week three

transitional metal of the week: 

silver, Ag for short.

back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, when my great grandfather worked in the silver mines in the mountains of colorado, nobody gave a thought to what that mining was doing to the environment. they did notice that the guys who worked the amalgamation tables, where silver was separated from crushed ore by arsenic or mercury, often lost their hair or teeth or went a bit crazy. oftentimes, too, arsenic, mercury and other mining chemicals would leak from settling ponds or be washed directly into local streams and rivers. these same rivers as recently at the last ten years, were sometimes flowing orange or a deep brown, and the toxic tailing piles "could melt your shoe laces."  a whole bunch of human energy, the great cooperation of nature and $30 million later, they're beginning to get a handle on the devastating effects of digging, blasting, hauling and amalgamating this "soft, white, lustrous transition metal", along with lead, zinc, manganese and gold, out of the earth. (and that's just in one small area of colorado!)

ductile and malleable, silver is the most-est in many categories. has the highest electrical conductivity, the highest thermal conductivity, the highest optical reflectivity, and lowest contact resistance of any metal. and it's pretty. no wonder humans have been separating it from lead since 4000 b.c.    chemists have given silver the atomic number 47 with an atomic mass of 107.8682. it has one electron in it's outer shell and belongs to group 11. in addition to lovely metalwork, money and jewelry, silver is also used in electronics, photography, optics, nuclear reactors, industrial reactions. it's being used, too, in medicine as colloidal silver, a powerful antibiotic, and  in the form of ions and compounds has been useful against viruses, bacteria, fungi, and algae.

link review:

i wasn't able to open some of the links this week - "not found." but, i did like the water concepts page about water molecules and their dance. wondering in what ways humans are like that, since we're about 60% water.

carbon extra:

hmmm. makes me think about everything i don't know about how this computer works and what it's made of. it's really amazing that we're all interested in deeply exploring such completely different areas of life and then again how they all converge into one.

week two

element of the week:

uranium!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Pray for the people of the Havasupai and the Grand Canyon and remember the word of elder Rex Tolusi:

"With the environmental groups that are concerned for animals, for plantlife, for the waters, at times I find it hard to bring these people together, to look at things as we, the indigenous people do. Our environment, we are a part of, for we are the children of Mother Earth. The groups that I speak to, I tell them, if the fishes can come together, if the four-leggeds can come together, if our feathered relatives come together, why can't the two-legged people come together and work together? I feel it's time now that we look at things around us, as we, the indigenous people, look at the earth, the air, the waters, the universe. We must protect these things..... I want to say the people that are here to spread the word to those who are not here, tell them what we have said here." - Rex Tilousi, Havasupai Nation, Grand Canyon, USA. Longterm member of the Havasupai Tribal Council, activist against Canyon Uranium Mine.

-from poisonwindmovie.blogspot.com

just wondering what everyone is sick and dying from....

uranium is a sweet, innocent little element which happens to be easily fissionable. that means it is easily broken into smaller pieces and gives off heat in the process. apparently, it's a very cold world, because some powerful people seem to be craving this heat with a passion. they want to kill people with it (nuclear bombs), create electricity with it (nuclear power plants), and use the waste products to kill even more people with it (depleted uranium weapons). they also want to truck those radioactive waste products all over the place and bury them in the ground, if possible, in sacred native american spiritual sites. if not possible, then they also enjoy putting them in underground sites with roofs so deteriorating that water is leaking through and pieces of the ceiling are falling down on visitors! so far doesn't sound super good.

uranium is toxic to the kidneys and reproductive system and uranium miners are well known to suffer lung cancers related to their work and the radon which is formed when uranium decays. birth defects have also been linked to these exposures.

but it's just uranium! again, a sweet (not tasting! don't try tasting it!), very dense little element. that's dense as in really packed in there, not duhhhhh. and it's atomic number is 92, if you ever want to call. it's atomic weight is approximately 238,  and uranium 238 is readily fissionable and capable of being transmuted into plutonium, which is the basis for modern nuclear weapons. uranium 235 is a naturally occurring isotope which has slightly fewer neutrons. it's considered fissile, meaning fissionable by other neutrons with slow kinetic energy. early atomic bombs were based on nuclear chain reactions among atoms of uranium 235. there is actually a place in west africa where they have discovered that natural nuclear fission had occurred underground with uranium in ancient times. (not that i understand at all how that really works!)

right now it's mined all over the world, primarily in canada, but also australia, russia, namibia, kazakhstan, uzbekistan, south africa, portugal and here. anyway, considering what's going on with this lovely silver-grey metallic element, we should consider strongly supporting all efforts to keep it in it's rightful home - in the ground.

ozone discussion:

well, everyone seems to know about cfc's or at least they've heard about it and have a general familiarity with the concept of cfc's destroying the ozone layer. but, one friend said -" al gore said the hole in the ozone layer has gotten better since cfc use has gone down." (in the movie - an inconvenient truth. i don't know if he actually said that, but that's how my friend remembered it.) but no one has heard about climate change affecting the ozone layer and how the deterioration is actually worse now. "overall about 30% of the ozone layer was destroyed." yikes! i wish i remembered that statistic when talking with people.

link review:

well, let's see. we have two links with tons of information that i get really blocked and impatient reading, and then we have a nice, easy to understand cartoon visual link that i think i'll choose to review....

showing very simply that elements are composed of one or more atoms of the same element. if there is more than one atom of the element, it's also considered a molecule of that element.

 

molecules are also formed by two or more  of the same or different elements combining chemically.

compounds are "atoms of two or more different elements bound together" chemically. also called  molecules.

mixtures are "two or more different elements and/or compounds physically intermingled." like, dancing on the same small dance floor.

week one

my results from the online quiz:

nice to review some very basic concepts. i was a little confused about what homogenous means. how can coffee be homogenous if it is already a mix of coffee beans and water, plus whatever comes off the pan or pot when heated?  is the homogenous "substance" just "coffee", including whatever is in it? i also wasn't clear if dissolving sugar in water was a chemical change or a physical change, but i do get it.

how do we find a balance between the needs of agriculture and the impact on our planet?:

organic farmers have been doing it quite nicely for a long time. backyard, front yard, rooftop, windowsill, sidewalk strip, vacant lot, community park, and probably lots of other creative space gardening can have a real impact on reducing our dependence on large scale agriculture (especially the chemical agri-business) and fossil fuels to ship and truck foods all over the world. not to mention the benefits of regular old organic, permaculture, and biodynamic farming for profit, providing healthy and eco-friendly foods for all of us.

cutting back on meat eating also hugely reduces our agricultural needs, in terms of animal feeds, and also greatly reduces pollution in terms of runoff into watersheds, rivers, and oceans, and methane gases produced by livestock. (go vegetarian! even going mostly vegetarian on a large scale could have a huge impact.)

organizing globally to support local, organic food production and processing could transform the planet. this would include helping solve water issues in areas of drought or flooding, compost and nutrient reclamation to heal depleted soils and increase the nutrient value and lifeforce in our foods, education about the toxicity of agrochemicals, and a return to the wisdom of local culinary and medicinal plants.

my friends used to spend their time planting fruit trees and gardens in low income neighborhoods, so people would have a free source of food to eat, and the birds and other animals also benefitted from the new harvest. (look at all the water and energy that goes to landscaping!) our precious planet can carry this great weight of human life if we all act in conscious awareness of the needs of all species.

impressions on periodic table articles:

there is a little tiny place in my brain where i still remember a very few things from high school chemistry. and what is up with the uu's? - unnamed elements 111, 112, 114, 116, 118. where are 113, 115, and 117?