Have you noticed what silver’s been doing lately? The price of silver is literally on fire!

Posted on 10 July 2016 by RobertLovesPi

Because of the price of silver being literally on fire, they will not be buying and selling troy ounces of metallic silver when the markets open in New York tomorrow morning. Instead, they will be selling “oxide ounces” of silver oxide, in sealed-plastic capsules of this black powder, with an oxide ounce of silver oxide being defined as that amount of silver oxide which contains one troy ounce of silver.

A troy ounce of silver is 31.1 grams of that element, which has a molar mass of 107.868 g/mole. Therefore, a troy ounce of silver contains (31.1 g)(1 mol/107.868 g) = 0.288 moles of silver. An oxide ounce of silver oxide would also contain oxygen, of course, and the formula on the front side of a silver oxide capsule (shown above; information on the back of the capsule gives the number of oxide ounces, which can vary from one capsule to another) is all that is needed to know that the number of moles of oxygen atoms (not molecules) is half the number of moles of silver, or (0.288 mol)/2 = 0.144 moles of oxygen atoms. Oxygen’s non-molecular molar mass is 15.9994 g, so this is (0.144 mol)(15.9994 g/mol) = 2.30 g of oxygen. Add that to the 31.1 g of silver in an oxide ounce of silver oxide, and you have 31.1 g + 2.30 g = 33.4 grams of silver oxide in an oxide ounce of that compound.

In practice, however, silver oxide (a black powder) is much less human-friendly than metallic silver bars, coins, or rounds. As you can easily verify for yourself using Google, silver oxide powder can, and has, caused health problems in humans, especially when inhaled. This is the reason for encapsulation in plastic, and the plastic, for health reasons, must be far more substantial than a mere plastic bag. For encapsulated silver oxide, the new industry standard will be to use exactly 6.6 g of hard plastic per oxide ounce of silver oxide, and this standard will be maintained when they begin manufacturing bars, rounds, and coins of silver oxide powder enclosed in hard plastic. This has created a new unit of measure — the “encapsulated ounce” — which is the total mass of one oxide ounce of silver oxide, plus the hard plastic surrounding it on all sides, for a total of 33.4 g + 6.6 g = 40.0 grams, which will certainly be a convenient number to use, compared to its predecessor-units.

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[This is not from The Onion. We promise. It is, rather, a production of the Committee to Give Up on Getting People to Ever Understand the Meaning of the Word “Literally,” or CGUGPEUMWL, which is fun to try to pronounce.]

When We Build Our Dyson Sphere, Let’s Not Use Enneagonal Antiprisms

Posted on 21 February 2016 by RobertLovesPi

Before an undertaking as great as building a Dyson Sphere, it’s a good idea to plan ahead first. This rotating image shows what my plan for an enneagonal-antiprism-based Dyson Sphere looked like, at the hemisphere stage. At this point, the best I could hope for is was three-fold dihedral symmetry.

Augmented 9- Antiprism

I didn’t get what I was hoping for, but only ended up with plain old three-fold polar symmetry, once my Dyson Sphere plan got at far as it could go without the unit enneagonal antiprisms running into each other. Polyhedra-obsessives tend to also be symmetry-obsessives, and this just isn’t good enough for me.

Augmented 9- Antiprism complete

If we filled in the gaps by creating the convex hull of the above complex of enneagonal antiprisms, in order to capture all the sun’s energy (and make our Dyson Sphere harder to see from outside it), here’s what this would look like, in false color (the real thing would be black) — and the convex hull of this Dyson Sphere design, in my opinion, especially when colored by number of sides per face, really reveals how bad an idea it would be to build our Dyson sphere in this way.

Dyson Sphere Convex hull

We could find ourselves laughed out of the Galactic Alliance if we built such a low-order-of-symmetry Dyson Sphere — so, please, don’t do it. On the other hand, please also stay away from geodesic spheres or their duals, the polyhedra which resemble fullerenes, for we certainly don’t want our Dyson Sphere looking like all the rest of them. We need to find something better, before construction begins. Perhaps a snub dodecahedron? But, if we use a chiral polyhedron, how do we decide which enantiomer to use?

