kanzure - 19-5-2007 at 06:08
Yesterday, I found Auerbach's Wilderness Medicine text, which is aimed towards producing effective medical professionals when in the outdoors-- past the confines of
the hospital or university lab. So, whether the doc is in the forest, or in the middle of the corporate jungle, ideally some action could be taken to
improve the well-being of the sickly, diseased, or injured.
Are there any books on wilderness chemistry? Not only would it be important to be able to check what elements make up potential food, but to show
friends neat little tricks by quickly picking up dirt and a nearby miscellaneous object to ignite it, or show other cool phenomena, as well as the
importance of understanding how to use the materials from the ground, such as ores, when we are not necessarily near our favorite sources of chemical
information.
What would you include in a book on wilderness chemistry? What tools would be important to construct? Could anybody synthesize some pest repellant?
Lots of ideas here ... guess it would be a step closer to answering what an 'ultimate chemist' should know.
- Bryan
12AX7 - 24-5-2007 at 15:44
Mostly, it would be interesting ores, the kinds of things that have specific localities.
Sulfur and potassium nitrate are not often found together, for instance, let alone found at all at most locations.
Tim
kanzure - 24-5-2007 at 17:23
Hunting down some information on minerals and mining would then be important. To start with, some immediate identification of minerals and ores is useful.
Dictionary of mining, minerals, ores, and related terms
Page on mineral properties
Methods of mining (brief bibliography)
Elsevier list of most requested articles on mineral engineering on April 2004 to March 2005
Hopefully there are some DIY sites out there. Until we get back to this thread, there are also some posts with more content over at 4hv.org and thescienceforum.com as well as (perhaps more usefully) scienceforums.net. (And now also thenakedscientists.com for broader audience.)
[Edited on 24-5-2007 by kanzure]
[Edited on 24-5-2007 by kanzure]
More:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/28/034201 `"This month's issue of Symmetry, a magazine jointly published by SLAC and Fermilab, is
featuring an article that points out the sometimes extemporaneous and unconventional solutions physicists have come up with in (and out of) the
laboratory. From the article: 'Leon Lederman ... used a pocket knife, tape, and items on anyone's grocery list to confirm that interactions involving
the weak force do now show perfect mirror symmetry, or parity, as scientists had long assumed.'"`
http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2007/03/bootstrapping...
http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/djgbk/index.html Dave Gingery
And any information on ores, extraction/purification techniques would be great.
- Bryan
[Edited on 28-5-2007 by kanzure]