Recent comments in /f/askscience

Berkamin t1_j9ccxun wrote

Reply to Why are we not acidic? by stronkreddituser

Amino acids have a carboxylic acids group attached to a structure that also has an amine group. The amine group is basic. People hear the term "amino acid" and only recognize the acid part, but they are both acid and base. That is apparently how they get chained together. The charged amine group gets attracted to the charged carboxylate group and they stick together.

1

TheDentateGyrus t1_j9cc41w wrote

Reply to Why are we not acidic? by stronkreddituser

Tons of reasons. But specific to amino acids:

Proteins are amino acids in chains, not free floating individually. So ONE of the amino and carboxy groups are exposed to solute at either end of a given string of a peptide. The rest are hidden in peptide bonds. Also proteins are in 3D, we have buffers, and a ton of other things.

1

platonic-humanity OP t1_j9cbtch wrote

Reply to comment by VT_Squire in Do we know if any other species has a minority with ‘abnormal’ social cues/behavior, such as what we would regard as neurodiversity in humans? by platonic-humanity

Hmm, the comparison to dogs does seem apt if we extrapolate the metaphorical, and not actually human relations are like dogs. I know that’s sidetracking the intent of this comment, but part of the reason I ask is to better understand the sociology of neurotypical-neurodivergent relations. So, I think the parallel to a species with differences we more commonly understand helps show the matter of neurodivergency being no better/worse, just sometimes not fit for the surrounding.

Makes me wonder if we’ve looked into other animal’s psychological differences, including their minorities, enough to understand much about how we view our own with mental ‘illnesses’. We aren’t fully sure how autism is caused nor how they survived in prehistoric times to still be genetically predisposed in many people.

0

baggier t1_j9c9ai7 wrote

Reply to How did we first figure out which substances are elements and which are compounds? by sapphics4satan

Back in the day the key was weights. If two things combine to give a new substance that is heavier (say iron + oxygen to iron oxide) then it is obviously a compound. If a substance cleanly decomposes to two new substances, then the new substances are simpler and might be elements (say hydrogen peroxide to oxygen and water). After building up lots of these reaction it became clear that some things (e.g carbon) couldnt be decomposed into anything simpler and must be an element.

9

VT_Squire t1_j9c7wmf wrote

Reply to How did we first figure out which substances are elements and which are compounds? by sapphics4satan

a long time ago....

"element" was just a word, nothing like how we use it today. Earth, wind, water, fire... then in the 1600s some clever guy thought about what we know today as chemical elements. That was the advent of "the atom." This meant the irreducible composition of a substance. By that point, you had early chemistry/alchemy actively TRYING to decompose substances into their basic elements and experimenting with different combinations. Like your question of gold... well, could it be reduced further? No? Okay, then it's an element.

It wasn't until the early 1900s that the modern definition of the element rooted in numbers of electrons and protons and such took hold. A few centuries worth of experimentation turned out to have some useful merit. Within a few decades of this, we built the bomb and haven't had a world war ever since.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

2