-you

 

That may be the poll that you looked at; I was Plutonium. 

  People like you because you’re bright and spontaneous. You get distracted easily, but you don’t let that stop you being a success at what you choose to do — including powering spaceships. Just be careful not to let others lead you astray.

 

Isn't that the bomb?

 

There are a lot more puns in the comments.

[DATA EXPUNGED 324]

I hate swimming, so id probably be Fr, Im not sure what isotope, maybe ²²³Fr? I only can keep focused for about 25 minutes before dozing off, and 223 has a half life of about 23 minutes, and is not very electronegative (only 0.7 on the Pauling Scale) so maybe ²²³Fr is my elemental twin...

Edited November 20, 2014 by DATA EXPUNGED

[CheeryFox 23,811]

Neon. Because it's quite captivating to look at. Like myself. 

[Snuggle Fiend 135]

I'm astatine. An exceptionally rare and estranged element, while relatively inhert and passive in nature, it takes a lot to make me react. I also break down very easily.

[DATA EXPUNGED 324]

 

 

wowzers How does it create perfect squares?

The bismuth that you are looking at has formed a crystal. The "Rainbow" colour is a result of a layer of oxidized bismoth on the surface of the crystal. Crystals form from a process called Nucleation. All elements have a crystal structure, however, for the elemtns that exist in the form of gasses and liquids, the average temperature is too high for them to form. 

[Hypn0ticD 1,213]

I had to take a test for thus, but I discovered that I'm like iron. I'm multi purpose, (occasionally) magnetic, but I can corrode and darken super easily!

[Lemon Slices 358]

@@Dsanders, well, I miss the times of industrial revolution and steam engines, too. It was the time when people started making machines to work for them, to set themselves free from working. It was a great dream.

 

Now we live in times where we have all this high-tech, and we still work hard and waste a lot of time on trying to make those stupid computers do what they're supposed to do. Where did we failed? Why aren't those machines actually help us? Why do we still need to work at all? Seems that someone is fooling us royally by making us still work to get money for our lives, and they exploit us as they did before industrial revolution, because nothing has changed in terms of debt money and working for our pharaohs.

 

What's more, people are dumbed down more and more. We have all those hi-tech microchips, lasers & stuff, but those are just toys which has been given to us by someone smarter. Ask anybody if he knows how they work, or can he build one, and he would definitely deny. In 19th century, people at least knew how to build an electromagnet or an electrostatic machine. Nowadays, they rarely know how to make fire without matches! not to mention producing electricity they know nothing about.

 

So mark my words, these times will return someday. And if you'd be able to use iron to build a steam engine all by yourself, then you'll be a Great Maggi. Not to mention if you know where to find iron ores and smelt them to get pure iron out of them ;J How many people you know who could do that? I know none... :/

wowowowowo, dude.

Wait a sec.

you have to realize that technology didn't runned together with populational growing.

Making machines that work for everybody could steal jobs and make people die hungry.

[Clover Heart 978]

I think it would be cool if there were some sort of metric for this. Like a flow chart, or something.

 

I really don't know. I couldn't even tell you what, like, 80% of the elements actually are.

 

I guess I'll go with copper. Cuz it burns green. And that's cool.

[Kurael 43]

I would guess I am like element 147 which is not known or doesn't exist. (Right?)

I am still trying to find out what and who I really am '-'

[SasQ 1,355]

 

 

wowowowowo, dude. Wait a sec. you have to realize that technology didn't runned together with populational growing. Making machines that work for everybody could steal jobs and make people die hungry.

 

I realize that (so I don't know why do you presume otherwise), I just don't agree that this is the real cause

It has nothing to do with population growth. Growth is actually a good thing (otherwise it wouldn't be the goal of all Nature). It makes the universe more rich, not more poor. See, for example, how adding more nodes to a network of computers increases its power exponentially. But people are being told (even by the scientists with PhDs) that the more there is of them, the worse for them. They even forged a term called "overpopulation" for it. They will tell you that exponential growth is something evil, because (according to them) populations grow exponentially, but food resources grow only linearly. This is bullshit, since our food is mostly other organisms – either animals or plants, and since they're all living things, like us, they also grow exponentially, not linearly! The problem lays not within exponential growth, but in balancing exponential equations (the rates of growth) on the fly.

 

There's also another problem, which is our "false economy" based on fiat currencies instead of true money. You can ask: what's the difference? And I'd reply: only the most important one you could possibly know of! Currency is a commodity which is easy to carry with you and exchange for other commodities or services, it has a standardized unified "price", and to this point those are traits which are common with money, too. But the difference is that currency doesn't have value in itself. Money, on the other hand, does have a value in itself. That's why I call our economy "false" or "corrupt": because it replaced money with just a currency – something which doesn't have any value in itself: the value of paper or plastic is almost nothing compared to what is there written on your banknotes. But these are only numbers on a paper, nothing more. You can exchange it for other commodities only because other people believe in that illusion too. But mass delusion doesn't make it any less an illusion, and people in Iceland or Greece or Cypress, or many other countries already learned that lesson, when all their "virtual" money stored on their bank accounts suddenly disappeared one day, and banks refused to pay them out. Because those money have never existed. It is just that people believed in their existence because they had some numbers on their balances.

