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Dicentra

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Dicentra last won the day on June 12 2013

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About Dicentra

  • Birthday 03/02/1972

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  1. I have no formal education with respect to economics but I like to ponder the big issues behind this kind of stuff. 🙂 I found this article and it seems to ring true - can those with more econ knowledge than I have let me know what they think? https://theconversation.com/how-shareholder-profits-conquered-capitalism-and-how-workers-can-win-back-its-benefits-for-themselves-103781
  2. From a chemistry standpoint, directly cooking food (like roasting marshmallows, etc.) should be perfectly safe whether you're burning propane or butane or natural gas. All of those should burn "clean" (i.e. converting the hydrocarbon fuel almost completely to carbon dioxide and water) with a little incomplete combustion creating some soot (carbon) and maybe a little carbon monoxide. If someone was worried about "other stuff" being deposited on the food through direct cooking, you're more likely to get that by cooking directly over a wood fire - the chemical make-up of wood is far more complicated than any of the fuels mentioned. 🙂 Any fuel source that's been "enhanced" (like those logs or pinecones that give off coloured flames) or treated wood (like off-cuts from construction wood or wood that's been treated with creosote like railroad ties) shouldn't be used to cook food. I don't think the DuraFlame logs give off anything particularly toxic - they just don't give off that much heat (at least, the indoor ones don't) so using them to cook is considered unsafe due to inconsistent and/or insufficient cooking of the food. Mmmmm... Roasted marshmallows...
  3. You can still buy all the free standing Willow Tree nativity elements from the website. 🙂 https://www.willowtree.com/shop/sculptures/nativities This might be what you're looking for, @Ditto : https://www.willowtree.com/nativity/
  4. I know that Adrian Dingle offers online chemistry tutoring and his background is org chem: https://adriandingleschemistrypages.com/chemistrytutoring-2/ He's not cheap but he's very, very knowledgeable and very good at what he does. Hope you can find something that works for you, @cave canem!
  5. Thanks, Malam! I haven't been updating these threads as I should - it always seems to get pushed down on my to-do list. 🙃 I figure even if I don't get the starting posts updated, people can still read through all the posts in the threads and get some great ideas from all the wonderful Hive members. 🙂
  6. That's what DH was mostly ranting about - if one doesn't know the original starting amounts, then all the other numbers are meaningless. 🙂 But I think the manufacturer is misunderstanding what dilution means in terms of their "Final Dilution" number if we follow with your calculations. If I take 30mg of a substance and put it into a 300mg tablet, it's true that the 30mg substance makes up 10% by mass of the tablet but if the person takes the entire tablet, the 30mg of substance isn't being diluted again by being incorporated into the tablet - the person is still getting 30mg of the substance whether they just ingest 30mg of the substance in pure form or whether it's compounded into a larger tablet. Know what I mean? So the "Final Dilution" column still doesn't make mathematical/chemical sense to me. That 30mg of the mercury product or the 75mg of the belladonna product hasn't been diluted further by compounding them into a tablet. If you compound the 30mg into a 300mg tablet AND then crush the tablet and give the person 30mg of the crushed tablet, that would be another 10-fold dilution. But taking the whole tablet negates any additional "dilution" factors. Hope that makes sense!
  7. As a chem teacher, I was ready to do the dilution calculations for you but - the info given makes no sense. 🙂 I googled the amounts and got a pamphlet for a homeopathic(?) remedy for pain relief that comes in tablet, ointment, and injectable form. I think the amounts you gave are for a 300mg tablet. This is the chart the pamphlet provided: If I total the mg amounts listed in the middle column, I get just over 300mg so a whole tablet. I can't tell if the middle column means that there is actually 75mg of Belladonna per 300mg tablet (which doesn't make any sense if it's homeopathic) or if the 75mg of Belladonna was put into solution and diluted 1 in 10 by four times and 75 mg of the resultant solution was added to the tablet or...? Pharmacist DH looked at it and says it makes no sense from either a Western medicine viewpoint or a homeopathic veiwpoint - classical homeopathy never deals with mg of anything in the final product and Western medicine doesn't deal with "potencies". It's like the company has tried to weirdly mix Western and homeopathic ideas and come up with... I don't know what. He says the fact that the chart references both mg and "potencies" is just weird and wrong. There is no way of knowing what these tablets actually contain. The oral LD50 of atropine is 75 mg/kg in mice but, like you said, belladonna isn't pure atropine. I would think that, at best, it's probably not enough of any of the ingredients to harm a person (but you would be more knowledgeable than I would about that part :)) It's called the molar limit. 🙂 It's based on a chemical principle where you consider the number of particles (molecules) in a mole of a substance in 1 liter of solution vs the amount the solution has been diluted. A mole in chemistry is 6.023 x 10^23 particles. A 1 M (pronounced one molar) solution is a solution where 1 L of the solution contains 1 mole of particles (1M = 1mol/L). That would mean that 1L of solution contains 6.023x10^23 particles (so 6.023x10^23 molecules/1 L of solution). If you dilute that liter of solution by a factor of 1:10 24 times (so 24X or 12C), statistically there would be less than 1 molecule of the original substance in the final liter of solution: 6.023x10^23 molecules/1x10^24 L of solution = 0.6023 molecules per L Since you can't have part of a molecule (and still have it be the same substance as the original substance), this dilution is the limit at which you would still have any chemically "intact" molecules left per liter of solution. You would either have no molecules left in the liter of solution or, randomly, you might have one or two molecules per liter (balanced out by no molecules in other 1 liter samples). If you drank a liter of the solution, there would be slightly over a 50/50 chance there would be 1 molecule of the original substance in that liter of solution. Most homeopathic remedies aim for a much higher dilution rate - statistically, there would be no molecules of the original substance left in the end dilution at dilution rates higher than 24X. From what I understand, though, the "healing power" comes from the water "remembering" its contact with the original substance and not the presence of the original substance itself. Because of that, proponents of homeopathy don't seem bothered by the fact that most homeopathic dilutions exceed the molar limit.
