Re: [OT] The Year 2038 Problem

From: Dan Pop (Dan.Pop_at_cern.ch)
Date: 06/07/04 

Date: 7 Jun 2004 17:03:14 GMT

In <I64wc.711$9g6.21@nwrdny03.gnilink.net> "Thomas G. Marshall" <tgm2tothe10thpower@replacetextwithnumber.hotmail.com> writes:

>Programmer Dude <Chris@Sonnack.com> coughed up the following:
>
>> Mark McIntyre writes:
>>
>>>> You can pretty much emulate what happens when you fill a plastic bag
>>>> with, say, natural gas and hold a flame to it.
>>>
>>> No you can't, and for goodness sake don't try this at home. Hydrogen
>>> diffuses into the surrounding air VERY quickly, and burns almost
>>> immediately. Did you never set fire to a test-tube of the stuff in
>>> school?
>>
>> Almost.
>>
>> Had a fun/goofy JHS science teacher who once gave a demonstration on
>> cracking water. He collected the H in a test tube and then clicked a
>> Bunsen burner igniter near the mouth.
>>
>> Made a nice, startling "POP!"
>>
>> Then he decided to try collecting the H in a beaker.
>>
>> He (and we!) were all VERY surprised.
>
>I remember a similar experiment, but with different results. The POP
>came from the O2.

You're misremembering it. It was the H2 that POPed, while the O2 turned
a slowly burning thingie into a first class flame. It's O2 (at sea level
pressure) that was responsible for the Apollo 1 tragedy (some sparks
ignited violently things that don't burn in ordinary air or even in the
lower O2 pressure the capsule was supposed use on orbit).

Dan 

-- 
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Dan.Pop@ifh.de
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