[All three images of my not-good-enough Dyson Sphere plan were created using Stella 4d, which you can get for yourself at this website.]

Free the Frozen People!

Posted on 12 July 2015 by RobertLovesPi

After seeing this sign in a local grocery store, I carefully searched the entire frozen food section, but I could find neither the frozen Mexican, nor the frozen Asian. Since they were gone, but the sign indicates they were there at one point, I concluded that the experiment was over, and hoped they had thawed out both experimental test subjects, found them still healthy after a few days in cryogenic suspended animation, and sent them home, each with a fat check to compensate them for the huge risk they just took.

However, even with compensation and signed consent forms, I still have certain ethical reservations about scientists performing this sort of experiment on actual human beings. Why not freeze, thaw, refreeze, and rethaw mice, instead? Is PETA really that scary?

Are they still doing these experiments, in my town or elsewhere? If so . . . free the frozen people!

There is one last thing about this whole thing which I just can’t figure out, though, and that’s this: why were they storing their frozen, experimental, human test subjects in the middle of a central Arkansas grocery store in the first place?

Important Safety Guidelines from Your Gravity Company, GravCorp, Inc.

Posted on 16 July 2014 by RobertLovesPi

Please read these safety guidelines carefully. Also, we recommend displaying them prominently, securely fastened to the sturdiest wall in your home, in the event that your gravitational service is ever shut off for non-payment of your GravCorp gravity bill.

Because your friends at GravCorp care about you and your family’s safety, GravCorp will never shut your gravity off abrupty, but does so gradually, over the 24-hour period following the end of the shut-off date (prominently printed in red, bold type) on your gravity shut-off notice. It is best to evacuate early during this period. [Tip: when you notice that you weigh noticeably less than you did the day before, that is your signal to leave.] We are not responsible for anything that happens if you fail to heed this advice, but we do have some safety guidelines to help those who, through no fault of ours, fail to leave their homes in a timely manner.

Once gravity shut-off is complete, if you are still inside your home, follow these safety rules carefully:

1. Be certain to keep moving at all times. Stationary humans have been known to die from lack of oxygen in the absence of gravity, due to the buildup of a spherical cloud of exhaled carbon dioxide, centered in the region of their mouths and noses. If you still have electrical service while your gravity is shut off, however, you can also avoid this danger by turning on all the electric fans in your home, such as the ceiling fan in the picture above.

2. Should you choose to go outside, exercise extreme caution to avoid serious accidents (most of which are likely to be fatal). If you still have telephone or Internet service, we recommend paying your past due GravCorp account balance (plus the $135 reconnect fee) by phone or Internet, from inside your home.

3. Keep all liquids inside containers, for inhalation of even part of a floating ball of water, or other liquid, can cause death by drowning. [Tip: don’t forget to seal all toilets — both bowl and tank — using approved, waterproof sealing methods and materials.]

4. Act quickly to pay your past due bill, plus the $135 reconnect fee, or have a pressure suit on and pressurized, for the air above you is already beginning to escape into space.

5. Remain calm, do not panic, and consider setting up automatic bank drafts to pay your gravity bill, effortlessly, each month. It’s convenient, safe, and saves you money on postage. (An annual $3.14 convenience fee will be charged to your GravCorp account, on or near July 1st each year, for this optional service.)

[Image credit: The picture above was found at http://www.thedistractionnetwork.com/going-to-bed/.]

An Alternate Map of the USA

Posted on 15 December 2012 by RobertLovesPi

According to this map, I live in Little, Oklahoma. I work in Rock, Louisiana, not far away. I buy most of my Chinese food (>50% of what I eat) a few kilometers to the North, in the former North Little Rock, now renamed Argenta, Missouri.

It was fun partitioning the state I live in (using the Arkansas River, and “Tornado Alley,” also known as Interstate 30, to do it), and otherwise playing around with the map of the country and continent where I live.

By the way, I actually do believe that if the USA ever falls apart, Soviet-Union-style, Texas really would be the only former state to give itself a subtitle.