Dear Mr. Car Manufacturer. . .

Dear Mr. or Ms. Car Manufacturer(s),

I've been thinking a fairly significant amount about my motorized vehicular device from which you had originally provided to the public (people like myself and my peers) to own.  I quite enjoy the 25MPG that I get in the city, and, I have to admit, I love taking my time in refueling my tank with the plentiful juices of society in which my vehicle runs; the juice which people have coined the term "Gas."

I have also been thinking a great deal about the safety which my vehicle provides me, which comes in the form of a safety bag, when behind the steering column, the one in my horn, and for my passengers, the side safety bags.  I used to feel like these provided myself, my family and peers with a significant amount of protection, but after seeing the bag take application, I was not quite sure.

It inflates at an awfully dramatic speed, due to the ignition of the sodium azide in the inflator, which, in turn, rapidly releases a nitrogen gas into the undeployed safety bag, causing it to deploy, and from many safety items which I have enlightened my knowledge, this can cause severe injury to a child and even to a fully grown person.  However, small children should probably not be in the front seat with such a deadly safety device in the first place, so I will give you credit on that part.  But only because it has become general knowledge for one to keep small children in the back.

I must say, I have found much fault with this safety device, because it can cause so much extensive damage, especially because of the inflation rate, but I must say, that one may have to be blamed on science. . . the science that car companies like you have exploited to potentially injure or protect my face severely.  So in the event that I am in a crash, with or without a small child risk in the front or back seat, I blame you for hurting my face.  In the event that my face is injured.  In the event which it is saved from a severe casualty, though, I must properly thank you and your advantage of SCIENCE to save my face, and the face of my peer(s).

In a final conclusion; Thank you for protecting my face; how dare you for injuring my face, and how could you injure my small children or babies as passengers, unless they're in the back seat??   Thank you for your time.

                                                                                         A Nearly-Every-Day Motor Vehicle Operator,
                                                                                                J. Doe and his/her Peer(s)


consulted sources:  http://www.lanl.gov/quarterly/q_sum03/airbags.shtml

Explosions!

Explosions aren't usually a part of every day life; unless of course you live on campus at NM Tech in Socorro, NM, or if you live in Soviet Russia, or in North Korea.  Now, I'm not entirely sure how to explain how an explosive works, mostly because I don't know how one works, entirely myself.  I do, however, have a link to a website explaining it's intricate and delicious secrets.
>>  http://www.explosives.org/index.php/component/content/article?id=71 <<

Now, just a spoiler alert, that link may or may not ruin the Hollywood special effects for you, because, in order to get a James Bond-sized explosion, you would need a significant amount of explosives, which is, I'm almost 100% positive, illegal to use and or have, even in a movie.  Though it would be interesting to actually know what causes the initial explosion IN an explosive, and how much I'd love to rant about it, I don't know all that much about explosives. 

Here is another link to another page on the same website, with a quick safety for "blasting caps."  Now, I feel like this page could be a bit more explanatory, and helpful.  And just to get it out of the way, because I hope I'm not the only one that thought this, but that stick of dynamite did NOT look like dynamite at first glance. . . just saying.  Also, I absolutely love how it says, "If you find a blasting cap, DON’T TOUCH! Call your local police or fire department immediately to report it. In unskilled hands, blasting caps are deadly." yet it doesn't even provide a picture.  So if you find one, unless you're up-to-date in your explosives lingo, I don't think any average person would even know what a blasting cap is.
>>> http://www.explosives.org/index.php/component/content/article?id=68  <<<

Fortunately enough, I found another link with a picture of a blasting cap. 
>> http://www.stresau.com/energetics/aboutmanufacturing.htm <<

Just to be fair, though, if I hadn't seen a picture of one, I probably would have picked it up in pure curiosity.

Reactions to Reactions

I believe that people should know about every day reactions because knowing one simple thing could save one's life one day.  When I think about it, it actually kind of blows my mind to think that [we] and everything around us are the products of chemical reactions, and we're lucky enough to be put together in a complicated enough of a way to have our own consciousness.  I mean, we're just walking, talking, living elements.  That's something to throw into a stoner's conversation.

