Re: Xenon compounds are much more variable than (say) Argon ones,was Re: frozen xenonauts

From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Jul 06 2001 - 23:12:56 MDT


Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Eugene Leitl wrote:
>
> > Uh. XeF6 is reactive as hell (it hydrolyzes to XeO3 in presence of water).
>
> XeF6 hydrolyzes to XeO3? Transmutation of elements?
> Dontcha hate it when you goof while pointing out someone
> elses goof? {8^D spike

I didn't see a contradiction; I just assumed that XeF6 plus water equalled
XeO3 plus some hydrofluoric acid or whatever. A quick look at Google
confirms:

XeF6 + 3 H20 = XeO3 + 6HF

Don't you hate it when you goof while pointing out that someone goofed
pointing out someone else's goof? Speaking of which, this is someone's
cue to demonstrate that I goofed pointing out Spike's goof pointing out
Eugene's goof pointing out... who was it originally?

Anyway, I'd like to take a moment to just marvel at the fact that I can
instantly know this sort of thing through the glorious medium of Google.
What did people do before Google was invented? Did they just walk around
all day with unanswered questions floating in their heads? I can't
imagine what that must have been like.

-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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