Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2001 02:52:00 -0700 From: "Crist J. Clark" <cristjc@earthlink.net> To: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: The Uses of Oxygen (was Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark) Message-ID: <20011011025200.V387@blossom.cjclark.org> In-Reply-To: <a05101003b7eb12fedac9@[194.78.144.28]>; from brad.knowles@skynet.be on Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 11:21:53AM %2B0200 References: <007701c15216$867d47c0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <a05101003b7eb12fedac9@[194.78.144.28]>
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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
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