Getting to the point; if someone knows about the every day items, the could, not only clean up their puppy's mess (for the fourth time today), or take out a grass stain in clothes, (the chemicals and enzymes in detergents and cleaning agents are put in there specifically for things like that), but they could survive a significantly longer time in The Wasteland, what with being able to poison giant rats and Super mutants (Fallout reference *cough cough*).

Knowing what does what with simple products that we use every day just may be able to save your life.  For example; you're cleaning  your bathroom and you just can't seem to get the smell out of the shower curtains or the toilet. or perhaps there's an awful stench lingering from in the drain.  You sprout an idea; "clorox+ammonia= ultimate cleaning solution! :0 why hadn't anyone thought of it before?" you say to yourself.  Well, let me just warn you now: don't do it.  That combination just so happens to create mustard gas.  Now, unless you're fond of chocking to death on noxious fumes, take my advice.  And don't hold me accountable for telling anyone to do it, because I never told anyone, I was just using an example.  So don't say I didn't warn you.

I can't quite think of any other combinations right off the bat, but for now, I feel like that gets the point across fairly well.

Book Update

To be quite honest, my book didn't really live up to my expectations, or it's title.  I checked it out so many times at the school's library that I ran out of renewals for it.  I didn't even know that you could do that. . . The reason why I had to check it out so many times isn't because the language was to hard to read; it's not like it was a super high level of reading, it's actually fairly low as long as you have a pocket dictionary at your side for when  you run into the occasional word that you don't know how to pronounce, or the definition off-hand.  I just couldn't get into it.  It's like reading Mein Kampf but for science nerds; incredibly boring, a LOT longer than it looks, and giving a long, unnecessary background that, quite honestly, probably could have been made shorter than it was.

To say the least, I couldn't have made it half way through the book, even if I could summon the willpower to pick it up again.  I give an absolutely sincere apology to anyone who liked it enough to actually even get INTO it, but I just couldn't do it.  Unfortunately enough to say; I am not impressed.

One of the things that I had actually learned when I forced myself to rack my brain by reading it, though, was pretty interesting.  I learned that the U.S. made some sort of act that allows any citizen to claim land in the name of the country if it's believed to have guano anywhere on it.  Sadly enough, this act is still in place today.  I'm not sure if I even got far enough in to find anything else even moderately interesting out, so I'm going to go ahead and end this disappointed blog here.

I hate this class. I'm going to fail. I knew I should have switched out of it.

Baby Bottle Lab

The other day, I joined my peers in one of the strangest labs I have encountered. We used baking soda, and vinegar mixed together in careful calculations to determine a number of moles that would give the baby bottles enough thrust to propel them through a six-meter gutter filled with water, in order to calculate the amount of moles of CO2 produced by the baking soda and the vinegar.  I succeeded one time in all my efforts to get the bottle to span the length of the gutter.  I was often confused by why my bottle would not go nearly as far as anyone elses when used with the same amounts of vinegar and baking soda, and if I were ever to do it again, I would probably just find a different bottle to use that would hopefully give me better results.  One of the questions I'm supposed to answer in this blog was "Why are limiting reactants determined by stoichiometric amounts?"  Unfortunately the only way I feel that I can answer this question, in all honesty, is that I don't believe that "stoichiometry" is a real word, and I hope that I won't get docked points for saying that.

The Mole; In All It's Glory (or so I'm told)

If I am remembering correctly, I started this semester in January, on the third; on a Tuesday (had to look at a calendar for that one).  On that day, I came into my chemistry class, first thing in the morning, thinking, "Oh, joy, another science class that I am barely going to skim by to pass.  Who knows, maybe this class will prove to be something in my strong suite."  /me; chuckles.*   What a fool I was.

Just to get this out there, I don't really know why I'm in honors science classes, nor do I know how exactly I got there.  I probably should have been in regular classes to start with, which probably would have kept me from bombing them with such. . . vigor. 

