Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Divergent Links

Which is "greener"? Aluminum foil or plastic wrap?

Just another reason why I insist that we are not consultants here at Aspen Research.

How can an inert gas be an anesthetic? Doesn't it have to take part in some (bio)chemical reaction?

3 comments:

Materialist said...

Since Xe is big for an atom but still small, it may be just the right size to fit into some sort of pain receptor - adsorbing via nonspecific VdW interactions but effectively having a specific (i.e. biological) interaction.

Anonymous said...

The brain reacts weirdly to small greasy objects. Nitrous, obviously, and halothane, CF3-CHCl2, is/was a standard anesthetic. Heck, at high pressure N2 becomes narcotic. Deep or long residence divers have to replace it with He. In this group Xe isn't too out of place. I wonder if there have been any animal studies on Rn?

Anonymous said...

I just checked and halothane is actually CF3-CHClBr. Wikipedia also notes cyclopropane as an anesthetic.