 

This type of economy is corrupt, because some smart asses called "bankers" (I prefer call them "banksters", it rhymes well with "gangsters") figured out how to exploit other people by generating fiat currencies to gradually replace real money. They pay you for your hard work and real commodities with unreal stuff (numbers written on paper), fooling you and others that it is worth more than it actually is. Once for a while, it turns out that their papers are worth nothing, but then there's too late already: they have your gold and your base belongs to them, and you have a ton of paper which you can at most burn in your furnace to warm up, or you have a nice piece of digits on your computer screen, but unable to convert them into any real goods as long as your bank won't do that for you. This way they gradually gather all the goods of this word, getting richer and richer, and turning people more and more into their slaves. But this is a much more advanced form of slavery: the one in which you don't even realize you're a slave. You have to work for them all your life to pay your bills, mortgages, and to buy your food in the mall. And no machines and high tech won't help you out, as long as you don't know you're in a trap.

 

That's why I said that the dream of industrial revolution, which was supposed to set us free, didn't come true so far: it's not because of machines, but because of the tricky slavery of corrupt economy. Nature uses economy, too, but it is real economy. It uses real money in a form of different resources which are easy to carry and exchange, have a definite and standardized "market price", but they also have a value in themselves (usually measured in mass or energy), so the physical laws of conservation will not allow for any corruption to happen: only equal exchange is possible. Corrupt economy based on fiat currency is a "hack" to walk around the laws of nature.

 

You said that the more machines are there, the less we need to work, which according to you is a bad thing, because the less we work, the less we earn for our living, so more machines leads to more unemployment and this leads to more poverty. But I say that you missed an important detail in your equation: It only works that way providing you really need to earn money to buy anything. This is, fortunately, a false assumption. There were times before currency when people have grown their own food, and they exchanged with whatever excess food they had, for some other food they have in scarcity themselves (but others could have it more abundant). No money was needed, because the commodities were money in themselves (since they had an innate value). This was called barter. Of course I can hear you saying that barter is cumbersome and old, and that's why we invented money. Yeah, we did. But money is nothing more than a commodity which is easy to carry on and exchange for other commodities. This is still barter, but an "improved" one. And this "improvement" is still before introducing fiat currencies which corrupted economy. Money is good, currency is bad.

 

Industrial revolution could really set us free, providing we weren't so much enslaved by the corrupt economy in the first place. If we weren't, these useful machines would really help us by working for us (or instead of us) and give us some more free time for our self-development, family, art, or other forms of experiencing the richness of life. If only we weren't deceived by our pharaohs that we have to work for them to get our Scooby Snacks... ;P Did you know that we can grow our own Scooby Snacks for ourselves? It's easy. Nature made it easy and effortless, if only you listen to its lessons and let her do what she can do best (so called "agriculture" is a whole another story of how natural growth could be corrupted so that you need to work hardly to get less than when you wouldn't work at all).

[Justin_Case001 4,855]

Um...Krypton because Superman.

[sweetolebob18 724]

SASQ

You are absolutely right about Oxygen, not Hydrogen being Phlogiston.  I remembered they discovered it when they used electricity to split water into gases & got confused about which one it was.

 

It has been 45+ years since my High School science classes.  Much has changed.  Today, the science books call quarks the smallest particle of matter.  My text books said that was an atom & had no mention of quarks.  So, I looked on the Bing Bar. Periodic Table Printable Version.  They had a bunch of charts.  The one that hung on the classroom wall is in the top row, furthest left.  It has Hydrogen on there twice.  Once on the top on the left with the metals, once on the top right with the non metals & then a column of the noble gases on the farthest right.

 

If I ever knew why they did that, I have long since forgotten.  My memory isn't what it used to be (& it never really was).  But I checked, not 10 minutes ago & that chart lists it twice.  Of course, there were a bunch of others & it was the only one that did this.

[Lemon Slices 358]

 

I realize that (so I don't know why do you presume otherwise), I just don't agree that this is the real cause

It has nothing to do with population growth. Growth is actually a good thing (otherwise it wouldn't be the goal of all Nature). It makes the universe more rich, not more poor. See, for example, how adding more nodes to a network of computers increases its power exponentially. But people are being told (even by the scientists with PhDs) that the more there is of them, the worse for them. They even forged a term called "overpopulation" for it. They will tell you that exponential growth is something evil, because (according to them) populations grow exponentially, but food resources grow only linearly. This is bullshit, since our food is mostly other organisms – either animals or plants, and since they're all living things, like us, they also grow exponentially, not linearly! The problem lays not within exponential growth, but in balancing exponential equations (the rates of growth) on the fly.

