The Periodic Table

« first day (2557 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2129 days later) »

uhoh

02:27

Q: Have caged molecules ever been observed in space?

@'s thorough answer to the question What is precipitable water vapor in millimeter-wave radioastronomy and how is it measured? links to the paper Observing Conditions for Submillimeter Astronomy which discusses spectral windows of atmospheric transmission in the 100 ~ 1500 GHz range. These window...

1 hour later…

CowperKettle

03:38

> Dietary folate intake is largely from fruits and vegetables as polyglutamates, which are acted on by the enzyme folylpoly-³ -glutamate carboxypeptidase (Visentin et al, 2014).

I wonder if this -3- is a typo, or maybe it's really part of the enzyme's name.

I wonder why this enzyme is not in Wikipedia

3 hours later…

1,3-feeds

06:41

Q: Using mathrm versus rm MathJax index formatting

I do not understand well, why is so much preferred \mathrm to \rm ? (by occurrence and by user script formatting support.) Note that I have in mind context of SE posts, mostly with uniform text formatting. Advanced LaTeX documents are probably different case. If my understanding is correct, th...

discussion mathjax

Hot nitric acid (HNQ)

06:55

Q: Do electrons go to even lower ground states after exothermic reactions?

I am a bit confused about what happens to the energy levels during an exothermic reaction. I understand that during an exothermic reaction, the energy of the electrons decreases. Is the potential energy of electrons related to the energy level diagram, shown below? So if the potential ener...

thermodynamics

2 hours later…

Avka

09:07

I thought we would be getting one more new mod

There's no question on Homework Policy

Kudos to Orthocresol, Martin and A.K

All the negative hw tagged questions are gone

2 hours later…

Martin - マーチン

11:18

@Avka yes, one more and one to replace Manish.

@Avka it you wanted, you could still add one.

@Avka thanks. There is still plenty to do, but we've achieved the most crucial points. Most of the not so good questions are either way better, or gone. And it's no longer a top 10 tag. As always, we welcome anyone with a bit free time to join us.

1 hour later…

Avka

12:46

@Martin-マーチン will do

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@Avka And me. I was such great encouragement. Clapping and whistling in the background

Avka

Considering half the top rep users are your socks I'm pretty sure you did more than that

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

13:47

A: 2019 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

Chemistry is a "living breathing branch of empirical science" and as such many questions it asks don't have "cut and dry" answers as they are being actively answered, or require very extensive levels of expertise that few have acquired to even understand. How does this compare to sites like SO...

Um, they don't?

It's chemistry not philosophy

Loong

14:04

Anyway, I don't see how this question is relevant for the moderator election.

orthocresol

14:15

@Avka I am waiting for @GaurangTandon's question. ;)

Gaurang Tandon

15:01

@orthocresol yeah, I'm writing it right now, just wanted to go over the site for a day or two to get accustomed to the current scenario. Though I am a bit worried the question will be a lot similar to the one you posted @orthocresol ("Right now, what do you think is/are the biggest challenge(s)...")

orthocresol

I don't mean to rush you.

If you want to run it by me before posting, feel free to.

Gaurang Tandon

Sidenote: I'm also glad at the amount of edits being done these days, the monthly edits tab used to be slower several months back. Also, kudos for getting the homework tag off the top 10! I'm glad it no longer appears on the homepage for non-signed up users :D

We might see a change in the number of homework-style posts due to that, what do you think?

@orthocresol definitely, i'll

1 hour later…

William R. Ebenezer

16:06

Q: Abnormally low melting point of Gallium

I recently read the reason for why Gallium has an abnormally lower melting point (melting at temperatures slightly higher than SATP), which is mentioned in J. D. Lee to be the prominent existence of Gallium as discreet $\ce{Ga2}$ molecules. Why does Gallium exist diatomically? I can see it has t...

molecular-orbital-theory elements melting-point

Is it too broad and/or cannot be answered?

I'd be honored if someone could place their opinion. @orthocresol @andselisk @A.K. ?

orthocresol

@WilliamR.Ebenezer Are you referring to liquid gallium existing as Ga2 species?

I don't think it's too broad. And even if we don't know the answer, that doesn't mean it's a bad question. In fact, it probably means it's a good question, because quite possibly somebody in the world is researching it as we speak.

It just means that you should not necessarily expect an answer immediately. Or in the near future.

