Philosophy

[Peter Apps]

Hi GCguy

As I now recall, we are in good company. Dr Jekell made a potion to turn himself into Mr Hyde and back again to his original self, but he could not replicate the original because the active ingredient was an impurity in one of the origincal components, and the new batch of component lacked the impurity.

Peter

[rhaefe]

The infamous "catalytic impurity"...

[gcguy]

Yes the catalytic impurity, usually found lurking in the bottom of round bottom flasks or on stirrers, sometimes on the end of spatulas.
I was wondering if we collected all the crud from inside every chemistry lab in the world, and mixed it all up, would we have a "universal" catalyst?

Would we need an infinite number of chemists performing and infinite number of experiments.....


GCguy

[GOM]

I suppose that you could argue that, if other people can't reproduce your experiment as well, then it has passed the ruggedness test.

Or perhaps there are other forces at work. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

I knew of a consumer product that periodically failed because it separated out. Somebody jokingly said that the failures were linked to the phases of the moon! It turned out to be true! The factory used well water in the manufacture and, being near to the coast, at very high tides the salinity of the water would increase.


Anyway I am even boring myself now

Ralph