In any aspect; to get to the main point of this blog: the mole.  The mole, from what I'm told, is no longer a pestilential mammal which waits for you outside your humble abode until you turn off the game without saving, and once you return, sweat perspiring ever so vigorously from your brow, pesters you relentlessly to spell his name correctly.  (Thank you for the chuckles, fans of Animal Crossing).  The mole is an enormous number used by scientists to calculate a specific number of molecules of an element in a compound or solution, etc. If I understand the mole concept correctly, calculating a number of moles is fairly simple, it's just the atomic number of an element in grams.  This is then used in a number of ways to determine how much of said element is produced by a reaction, how to calculate an empirical formula to find the molecular formula, and so on, and so on. . . It's a downer I have no idea how to use it find any of those things. . .


*=/me is the command used in Steam chats to indicate the action of a person.

Book? What book...?

In my time being enrolled in Honors Chemistry, since nearly the start of the class, we have been assigned to read a book.  But not any specific book, nor could we just read any old book.  We had to read something based off of science or on the history of science.  I, personally, chose to read The Alchemy of Air.  Mostly because I knew someone that had taken this class before and that is what he had chosen to read, and I figured it would be an interesting read.  Unfortunately enough for me, since my mind is only really intrigued by the more fanatical and classical sides of literature, it easily became very hard for me to wrap my head around ever even getting to this book.  Having two honors courses and trig on top of all of that doesn't really help with the matter that it's hard for me to even pick it up in the first place. . .

I find it really rather drab, if you will, merely because there doesn't seem to be a true storyline behind it.  Just facts of things that had happened and what some guy had done behind his closed scientist doors in order to keep the world from starving and, better yet, fatten it up.  I hate to admit it, (especially because my teacher will be reading this, but) I have barely gotten through the first few chapters.  Like I said, it's hard for me to pick up, for me, almost entirely because of the fact that it isn't all that interesting.  Any spare time I used to devote to reading is now occupied by time devoted to keeping my arse out of the gutters of the grade books.

Hopefully in the upcoming spring break I will be able to make up for all that lost reading. . . To conclude this message;  I don't find The Alchemy of Air as interesting as I had once had hopes for it to be.

Today I read a blog about neutrino physics.  All I could really tell from what I could understand of all the complex words and numbers were that somehow some type of particle was either shot faster than the speed of light, or the people doing the experiment weren't paying enough attention to what they were doing. 

Old and New Materials

Today I watched a rather interesting video on silk and the way in which scientists can reverse engineer silk and reuse it as several different types of items.  This video was titled, "Old and New Materials."  I found that it was very intriguing, especially because I had never heard of one single material able to be applied in so many different ways and still be biodegradable.  We've all seen the way that plastic can be used, and reused and applied in so many different ways as a substitute for metal, like on cars, or glass, like with cups, but they're not so friendly with the environment or our bodies.  This new way of using silk, however, is perfectly eco friendly and can be used completely safely in our bodies.  I don't know about you, but I thought this was pretty neat.  One of the things about it that especially caught my attention, was ability to use it to implant an l.e.d. tattoo.  Now, if that meant what I think that means (glow in the dark tattoos -...-), then there could be some serious applications for a very intriguing art form emerging.  I can just see it now; comicon, 2015, people showing up painted blue, with pointy ears and shiny new tattoos on their bodies, illuminating the room.  Ah, the satisfaction of having a nerdy point of view.

Dreams and Ambitions

My name is Brandon, and I am a student in a chemistry class at Mayfield.  I have future dreams and ambitions of becoming an author of poems, stories, novels and books, (four poems, of which, I have already published in the school's "Ink Slinger") , of becoming a co-creator of two video games that I am currently planning the plot line for, and I hope to aspire to a future greatness of the bassist in a well renown band.  I also hope to author and illustrate several graphic novels, and hopefully illustrate covers for books.  Quite the mouthful, I know, but when one has a dream, it's something one simply must pursue.
I currently have the start to a number of graphic novels that I hope to ink and eventually add to my Deviant Art account, and hopefully begin to post them to a website that is purely of my own creation, so that, if one wishes, i can set due dates for myself and hopefully attract the crowds of fans I fantasize of one day having.

With all of that being said, I believe that I can successfully end my first post.

Science

science