References

Blog 1:
"Watercooling Fluid Shootout." Bit-tech. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015.  

C     Chemistry Class knowledge

       Blog 2:

       "Arctic Silver 5 High Density Compound." Arctic Silver, n.d. Web. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.arcticsilver.com%2Freviews%2Fas5%2Fpcsynapse%2Fpcsynapse_reviews.php.htm%3Fverify%3D14>.

       "Arctic Silver: AS5." Arcticsilver.com. Arctic Silver, n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.arcticsilver.com%2Fas5.htm>.

      Blog 3:
      Stroyan, K.d. "Chemical Reactions." Calculus Using Mathematica (1993): 183-91. Web. 11 June 2015.

      "10 Common Reactions We See Every Day." Chemistry.about.com. Chemistry.about, n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fchemistry.about.com%2Fod%2Fchemicalreactions%2Fss%2F10-Examples-of-Chemical-Reactions-in-Everyday-Life.htm>.

      Blog 4:
      

"A    Algae Basics - All About Algae." Algae Basics - All About Algae. Allaboutalgae, n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http://allaboutalgae.com/what-are-algae/>.

      "Antimicrobial (Algae) Protection." EKWB,com. EKWB, n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ekwb.com%2Fsupport%2Findex.php%3Fact%3Darticle%26code%3Dview%26id%3D24>.
      
      Blog 5:
      "Phase Change Cooling (vapour) Defenition."Http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fsearchnetworking.techtarget.com%2Fdefinition%2Fphase-change-cooling>.

       "Phase Change Cooling." Http://www.dimastech.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dimastech.com%2Fen%2Fcascade-phase-change-cooling-systems>.

       Blog 6:
       Helmenstine, Anne Marie. "What Can You Do with a Degree in Chemistry?"Http://chemistry.about.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fchemistry.about.com%2Fod%2Feducationemployment%2Ftp%2FWhat-Can-You-Do-with-a-Degree-in-Chemistry.htm>.

       Helmensteain, Anne Marie. "What Are Some Careers in Chemistry?"Http://chemistry.about.com/. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015. <http%3A%2F%2Fchemistry.about.com%2Fcs%2F5%2Ff%2Fblcareers.htm>.

Career with chemistry?

So you learn all this stuff in your chemistry class, but you sit there thinking what the heck am I ever
going to do with this stuff I learn, when am I ever going to have to identify what substance is present in this or how much of element X I have in Solution Y or whatever it is you do in your chem class! Well, you would be surprised...did you know chemistry is used by many brilliant people every single day? From forensic scientists to chemical engineers to healthcare scientists, and to toxicologists. There are millions and millions of people who work every single day in this field and use their chemical knowledge to help the world, you can read more in depth about it from this these two articles if you want to know every, juicy detail, http://chemistry.about.com/cs/5/f/blcareers.htm, http://chemistry.about.com/od/educationemployment/tp/What-Can-You-Do-with-a-Degree-in-Chemistry.htm, these are two really interesting articles about few of the many careers there are that involve an individual using their knowledge of chemistry for a living! Lets take a look at what a chemical engineer is. A chemical engineer is actually a generalized category for variants of fields of engineers who use their knowledge to benefit the world and overcome technological challenges and obstacles through the use of their scientific and chemical knowledge, to list every single field in which chemical engineers work would take a list longer than the earth's diameter, but to list a few, we are going to take a look at the fields of food processing and safety industries. Chemical engineers, when it comes to food processing, are in charge of using their knowledge to assist with the regulation and testing of food products, for example they are the ones who determine how to store a product, based off of what is is composed of, they also determine the expiration date on your food and make sure you don't end up pouring yourself a bowl of cereal one day and have it end up tasting like sour garbage. Moving on to safety industries, Chemical engineers are ESSENTIAL. Chemical engineers in the field of safety industries are the one who determine which product has which hazards associated with it, they process and examine the product and make sure it goes out with all the necessary points of information are filled out accurately and correctly, they use their knowledge of various properties of substances such as pH levels and reactivity with other substances to achieve this, without them, some poor schlub would confuse a vial of CuSO4 with Gatorade and end up going to the hospital. In the end, chemical knowledge and the people who use it are essential and the world cannot function without them. You would be surprised just how much of that chemical mumbo jumbo your teacher tells you about in class is being used around you every single day, you would be surprised just how much of it comes in handy to people all over the world! Do you have a cool career in mind that would involve chemistry? if so, tell me us all below and tell us how it utilizes your knowledge of chemistry!

More liquid cooling? Nope, PHASE CHANGE COOLING!

