What kinds of acids could damage a jacuzzi?

What kinds of acids could damage a jacuzzi?
In regards to the Quantum Zeno Effect, what defines "observation"?
What triggers the physical changes in silverback gorillas, and are there any similar changes noted in other dominant male primates (including in humans?)
Ant Hill Garnets? A simple question.
Is there an alternative to electronics for computing?
Does Oxygen bind to Methemoglobin? If so, how?
In galaxy collision, how does the colliding dark matter interact?
What is the temperature of steam off the surface of boiling water?
Why are there no animals with two brains/two heads/two consciousnesses?
Does light respond to changed boundary conditions instantly, proportionally to c, or at some other rate?
in physics I was taught that a photon is absorbed only if it carries the exact amount of energy needed for a transition. But I get to a contradiction if I try to reason about that. Shouldn't it be a small range of energies instead?
Use of Beta Decay for Alchemy?
How does torque and angular momentum behave in 4 dimensions?
What was supposed to be the difference between inertial mass and gravitational mass?
Can light escape from a shrinking black hole?
How much dietary iron could a person eat before setting off a metal detector?
Is it true that Rh- folks are more resistant to toxoplasma?
Just how much better is Solar technology now than five years ago?
Is it necessary to understand where we learned a harmful belief or thought or is replacing them good enough?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 09:08 PM PST

Are there any with innocuous household uses?

submitted by /u/rusoved
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In regards to the Quantum Zeno Effect, what defines "observation"?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 02:10 PM PST

submitted by /u/Ghosticus
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What triggers the physical changes in silverback gorillas, and are there any similar changes noted in other dominant male primates (including in humans?)

Posted: 12 Mar 2017 05:20 AM PDT

submitted by /u/DweadPiwateWoberts
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Ant Hill Garnets? A simple question.

Posted: 12 Mar 2017 03:03 AM PDT

I wanted to ask a question to you people of /r/ Askscience. Is there a different process to the creation of Ant Hill Garnets compared to regular Garnet? I've always found it strange the differences the two have.

submitted by /u/Tunafish0214
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Is there an alternative to electronics for computing?

Posted: 12 Mar 2017 04:11 AM PDT

Man moved from steam to electricity. What is next?

submitted by /u/redhighways
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Does Oxygen bind to Methemoglobin? If so, how?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 11:49 PM PST

Question inspired while studying but realizing that textbooks really don't care much about giving you the full picture and just like tossing random words around.

submitted by /u/WhatTheOnEarth
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In galaxy collision, how does the colliding dark matter interact?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 12:20 PM PST

I was watching a simulation of two spiral galaxies colliding and it got me wondering about what's going on with the dark matter, how is it interacting with other dark matter and with regular matter

submitted by /u/SurfWookie
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What is the temperature of steam off the surface of boiling water?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 06:08 PM PST

Realistically when I boil water, can the steam go over 100C?

submitted by /u/firetruckfiretruck
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Why are there no animals with two brains/two heads/two consciousnesses?

Posted: 12 Mar 2017 01:32 AM PST

I just saw this pic of a baboon giving birth (http://i.imgur.com/wUS0wl6.jpg) on Joe rogans faseboom and it hit me, why isn't this just a normal animal? I mean, wouldn't it be handy to have eyes in the back of your head, and someone else to consult on decisions? I'm surprised a Siamese twin or something hasn't been a massive survival advantage at some point and kicked off a new species or something?

submitted by /u/bumbaclaart
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Does light respond to changed boundary conditions instantly, proportionally to c, or at some other rate?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 12:28 PM PST

My intuition would be that light responds to boundary conditions instantly. How else would light know to almost completely pass through glass (~96%) in the incident direction and not scatter much at all to the sides? My ridiculous explanation for this is that, to a photon, all of space is a single point at any given point in time, so its entire path is known, and therefore to truly solve for the fields, the boundary conditions at every point in the photon's path must be used. Yes, I am aware that it does not make much sense to use a photon as our frame of reference which I why I call this ridiculous.

Now, it is my understanding that the modes within a waveguide take some nonzero time to establish. This would seem to imply that the photons do not know their boundary conditions at every point in space ahead of time (or something). This seems to undermine my above reasoning.

So here are some additional theoretical questions: If we take a multimode fiber and splice in a singlemode fiber, after say, two meters, my assumption (and current understanding) is that only the fundamental mode will exist at any point in the fiber. Again, my explanation is that the photons somehow know that they cannot establish those other modes because they know about that singlemode section of fiber that is coming up. Is this the case? This is obviously assuming that the incident light has a high enough frequency to support multiple modes.

