Daily Challenge Day to Day 233

Location
Switzerland
Name
Matt
Start Date
Jan 19, 2021
End Date
Jan 19, 2021

(N.B. While this is a link to a commercial offer, it's not meant to be an endorsement of any kind - I just found it rather funny to have come across this, and it sort of fits ...)

On the subject of Paddle & Roll ..


Try it ... :D

(No, don't - though he's really explaining it well!)

M.
 
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You can never have too much copper oxide.
Funny Story: Once we were trying to show a group of non-STEM majors the wonders of smelting and why epochs of human history are named after this process. We put copper oxide and seed corn in a sealed clay pot and baked it in our high temp oven for a week. When they broke it open, many found a little shiny pellet of copper. While they were ooh-ing and ahh-ing, I pointed out that they Neolithic predecessors probably had the same reaction to seeing something shiny in the ashes.
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You can never have too much copper oxide.
Funny Story: Once we were trying to show a group of non-STEM majors the wonders of smelting and why epochs of human history are named after this process. We put copper oxide and seed corn in a sealed clay pot and baked it in our high temp oven for a week. When they broke it open, many found a little shiny pellet of copper. While they were ooh-ing and ahh-ing, I pointed out that they Neolithic predecessors probably had the same reaction to seeing something shiny in the ashes.
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I've always wondered about what led our ancestors to discover things. Why did they decide to bake corn and copper oxide together? Why did they decide to melt tin and copper together? For that matter, how did they figure out that some poor unfortunate died from ingesting a plant like White Snakeroot, Monks Hood, or Hemlock? Curious.
 
I've always wondered about what led our ancestors to discover things. Why did they decide to bake corn and copper oxide together? Why did they decide to melt tin and copper together? For that matter, how did they figure out that some poor unfortunate died from ingesting a plant like White Snakeroot, Monks Hood, or Hemlock? Curious.
My guess is that that fire pits were built from rocks that contained metal oxides. Carbon-based materials, like charcoal or burned remains of cooked food, could act as a reducing agent to turn the oxides into free metals. This would results in hard or even shiny pieces of metal, which curious humans might have played with and discovered the malleability of the metal. They would have kept these for same reasons that we have jewelry and knick-knacks. Over thousands of years, we worked out the details of smelting and made pots and knives. Once this became military technology, i.e., swords and spear heads, the whole process would have accelerated.
 
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My shot today comes from a short bicycle ride on a cloudy day, riding through the small Oregon town where I live... when I reached the railroad crossing, something made me stop.

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Taken with the GX8's in-camera jpeg 'Dynamic Monochrome' picture effect.
 
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