  8. And thank you so much to those offering their experiences with my courses - whether positive or negative. 🙂 I'm very small and don't do any paid advertising so word-of-mouth is important. I know my courses don't work for everyone but I'm so very glad that I can continue being part of the homeschooling community (even though my daughter is graduating with her B.Mus. this spring :)). And this forum has played such an incredibly important role in both my own homeschooling journey and in understanding what I could do and offer as a chemistry teacher to help support the homeschooling world.
  9. I got a notification that I was being paged. 🙂 I have three levels of chemistry courses (four if you count the Intro to Org Chem/Biochem course but that's more of a second-highschool-chem-specialty course). I have: *the reg chemistry level of "Chemistry with Honors Chemistry option" course *the honors chemistry level of "Chemistry with Honors Chemistry option" course *Advanced Honors Chemistry The Adv Honors Chem is much closer to AP Chem than not and is meant for students who are looking to pursue college degrees in chemistry/physics/chemical engineering. It's very rigorous. The "Chemistry with Honors Chemistry option" course has two levels built-in. If a student completes the material NOT labelled as "Honors", then that student would complete a regular chemistry level course. If a student completes that material PLUS the material labelled as "Honors", then that student would complete an honors chemistry level course. Hope that makes sense! And @ByGrace3 - you are correct. I don't have a completely asynchronous (i.e. start/end when you wish and work at whatever pace you wish) that's also teacher-graded. I know that Derek Owens offers courses like that (but not chemistry :)) but in order to do that, he hires lots of extra people to do the grading. Since there is only me 🙂 I would have to be grading year-round with no breaks in order to offer that. It's not something that I'm keen on doing. 🙂 If interest in my self-paced courses were to grow by quite a bit, I could then see hiring graders and offering something like that. I hope that helps! You're welcome to message me if you have any other questions.
  10. I know you're looking for gingerbread for construction 🙂 but if anyone wants to make gingerbread cookies (and this recipe would probably work for houses, too) that are the BEST tasting gingerbread cookies I've EVER had, try this recipe: https://www.marthastewart.com/315628/gingerbread-snowflakes Everyone that I've ever made them for loves them. The secret ingredient... ground black pepper. It gives the gingerbread some "bite" without being over-spiced. I've had other gingerbread where people have wanted to get that "bite" and they've tried doing it by using more cinnamon, cloves, and/or ginger and it doesn't work. With the royal icing and sanding sugar on top, these cookies are lovely and sparkly.
  11. The two aren't related. 🙂 The area where I live was informally known as Clover Valley in the past (we had a Clover Valley Dairy here at one time and, before it closed, our farmer's market was the Clover Valley Farmer's Market) and I've always liked the name. When I was deciding on a name for my business, I realized that it was pretty close to Jetta's business name so I made sure to reach out to her first to see if she was OK with my business name being so close to hers and she was fine with it. 🙂 It's just a wacky coincidence that the name I wanted was so close to her name. 🙂
  12. You're welcome! When I grade the tests, they're worth a variety of points - usually the more "meaty" the chapter, the more points the test would be worth. 🙂
  13. Hi folks, I just saw this so thought I'd pop in and give an answer - I hope that's ok. 🙂 A parent recently contacted me about this very question and this is what I responded to them: The application of points to questions is left up to the discretion of the parent - that's why I don't give any kind of grading rubrics with the questions. 🙂 I wanted to give parents as much flexibility as I could so that they could customize the grading to fit with their own homeschool philosophy (some don't award points, some teach to mastery, etc.). When I'm grading, I award 1 point per question for things like multiple choice/true and false/matching questions/fill-in-the-blanks. For short answer problems, I tend to award points based on the number of steps required. If a short answer question requires two different calculation steps, for example, I'll usually award 3 points (1 for each step plus 1 for the correct answer). If a short answer question has more than one part (like part (a), part (b), etc.), I treat each part as a different question in terms of points. If part (a) required a two-step calculation, then part (a) would be worth 3 points. If part (b) only required a single word answer, I'd award 1 point for part (b) and so on. I hope that helps! I do hope that helps! If anyone has further questions about this, you're welcome to message me here or, still better, email me at clovervalleychemistry@gmail.com. That way, I'll get your message right away. 🙂
  14. Thanks, Malam! Mark T had taken over updating the physics thread but even if it doesn't get updated, it's good to have the info here in your post. 🙂
  15. That's wonderful that she has so much support through her school! I'm coming from a public school teaching background and the support for the students I taught with brain injuries was... me. 🙂 I'm so glad that she'll have the support she needs and I hope that, beginning with your exploration, she learns to love the amazing world of chemistry. If you and she run across any chemistry topics where you're interested in wanting more info or in asking deeper questions, you're more than welcome to reach out to me through a PM here on the boards. I love to encourage a love of chemistry! 🙂
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