What if we have a long section (200m) of multimode fiber then a one meter section of singlemode fiber then another 200m of multimode fiber all spliced together? Will multiple modes exist in the first section of the fiber? I assume only one mode will exist in the singlemode section. If multiple modes exist in the first section of the fiber, will multiple modes restablish themselves in the second section of multimode fiber? If these modes were transmitting different signals, will the signals be able to be recovered in the second section of multimode fiber or will they all be mixed? If multiple modes exist at any point in this spliced fiber, it again undermines my current understanding. Did the photons forget their previous boundary conditions because they have traveled so far?

submitted by /u/DisinterestingStory
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in physics I was taught that a photon is absorbed only if it carries the exact amount of energy needed for a transition. But I get to a contradiction if I try to reason about that. Shouldn't it be a small range of energies instead?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 01:06 PM PST

So the emission spectrum of the Sun gives the power emitted at each wavelength. It's a continuous spectrum. More power emitted at a particular wavelength, when switching to a particle point of view, means many photons emitted at this wavelength.

Therefore the energy of a particular photon is a continuous random variable whose probability distribution is proportional to the spectrum of a black body at 5700°K. In order to be absorbed when it hits an atom on Earth, the photon must carry the exact amount of energy to raise the level of the electron it's going to excite. It's a particular number.

What's the probability that a continuous random variable takes the value of a particular number? IIRC from statistics, this probability is zero. By this logic the photon should never be absorbed. You only get a non-zero probability when you reason about a non-zero-width range.

But photons are absorbed. By modus tollens (of a negated implication), the probability must be non-zero, and by modus tollens again the width of the absorption range of energies must be non-zero.

Can you spot any flaws in this reasoning? Please help me understand...

submitted by /u/annitaq
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Use of Beta Decay for Alchemy?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 11:23 AM PST

Okay, so Newton tried turning Mercury into Gold, and theoretically, using Beta Decay (I learned about this recently, please pardon any ignorance of mine, and correct me if I'm wrong) one could do this. By isolating a Mercury nucleus, perhaps through positron annihilation of electrons, we could then use gamma radiation to excite the nucleus, causing emission of an Alpha Particle, making a Mercury nucleus into a Gold nucleus. After that, electrons could be added to this, hence changing Mercury to Gold.

If that's just plain wrong, let me know, if I'm onto something, expand on it.

submitted by /u/NamesElliot
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How does torque and angular momentum behave in 4 dimensions?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 07:53 AM PST

Like rotation always happens in a plane, you can use the direction that is perpendicular to describe it. But in a space of 4 dimensions there is not a line but another plane that is perpendicular to the rotation. How do you describe, for example, a rotation in the x/y axes or more complex motions in n dimensions?

EDIT: Just to clarify my question. How would beings in a 4 dimensional universe conceptualize angular momentum and torque?

submitted by /u/clumsywatch
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What was supposed to be the difference between inertial mass and gravitational mass?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 08:39 PM PST

I understand that the two are equivalent; every book on relativity I have read has stressed that. I just have a lot of difficulty understanding what the difference between them was supposed to be, or why people ever thought that they weren't equivalent.

submitted by /u/theLabyrinthMaker
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Can light escape from a shrinking black hole?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 08:41 AM PST

As far as I understand it, there is agreement that nothing can escape from a Black Hole (apart from Hawking Radiation, which does not "escape"). Does this hold true for evaporating/shrinking Black Holes?

Thoughtexperiment:

I throw an omnidirectional lightsource into a Black Hole.
As it approaches the event horizon, the lightsource emits light - some (less and less) reaches me.
The moment the lightsource passes the Event Horizon, even the light that should be heading directly away from the singularity will have insufficient speed to escape. If its direction is straight away from the singularity, its speed is c, and its point of origin is exactely at the Event Horizon - this light should "stand still" (?)
I wait for the black hole to shrink due to Hawking Radiation (in the meantime I play intergalactic garbageman and prevent any matter/energy from falling into the black hole)
The shrunken black hole has less mass and a smaller Event Horizon, meaning that light trapped at the former Event Horizon (e.g. some of the light from the lightsource I trew in) CAN now escape.
(Which in turn would futher reduce the mass of the black hole?)

Please help me find what I'm missing here!

submitted by /u/roger_g
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How much dietary iron could a person eat before setting off a metal detector?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 07:49 AM PST

submitted by /u/zSilverFox
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Is it true that Rh- folks are more resistant to toxoplasma?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 05:57 AM PST

Hi Science! Nursing student here. Now I think we've all seen some of the weird theories about Rh- blood - my personal favorite is that it came from reptilian aliens! I recently heard that Rh- blood may confer a slight resistance to Toxoplsma gondii, but because of all the misinformation out there I wasn't sure if that was true or just more hype.

So does anyone out there know if this is true? Do we know why? Any good journal articles I could read up on?

Thanks Science wizards!

Edit: Reptilian blood thing is a joke. Don't want anyone thinking that a future nurse actually believes in that.

submitted by /u/MyOwnGuitarHero
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Just how much better is Solar technology now than five years ago?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 05:55 AM PST

How realistically could the electricity grid transfer to being based on Solar energy on a 25 or 50 year horizon? How much of an impact will new technologies (such as batteries and storage facilities) have on cost of solar electricity?

submitted by /u/JoeTheShome
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Is it necessary to understand where we learned a harmful belief or thought or is replacing them good enough?

Posted: 11 Mar 2017 09:32 AM PST

The generation before mine always talks about because their parents did x they learned y.

submitted by /u/F1RST-1MPR35510N
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