Is it possible for a normal person with some knowledge of chemistry to test the chemical composition of a small sample of liquid with a home chemistry set? If so, what kind of things would you normally see him doing to look all sciency/like he knows what he's doing ( Read more... )

I'm writing a story part of which is set in 18th Century Paris shortly after Lavoisier's publication of Méthode de nomenclature chimique. One of my characters wants to convince Lavoisier that Sapphire is an element. They do not need to succeed but I'd like an idea of the evidence they might put forward and how (and if) Lavoisier might counter it. ( Read more... )

This probably goes waaaay into the territory of "stupid question", but in a bit of dialogue I'm writing, an extremely pedantic character needs to make mention of how much sugar is in the (average) human body, preferably in terms of grams (or milligrams or whatever) per kilogram of body mass ( Read more... )

Ok, this is probably the weirdest question I've ever asked… I've done some research on google about metal alloys, but so far I haven't found the answers I'm looking for ( Read more... )

Setting: Standard fantasy (i.e. pre-industrial) although that can be modified; I wouldn't mind them having (for instance) more modern smelting techniques, but would prefer to keep that general level of technology ( Read more... )

And by "very low temperatures" i mean something akin to being lowered feet-first into a vat of liquid hydrogen over the course of several minutes.What would be the consequences? How would the victim feel? How far in would he make it before he dies? How would the body end up looking like ( Read more... )

Googled: metals that are liquid at low temperatures; francium; a few related chemistry terms

My problem here is that I don't understand chemistry lingo. The following is a quote from the Wikipedia article on Francium:

Because of the general appearance of the other elements in its periodic table column, it is assumed that francium would appear as ( Read more... )

Hi, I thought this might be useful for people:

"Xenology - An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization" is the almost complete, free online version of a comprehensive resource book for sci-fi writers and other interested people. It's from the 1970s, so the science isn't entirely accurate anymore ( ( Read more... )

When: 1881
Where: London, England
What: A Sherlock Holmes fanfiction.

I'm working on a fanfiction based on the 2009 movie'verse for a bigbang challenge, which incorporates elements from the novel A Study In Scarlet. Now, it's going along pretty well so far, until I realised that if I write from Holmes' point of view, I can't use vague terms like ( Read more... )

I have a character who wants to burn his fingertips off with acid so that he couldn't be recognised by his previously taken fingerprints anymore (he's not the sanest person on Earth). Sulfuric acid would apparently be strong enough to do this, but how would he go about not damaging himself more than necessary (how long to keep the fingertips in the ( Read more... )