 

There's also another problem, which is our "false economy" based on fiat currencies instead of true money. You can ask: what's the difference? And I'd reply: only the most important one you could possibly know of! Currency is a commodity which is easy to carry with you and exchange for other commodities or services, it has a standardized unified "price", and to this point those are traits which are common with money, too. But the difference is that currency doesn't have value in itself. Money, on the other hand, does have a value in itself. That's why I call our economy "false" or "corrupt": because it replaced money with just a currency – something which doesn't have any value in itself: the value of paper or plastic is almost nothing compared to what is there written on your banknotes. But these are only numbers on a paper, nothing more. You can exchange it for other commodities only because other people believe in that illusion too. But mass delusion doesn't make it any less an illusion, and people in Iceland or Greece or Cypress, or many other countries already learned that lesson, when all their "virtual" money stored on their bank accounts suddenly disappeared one day, and banks refused to pay them out. Because those money have never existed. It is just that people believed in their existence because they had some numbers on their balances.

 

This type of economy is corrupt, because some smart asses called "bankers" (I prefer call them "banksters", it rhymes well with "gangsters") figured out how to exploit other people by generating fiat currencies to gradually replace real money. They pay you for your hard work and real commodities with unreal stuff (numbers written on paper), fooling you and others that it is worth more than it actually is. Once for a while, it turns out that their papers are worth nothing, but then there's too late already: they have your gold and your base belongs to them, and you have a ton of paper which you can at most burn in your furnace to warm up, or you have a nice piece of digits on your computer screen, but unable to convert them into any real goods as long as your bank won't do that for you. This way they gradually gather all the goods of this word, getting richer and richer, and turning people more and more into their slaves. But this is a much more advanced form of slavery: the one in which you don't even realize you're a slave. You have to work for them all your life to pay your bills, mortgages, and to buy your food in the mall. And no machines and high tech won't help you out, as long as you don't know you're in a trap.

 

That's why I said that the dream of industrial revolution, which was supposed to set us free, didn't come true so far: it's not because of machines, but because of the tricky slavery of corrupt economy. Nature uses economy, too, but it is real economy. It uses real money in a form of different resources which are easy to carry and exchange, have a definite and standardized "market price", but they also have a value in themselves (usually measured in mass or energy), so the physical laws of conservation will not allow for any corruption to happen: only equal exchange is possible. Corrupt economy based on fiat currency is a "hack" to walk around the laws of nature.

 

You said that the more machines are there, the less we need to work, which according to you is a bad thing, because the less we work, the less we earn for our living, so more machines leads to more unemployment and this leads to more poverty. But I say that you missed an important detail in your equation: It only works that way providing you really need to earn money to buy anything. This is, fortunately, a false assumption. There were times before currency when people have grown their own food, and they exchanged with whatever excess food they had, for some other food they have in scarcity themselves (but others could have it more abundant). No money was needed, because the commodities were money in themselves (since they had an innate value). This was called barter. Of course I can hear you saying that barter is cumbersome and old, and that's why we invented money. Yeah, we did. But money is nothing more than a commodity which is easy to carry on and exchange for other commodities. This is still barter, but an "improved" one. And this "improvement" is still before introducing fiat currencies which corrupted economy. Money is good, currency is bad.

 

Industrial revolution could really set us free, providing we weren't so much enslaved by the corrupt economy in the first place. If we weren't, these useful machines would really help us by working for us (or instead of us) and give us some more free time for our self-development, family, art, or other forms of experiencing the richness of life. If only we weren't deceived by our pharaohs that we have to work for them to get our Scooby Snacks... ;P Did you know that we can grow our own Scooby Snacks for ourselves? It's easy. Nature made it easy and effortless, if only you listen to its lessons and let her do what she can do best (so called "agriculture" is a whole another story of how natural growth could be corrupted so that you need to work hardly to get less than when you wouldn't work at all).

 

Oooookay.

So Mathus' argument is invalid?

[sweetolebob18 724]

Malthus said food grows arithmetically (1,2,3,4....) but population grows geometrically (1,2,4,8,16....) & argued for population controls.

 

Technically, that's wrong. Population growth is a compound interest problem based on the number of women of child bearing age who actually have kids who live to grow up. (IIRC)

 

However, his basic point is that populations grow until they hit the max # allowed by the limiting factor.  (Usually, but not always food.  Could be water in the desert, etc.  In beer, yeast dies when their wastes make their environment too toxic to live.  Yes, alcohol is yeast piss & it poisons them.  Drink up!)

 

Malthus' big Claim To Fame is he is the 1st to argue that growth is bad (or, at least, 1st really famous person)

[Ac3xAssasin 452]

Silicon, because I love all things electronic.  

[DashieDoo 54]

Definitely Cobalt Just because.