William R. Ebenezer

16:22

@orthocresol Well, solid actually, since Lee's inorganic book says "Gallium has an unusual structure. Each atom has one closest neighbor......this remarkable sturcture tends towards discrete diatomic molecules rather than a metallic structure. This accounts for the incredibly low m.p. of Ga at 30 degr. C"

a few lines later says the abnormal structure is found only in solid state, so no abnormalitly in boiling point.

orthocresol

Ok. I suggest adding that into the question for clarity.

If only to help ignorant people like me.

But otherwise, I don't have any problem with your question.

William R. Ebenezer

Alright I'll put it in. Thanks!

orthocresol

In fact, that is quite fascinating...

Gaurang Tandon

17:06

1. We have a homework closure policy by which we close down questions that fail to "demonstrate some effort to understand the underlying concepts."
Now, questions may also come from people with non-chemistry backgrounds. Such people are more interested in knowing what to do/what would happen given a particular situation involving chemicals, rather than knowing *how* it happens chemically. They may also lack the chemical expertise to be able to understand any chemical concepts of the situation at hand.

2. We have had several attempts at defining how much effort is required to avoid a homework closure. However we have yet not had any edits to the homework FAQ post in that direction.

Questions which are not a blatant copy-paste of textbooks still get closed as homework (examples: 1, 2, 3), and are sometimes reopened (example).

This situation causes confusion to both close voters and askers alike: what exact criterion to use when close voting a question? Do you see this situation as a problem, and if so, how do you intend to tackle this situation as a moderator?

3. We often see poor/average quality questions that get closed - get good quality answers (here's a [search query](
https://data.stackexchange.com/chemistry/query/1038901/poor-closed-questions-with-at-least-one-answer-having-a-score-greater-than-a-thr?MaximumQuestionScore=2&MinimumAnswerScore=4)). There might be a few users who regularly posts decently good quality answers to such questions. Remember that this prevents a bad quality question from getting [Roomba'ed](https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/help/roomba). What do you do in such cases: let them post answers to poor quality questio…

A.K.

@WilliamR.Ebenezer My opinion is not of value the how chemistry works.

Gaurang Tandon

Please have a look. I do feel that these questions aren't really "mod-specific", that is, anyone without a diamond could still answer them somewhat. However, I felt it might be a good idea to seek a mod's opinion on them, as mod's will be the ones leading the changes.

Hot nitric acid (HNQ)

Q: How to solve constants out of the internal energy equation?

Imagine we deal with a new kind of matter, whose state is described by: $$PV = AT^3$$ Its internal energy is given by: $$U = BT^n \ln\left(\frac{V}{V_0}\right) + f(T)$$ Where $A, B$ and $V_0$ is a constant and $f(T)$ is a polynomial function. Find B and n. This is ...

thermodynamics equation-of-state

Gaurang Tandon

@Hotnitricacid(HNQ) Wouldn't the answer benefit from explaining how the equation applies to the given context? I sure lack the chemical expertise to judge how obvious the equation is, so hopefully someone with more expertise can have a look.

orthocresol

18:18

It's q obvious with thermo knowledge, but as it stands should really not be +4, IMO.

But I can edit it when I am free... probably not today... busy churning out a project report...

I should really suspend myself so that I stop coming here :/ but elections are exciting ;D

@GaurangTandon Okay, I like them in this order: 2 > 1 > 3. WRT 2 > 1, that is a personal bias because I dislike the effort criterion and would be very pleased if this were to be clarified in the near future. It's not a secret that I care more about the "research-level" questions and not the "layperson" questions. WRT 3, there is an obvious and "easy" answer, which is to improve the question such that it is no longer closed. I also personally agree with the easy answer.

My contention with "easy" answers is that you don't really learn much, since most people will give you the politically correct answer (which may or may not actually be the "best" answer). It's also why I don't really like jonsca's question on "how to deal with a rude flag from an established user" - the easy answer is "exactly the same way we deal with it from any other user". In practice, doing it is not as easy as saying it.

But that's just my 2c. Feel free to post all three. There's nothing inherently wrong with multiple questions - that's what the voting mechanism is for

Gaurang Tandon

Cool. I understand your point and agree with you. I'll post the first two questions then.

orthocresol

Ok!

« first day (2557 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2129 days later) »

all rooms