Gross things found in the lab… (suite)

    As written few days ago, I talked about certain things found in the lab. Here are two pictures. The first one is the head of a dead turtle and the second one is a bat, both in formaldehyde. That's f*cking disgusting!

who creates the needs?

    I have to excuse myself for not writing any posts for the last few days. There are so many sources taking my time, example: the lab, my job at Staples, my distance courses, etc. I arrived a bit sooner this morning at the lab to write a post. I remember once when I was in the restroom at the Morgane Cafe, in Trois-Rivieres. It's a great place to study. You buy a coffee and you may stay there as long as you wish. Also, the girls working there are great and nice. 

      So here the point I wanted to come to. I was sitting on the throne, and i saw an ad. Having nothing else to do, I read what was written on it. It said:

Je nais (I born)

Je consomme (I buy)

Je meurs (I die)

    I was stunned by the truth of it. It seems the society is doing everything for us, people, to buy the solution of our life! I mean like, you turn on the TV, you see ads about the miracle solution/machine that will make you slim, or God knows what. Look at the Swiffer ad, the woman (have you ever noticed it is always a woman who vacuums?) always smiles as she was loving it. Hey come on, is there anyone who likes doing that? Also, Swiffer is a compagny, so it has to make money. I'm not saying here that what they do isn't a good product. But, when you realise that when you did swiff your floor, what you do with it? You throw it in the garbage. Easy shot hey? After 8 times, oops, I don't have the Swiffer shit anymore, what am I gonna do? Go and buy some at the grocery store! There are two important things here: consumption of a product to make us buy, and pollution. That kind of material/fibers and not recycled so it goes directly into our dumps. That's horrible. Anyway, that's my point of view. 

    I'm not finished, hey hey! My title says, who creates the needs? Is it the society or the corporations? I mean here, do we all need what's on the market of consumption? As the example before, Swiffer is not necessary to our lives. Before it existed, we had the good old-fashioned vacuum. You buy it once, and you got it for years! I'm just disgut about the society and its tendancy to consume things we don't need. We are all naive, trusting useless things and buying them. Oh well…enough for this morning

being socialy unadapted

Have you ever felt being different from others? Well I f*cking do, more and more everyday. I feel I'm becoming a lab rat. My legs are white and I ain't have a sun tan up to now this summer. What the hell is going on? I went to see one of my friend this afternoon. She invited me for lunch with her baby and her cousin. I was feeling kinda weird being with other people. Then, we went to swim at her place. Damn it, I didn't feel I was fitting in. They are great people, very nice, warm… everything. F*ck… It's kinda hard to get me out of the lab for other things than having a beer at the Chasse-Galerie (the university bar). I came back few hours ago from her place. And guess where I am right now… at the lab, writing on my wordpress. I ain't have a social life. I'm only socialy unadapted…

Gross things found in the lab…

I was in the neurohistology lab, wasting my time asking myself if I was going to have a beer with my lab partners at the bar to watch the soccer game or if I was going to work on a sunny afternoon. The decision wasn't so hard to take. So, I was heading for the exit when I came face to face with bottles containing strange things. I took one of them, and that as f*cking gross: a turtle head without eyes. Yak… I don't have my digital camera here, but when I'll get it back, I'll post a picture of it… totally gross…

myth busting

    I don't know if it may apply to you, but when I was young, my dad used to say that sometimes, filling your gas tank with supreme gas is good. I was fueling my car yesterday and I was thinking about it. Here in Quebec, ordinary fuel is 1.08^.9 CAN dollars per litre. At this time, it means around a US dollar. What ever the price, it is always too expensive! The supreme gas is always 5 to 8 cents more expensive than the ordinary one. I was asking my self, what's so different in the supreme gas to be more expensive and is it good to pay a bit more and have supreme gas in my little car?

    After doing some research in my old notes of chemistry and aviation propulsion, I finally found some interesting facts. Fuel is constituted from hydrocarbons between 5 and 12 carbon-long molecules. Diesel is more between 15 and 18 carbon-long molecules. There no explosion in the engine, but rather a rapid combustion of a mix of gas and air (usually ratio 15:1 air/fuel). 

     The octane rating is calculated for it's tendancy to resist to knocking. Knocking is a phenomenon when fuel burns before its time and causes the engine to knock. There are two mains way to "achieve" the knocking: the detonation and pre-ignition. The first one occurs when "when the remaining unburned mixture is heated and pressurized by the advancing flame front for a certain length of time". The pre-ignition is caused by another ignition source than the spark plug, like hot spots (remainings in the cylinder). 

