Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Double Replacement

I've got silver and lead in my hands. There's a gaping wound on my thumb. I'm about [ ] this close to sending my computer off to the glue factory.

All in all, I think I could go for a sandwich right about now.

First things first, I was pretty careless when me and Landon were mixing up chemicals for the normal chemistry classes' labs. It was a simple double replacement lab, so me and Lando just had to make some really weak solutions of a bunch of chemicals. Easy easy, japanesey. Landon did the math, I weighed the junk, added the water, and then swirled it around until mixed. It's a party in 5th period.

The concept of double replacement (And single replacement) is really easy. If, for example, you've got a solution of silver nitrate and you add another solution to it, something like lead sulfate, depending on how reactive the doobers are (silver and lead) they might switch. If Silver is more reactive than lead, the silver will ditch the nitrate and join up with the sulfate. So, you'll have silver sulfate, and then nitrate, and then lead floating around.

Of course, that's very inaccurate. Those are the only two chemicals I can remember off the top of my head that we used, and I'm pretty confident that those two wouldn't work together anyways. I'm pretty sure I mixed up the definition of the whole deal anyways.

The point, however, is that you get the junk from the solution, and it switches places with something else. It ends up that it switches places with the oils and fats in your skin as well.

So, no big deal, but I've got four or five tiny black spots from the silver I got on me, two purple smears from what I assume was the lead, and a few random brownish ones that seem to be something else. Haha, sorta nutty. It'll just look like I need to wash my hands for the next few months, that's all.

It's a fun story to tell, nothing to worry about.

As for the thumb wound: Stallion (my beloved computer) has been acting up lately; I have pursued corrective measures. It's clear that my power supply is in its death throes, I desperately need to replace it. Unfortunately, my computer budget is currently zero, so that's out of the question, at least until I make it to the bank. Anyways, I had the great idea of trying to switch it out with the power supply sitting in my brothers computer in the other room. Nobody is using that computer, figured it was worth a shot.

so, I swap em, and it doesn't work. In the process of swapping back I discovered that the inside of my computer case has some wicked sharp edges. Sharp edges that really hate my thumb. Yeah. Band aids don't do well sticking to the top knuckle of your thumb, so I wrapped a bunch of medical tape around it as well. It looks a lot worse than it is, sorta comical.

I had to format stallion tonight, I don't fully understand why. An experiment I tried resulted in me losing all the data I had accumulated over the last few weeks, since the last time I formatted. It's not a lot, nothing to complain about really. The only important things I lost was my region dance song list, and the few pictures I had taken with my web cam and my new digital camera.

I'm currently in the process of setting stuff up the way I want it. It's sorta fun, sorta obnoxious at the same time. Things will settle down soon though, it'll be great.

So, list of things to do regarding stallion:

1. Get a new power supply

2. If that fails to work, send to glue factory.

3. Get job, upgrade.

Yep. In that order, too.

There might be another post tonight, depending on how I feel. In the meantime, enjoy the complimentary snowflakes.

1 comment:

Jaron Frost said...

Wow, that chemistry stuff really sounds cool... It's along the lines of the age-old turning lead into gold thing! It's like you half-turned your hand into metal! AAH that's so cool! I imagine it wouldn't be very cool for very long, but it's still a really cool concept. :)