From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Oct 11 2:52:11 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net (gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.121.85]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E425937B401 for ; Thu, 11 Oct 2001 02:52:08 -0700 (PDT) Received: from blossom.cjclark.org (dialup-209.245.137.99.Dial1.SanJose1.Level3.net [209.245.137.99]) by gull.mail.pas.earthlink.net (EL-8_9_3_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id CAA11400; Thu, 11 Oct 2001 02:52:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from cjc@localhost) by blossom.cjclark.org (8.11.6/8.11.3) id f9B9q0g07155; Thu, 11 Oct 2001 02:52:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cjc) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 02:52:00 -0700 From: "Crist J. Clark" To: Brad Knowles Cc: Ted Mittelstaedt , Salvo Bartolotta , "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" , freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: The Uses of Oxygen (was Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark) Message-ID: <20011011025200.V387@blossom.cjclark.org> Reply-To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu References: <007701c15216$867d47c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: ; from brad.knowles@skynet.be on Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 11:21:53AM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 11:21:53AM +0200, Brad Knowles wrote: [snip] > However, all that said, by far the most dangerous of all > gases that are used in welding and similar activities is compressed > Oxygen. All other flammable gases will have a hard time finding > enough oxygen to burn cleanly or completely, if they are released by > accident (such as in an explosion). However, with enough oxygen > present, just about anything can be burnt very, very easily. > > I would seriously hope that these people weren't actually > using compressed oxygen, but perhaps instead compressed Nitrogen, or > some relatively inert gas. Yeah, I kind of did a double-take on that too. Things like hydrocarbons, methane, propane, are actually really, really boring and rather inert gases. We tend to forget that it is oxygen which is the hella-wicked, corrisive, violently reactive stuff. Just be cause we live in this freakish atmosphere which is kept full of molecular oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis, we tend to think of molecular oxygen as something that's normal. It's practically a friggin' free radical. I loved the Babylon 5 episode where they were afraid to use weapons flying around in Jupiter's upper atmosphere since the methane and other hydrocarbons would explode. Heh. Hydrocarbons are not explosive. A hydrocarbon-oxygen mixture _is._ -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@alum.mit.edu cjclark@jhu.edu cjc@freebsd.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message