    More there are carbons in the chain, more it is likely to ignite. Heptane (7 carbons) and octane (8 carbons) are totally different in their behavior. In the octane rating, heptane has the value of 0, and octane -20. But why do we say octane-87, 91 or 94? Actually, in the gas we put in our car is the 2,2,4-trimethypentane:

CH₃-C(CH₃)₂-CH₂-CH₂-CH₃

who has the octane ratio 100 on the scale. As told before, this one is 5 carbon-long chain, so much likely to burn before it is supposed to comparely to octane. A few years ago, lead was added to delay the combustion (until it was proven that it was very nocive fot the environment, although it is still used in aviation). For each car, the manufacturer tells us in the car guide which gas is the good one for our piece of metal. The engine is synchronized to ignite at a certain point in time, not before neither after. Which means that you need to fuel with the good one. If you put supreme fuel in your car, then the combustion will be delayed in time and the combustion won't be as good as it is supposed to be. So don't be fooled with ads who tells you that it is good sometimes to put high-octane rating fuel when fueling. And… in the same time, you'll save money!

Who’s less worthy???

    Everybody knows a friend, or one's friend, who passed through this kind of situation. I was asking myself who's less worthy in this scene. Let's say that you have a boy/girlfriend since a few years. Everything is doing pretty good in the relation, until one day, one or the other has to leave in another town, where your best friend (of the opposite sex of your boy/girlfriend) lives. The couple breaks. The first thing you hear(after few days), is that right after the separation, the two of them are together. 

    Here's my question again, who's less worthy between the two of them, the bitch (ex-boy/girlfriend) or the traitor (your "best friend")? I think both of them are worthless equally. Only people with no respect and honor, or being totally weak-minded can do this. This is what I think; I might be wrong, but whatever, if anyone has another way of thinking please tell me! 

what we can find in a lab (suite)

As I told yesterday, I found some interesting chems in the lab. I was wondering if lead azide was soluble in water. I knew that lead salts are rarely soluble, so I looked in my analytical chemistry books, and even on Wikipedia about the solubility constant of it. I found nothing. So I tried! I put into solution the two substances I had. The lead nitrate was a bit hard to dissolve so I heated up a bit until 60 degrees. Then, I mixed them. At first I did it with a pipet, because I didn't want any… "bad reactions". It seems the Lead Azide is completly insoluble in water. It precipitates instantly. The white matter it makes is then what I was looking for, Pb(N₃)₂. Actually, I didn't calculate the solubility constant, I was too lazy to see how much I put, whatever… the conclusion is that lead azide is insoluble!

The final product is a primary explosive used in the tank missiles. What I mean as for primary explosive, it is because it is very sensitive to chock and electricity. Although, the explosive velocity is much lower than secondary explosives (like TNT). For lead azide, it's velocity is around 5100m/s. For secondary explosives, it's around 8000 to 10 000m/s. Lead azide is usually on the top of the secondary explosive, so when the missiles hits the target, the most sensitive matter exploses and ignites the less sensitive matter, such as TNT. The form of the missile is calculated that there is only one big explosion, and not 2. Explosive chemistry is a pretty interesting science, believe me!

P.S. By the way, do never do this at home or in your lab. I'm an explosive expert. I've worked for military R&D, I know what I do. Working with this kind of matter is really dangerous and someone who's not advised about doing this may have a bad experience. Never underestimate the power of it.  

 

what we can find in a lab

That's pretty funny what we can find in a lab, especially here. This is an experimental neuropsychology lab, which means that we work with animals, usually mice. When we were fixing some brain slices few days ago, I had nothing to do between two steps. As being a ex-chemist, I looked around like a child in the lab to see what kind of chems we had. I found we have pretty interesting stuff.

As an example, I found some Sodium Azide (NaN₃) and Lead Nitrate (Pb(NO₃)₂).

The funny thing around this, is when you mix these two items, it makes NaNO₃
and Pb(N₃)₂ a primary explosive used in missiles.

2 NaN₃ + Pb(NO₃)₂ à 2 NaNO₃ + Pb(NO₃)₂

I just wonder why in the hell is it in a neuro lab? If any one can answer this question, please tell me.

I also found some testosterone propionate… I wonder what kind of thing I could do with this… That would have been for some experiments on rats and behavior. I shall see for this later.

 

 

welcome to my wordpress…

Well, here I enter in the cyber world of blogging. I don't really know how much time it'll last and neither how many times I'll post on it. Anyway, we'll check on that later.

 I'm working in an experimental neuropsychology laboratory at the university. I'm working with Ben (you'll find his wordpress in the links). We enjoy having beer together on late afternoons, when it's sunny outside and lots of girls are on the grass tanning and reading. Summer is such a great season for us guys… Oh well, so welcome again on my wordpress, and enjoy!

 Sincerely, Vince