Psst.., That's called graphite, not lead (in pencils)

>> ^jmd:

Frax, youmusta been a peach at school. "ZOMG! YOUR ALL USING STICKS OF DEATH!" "No of course I didn't do my homework... does it look like I wan't lead poisoning?" "Test that require number 2 pencils is the gov trying to kill off the 99%!!"

From what I know, those zircaloy fuel rods melt at around 1800-2200°C, not 1200°C as suggested in this clip. If I'm not mistaken, the hydrogen explosions might be a direct result of oxidation of those zircaloy rods, thus indicating a partial meltdown simply through the existence of vast amounts of hydrogen.

@Psychologic
If it wasn't irreparable once the fuel rods started melting, it sure as hell turned into scrap the second they inserted sea water.

@Ornthoron
The third containment layer, the reinforced concrete bubble, won't stop the molten sludge made of uranium and zircaloy indefinatly. From what I know, it's a matter of days at best, if enough rods have melted down. If the entire load melts, if a complete meltdown occurs, that's 60+ tons of uranium alone. No concrete or steel will stop that unless it is cooled externally. That's why they use a large area of graphite-concrete composite material as a core-catcher in EPRs and others.

I'm sorry, but who wants animal skin for their car???

Hey Bob, What should we make the car out of?
How about Steel Carl? No
Graphite? No
Kevlar? No
Aluminum? No
Metal Carbide Powder and a Multi-element High-entropy Alloy Powder (here)

Leather? oh, hey, that a solid idea! Screw technology... (bla, bla, bla...)

To be fair, the Soviets had many chances and a lot of time to stop Chernobyl from melting down by dropping the core into a giant lead and graphite plug that would seal it and stop the reaction. That is what they were supposed to do if a melt down started. However doing this ruins the plant and turns it into a giant paper weight. The engineers at Chernobyl repeatedly asked permission to drop the core and were denied by the government. In America, if a melt down was immanent, the plant engineers would drop the core because they wouldn't have to ask permission from the president to do so. The Soviets could have averted disaster by sacrificing their plant, but chose to try and stop the reaction AND save the plant so they didn't look foolish to the rest of the world. Uninformed, uneducated politicians were responsible for the Chernobyl disaster, not poor technology or incompetent engineers.


>> ^dingens:

As opposed to ... hmm, let's say, BPs incompetence? Sure, they don't run nuclear plants, but modern technology _can_ fail, especially when run by greedy bastards.

Since you're so curious, Schmawy, it's called "free plate tuning", and it was developed by the recently departed Carleen Hutchins...

Carleen Maley Hutchins (May 24, 1911 – August 7, 2009) was an American former high school science teacher, violinmaker and researcher, best-known for her creation, in the 1950s/60s, of a family of eight proportionally-sized violins now known as the violin octet (e.g., the vertical viola) and for a considerable body of research into the acoustics of violins. She was born in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Hutchins’s greatest innovation, still used by many violinmakers, was a technique known as free-plate tuning. When not attached to a violin, the top and back are called free plates. Her technique gives makers a precise way to refine these plates before a violin is assembled.

From 2002 to 2003, Hutchins’s octet was the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Titled “The New Violin Family: Augmenting the String Section.” Hutchins was the founder of the New Violin Family Association[1], creator-in-chief of the Violin Octet, author of more than 100 technical publications, editor of two volumes of collected papers in violin acoustics, four grants from the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music, recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, an Honorary Fellowship from the Acoustical Society of America, and four honorary doctorates. In 1963, Hutchins co-founded the Catgut Acoustical Society, which develops scientific insights into the construction of new and conventional instruments of the violin family.

The Hutchins Consort, named after Hutchins, is a California ensemble featuring all eight instruments.[2]

In 1974, Hutchins and Daniel W. Haines, using materials supplied by the Hercules Materials Company, Inc. (Allegheny Ballistics Laboratory) of Cumberland, Maryland, developed a graphite-epoxy composite top that was determined to be a successful alternative to the traditional use of spruce for the violin belly.[3]

I did not know that! Thank you for putting an urban myth to rest in my noggin.

In reply to this comment by mauz15:
>> ^raverman:
This reminds me of the millions of dollars NASA spent trying to perfect a pressurized pen that would write in zero gravity on space missions.
The Russians used a pencil.


