On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 13:07:05 -0400, John Popelish wrote:

John Fields wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 08:32:09 -0800, (Floyd L.
Davidson) wrote:


Dr. Polemic wrote:

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:14:42 -0800, (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:


Dr. Polemic wrote:

Danged, several weeks of work shot because it just hadn't
occurred to him that ni-cad would boil at room temperature.

I doubt that it *boils* at room temperature; evaporates slowly, maybe. At least, not at
the temperature of any rooms I've been in.

Oh, it boiled off!

So, tell me, what is the vapor pressure of Cadmium at 20 degrees C?

I don't know. Look it up.

I had a feeling that something like this would be his response.

The CRC handbook indicates that the vapor pressure of cadmium is about 10^-12 torr at
room temperature (20 degrees). This is better than the vacuum at the moon. The best
vacuum pumps available today can't hit that in a bell jar, much less 40 years ago.

No way did he "...get ni-cad to boil at room temperature (by) simply
reduc(ing) the pressure to something *significantly* below its vapor
pressure. We did it knowingly with gold too once..."

Gold has a vapor pressure of 10^-11 torr at about 800 degrees. I don't think gold will
boil even in interstellar space (10^-17 torr) at 20 degrees. It *will* evaporate, though;
so will tungsten! Slowly!


Takes a nice little vaccuum pump to do it though.

Yer fulla ****.


I think he is confusing boiling with sputtering.

But he says it *boiled*; he couldn't be mistaken, could he?