False. Both the americans and the soviets initially used pencils, but it is dangerous if a piece of graphite broke and floated around inadvertently. It could affect instruments, get into your eyes, etc. Also, a free oxygen environment makes the wood of the pencil and probably also the graphite more prone to burn or combust.

Good analogy on seeking simple solutions to a problem, but completely made up and incorrect.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._and_Russian_space_programs

>> ^raverman:
This reminds me of the millions of dollars NASA spent trying to perfect a pressurized pen that would write in zero gravity on space missions.
The Russians used a pencil.


False. Both the americans and the soviets initially used pencils, but it is dangerous if a piece of graphite broke and floated around inadvertently. It could affect instruments, get into your eyes, etc. Also, a free oxygen environment makes the wood of the pencil and probably also the graphite more prone to burn or combust.

Good analogy on seeking simple solutions to a problem, but completely made up and incorrect.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen#Uses_in_the_U.S._and_Russian_space_programs

although i enjoy alot of graphiti , the problem is that no one can say there work is better than sum one else , so if you are going to say its alright to graphiti on public property then you are saying people with (what most people would call) shit tags are just as valid in graphiting on public property as those with reli nice tags and stencels.

i mean granted in a public art galery alot of the work is "shit" depending on who you are and what you like but its in a isolated space so its not like everyone has to look at it all the time,

maby towns could have designated tag walls with different categories for usage. 1 is a free for all 2, vote to keep , 3 specialist commission

>> ^notarobot:
I still love the style of flash animation he uses!


Doesn't really look like flash to me ... looks more like some sort of tracing paper with him drawing the scenes with perhaps a soft graphite pencil from behind the paper. You can sort of see the vague blurry outlines of his fingers and drawing hand moving around behind the paper. Some cursory searching confirms my suspicion:

[fyi] via http://animationcritic.blogspot.com/:

I actually completely lifted the technique really from an obscure old arthouse movie called The Mystery of Picasso where the filmmaker [Clouzot] spent a few days with Picasso in his studio. Picasso painted on transluscent canvases and [Clouzot] shot him from the other side, shot the canvases from the other side. I sort of took that and just added narration to it.

^Winstonfield_Pennypacker
^ ^joedirt
Faith and scientific method are opposed to one another.

That is your opinion. It is not based on facts or evidence, and is not much different than bible thumping. What evidence do you have that faith is 'opposed' to scientific method?

It's more like the scientific method is opposed to faith (in the bible literalist sense, not the spiritual sense). That's an a priori fact; nobody's opinion. Faith seems to try to ignore science.

Within the scientific method, everyone should be willing to believe that it's possible their own theory is false, and a rival theory is true. Rival theorists should be able to agree on exactly what tests it would take to make them change their mind. This is the heart of the process.

Any theory whose proponents refuse to accept that their position may be incorrect or refuse to propose a test that would convince them, is excluded from the scientific process.

For example, let's say I believe that graphite is an electrical insulator. You believe that graphite is an electrical conductor. I tell you you're a lunatic, but if you can run an electric circuit through a graphite pencil, I'm willing to change my mind. And lo, the light comes on, and I thank you for teaching me something new, and pay for the next round.

For a real example, let's say there's this guy named Einstein who is spouting some crap like gravity is actually space curved by mass, and that nothing is exempt from this curvature, not even light. We all know he's nuts, but we talk about it, and agree on a test: before, after and during the next solar eclipse, we'll take pictures of the stars where the sun is going to be during the eclipse. If Einstein's theory is right, those stars will appear to shift towards the sun during the eclipse because of the sun's mass bending the path of their light, and then appear to shift back out again afterwards. Lo, the stars do appear to shift, and General Relativity is confirmed!

Now, ask a bible literalist what evidence it would take to make him accept that the Earth is more than a few thousand years old, and no matter how scientifically educated he is, that answer will never come.

Note: None of this proves that anything in the bible is wrong, or that atheists are justified. It just demonstrates that faith (in the bible literalism sense) is not at all compatible with scientific method.

Yeah, you could do all this, or you know....put a flashlight in your car.

But no, tear up your car, somehow split a pencil down the middle to extract the graphite and then jury-rig it up to your battery so you can see.

Put a flashlight in your car. I have one in mine, use it all the time. Sure, this is a neat video, but not very practical.