Today I have come across an article that i have found particularly interesting simply due to the fact that i have never seen much of this before, reading this article :http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/phase-change-cooling, I am astonished to see what heights and risks people are taking their expensive hardware towards. I know what you are probably thinking,
Is this going to be another blog post about more computers and chemistry mumbo jumbo that we have heard over and over and over again? NO, well yes, YES AND NO! Its more computers, its more chemistry, but its not the same! I am going to explain how you can keep your hardware below 0 degrees C and all with the use of just gas, (and various other complex components)!Today we are taking a look at phase change cooling, and first thing you might be thinking is, what the heck is that! Well, phase change cooling, which is also called vapor cooling in some cases is a microprocessor cooling technology, which works more or less the same way as your refrigerator at home. The base components for the cooling are a condenser, the vaporizer, the radiating element and the pump! Lets go over what each of them does, the condenser condenses a refrigerant gas into a volatile liquid, where the pump moves the liquid to the vaporizer, where the pressure is dropped and the liquid returns to its original gaseous state. Now that we know what each part does, how does it cool your CPU? When the liquid returns to is gaseous state, it rises to the CPU cooling block, where the thermal energy is absorbed from the processor and brought back down to the radiating element which in essence recycles the heated gas.This method of cooling is far more safer than liquid cooling, due to the fact that the liquid inside the loop is a gas and need high pressure in order to form into a potentially dangerous liquid, if a leak presents itself with a phase change cooler, the gas will simply be removed via the fans of your PC case, because of it very low evaporation point. While traditional liquid cooling usually uses more common liquids such as distilled water or other non-conductive fluids, and if those spill, your out of luck! I hope this helped you see just how effective gas can be when it comes to cooling PC hardware! My question for you dear readers is, why do you believe this method works more effectively than liquid cooling? I s it because its a gas taking away the heat?  Let me know!

How not to colour your custom water cooling fluid!

    

       So most people especially those who build custom water cooling loops in their PC's, tend to use custom fluids along with those loops, and usually seasoned builders tend to deter away from that and use pure distilled water. The reason they use this is because distilled water is 99.9% pure water without any contaminants or conductive ions, the problem with "water cooling newbies" is when they want to have fancy colours tend to do one thing that completely throws them under the bus, they add food dyes or other synthetic/semi-organic substances. They reason this is a terrible idea is one word, Algae. If you are curious as to what that is, ou may read this informative article on it and where it tends to present itself most often, http://allaboutalgae.com/what-are-algae/. In this case Algae is an organism that forms inside an individuals water cooling loop that causes blockage, loss of efficiency by clogging up your pipes, and overall degradation of your components, this usually happens when you use a liquid that has various contaminants from it, also it depends on the pH level on your liquid, temperature of your PC which affects the temperature of the liquid, which helps the algae form, as well as picks up metal ions from your fitting and various other components such as block which causes a precipitate, which is a substance deposited from your solution, (your liquid) in solid form, which causes it to stick to your tubing and your fittings and cause various blockage, generally reducing the efficiency of your loop. How can you avoid algae build up? Simple, use pure fluids, a great example, distilled water, well distilled water has no contaminants in it and is non-conductive, if you also add a small amount of biocide or any other anti microbial solution, it will keep any algae from forming. Another method is to used silver coated fittings, silver is an anti-microbial metal and keeps the algae precipitate from forming inside your tubing. So to sum up, if you want to reduce the need for maintenance and algae buildup, use pure liquids with antimicrobial substances, it will keep the organism from forming and keep your loops unblocked and free flowing! Do you have any ideas for a cheap and algae-free way to colour your fluids? without causing corrosion and micro bacterial growth? Let me know!

Reactions are happening all around us?

Have you ever sat in your chemistry class, being bored out of your mind? I know I have! (Jokes, I love chemistry!). You sit there and you wonder, when am I ever going to need to use my knowledge of decomposition, or synthesis, or combustion, and when do these weird reactions even happen in our everyday life? I know right?! Its so complicated that the chances of them occurring in real life are probably the same as seeing a cat do the Charleston on top of your house, right? WRONG! Reactions are everywhere, they a here, they are happening! Don't believe me? Read this super fun/interesting article about reactions and how they are everywhere in our lives! http://www.csun.edu/~jk323784/subjects/chemistry/notes/chem_rxns.pdf.  Reactions are always happening all over the place, from photosynthesis to the spaghetti your mom is making for dinner tonight...In fact, do you know that you a chemical reaction is happening right now? As you are reading this, if you are a living being i assume you need to breathe right? Well, there is your reaction! When you breathe in about 21% Oxygen, 0.03%  Carbon, 78% Nitrogen, and depending on the setting, certain amounts of water!(H2O). So what comes out and how is it a reaction, well you breathe out about 16% Oxygen, 4% Carbon,  78% Nitrogen, and lots of water, Its both a synthesis and a decomposition reaction, it decomposes the glucose that is achieved through photosynthesis, which forms the glucose we breathe in, and synthesizes to form Adenosine triphosphate , which is a whole other story we might cover another time...The formula for those who care, for our respiration or "breathing" is  C6H12O6 + O2 → CO2 + H2O + Energy. So you see? Chemical reactions are a big part of what makes you walk around and live, there are more reactions going on every second than we can even count! So get out there, see what you can discover! And hopefully you won't fall asleep in chemistry class again! Do you have any interesting reaction that might not be in the article or this post? Write it in the comments and let us know!










Source: http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/chemreactionsbreatheanswer.html
             https://www.google.ca/search?q=what+is+ATP&oq=what+is+ATP&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.3078j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8
           

Metal based thermal paste? What makes it so good?

           There are so many great thermal pastes on the market from MX4 to IC Diamond, but what makes one so different from the other? Today I have the answers for you! I found a really interesting article that discusses one of the most famour thermal pastes to date, and this also being one that i use in my personal system, i just had to mention it! You can read more in depth about thisnd and metal thermal paste right here: http://www.arcticsilver.com/reviews/as5/pcsynapse/pcsynapse_reviews.php.htm?verify=14.  Lets start off with the basics, if you are new to computers in general you might be wondering what is this thermal paste? Thermal paste is the interface between point A, a point of heat being generated, to point B, the heat sink, which acts as a dissipator for the heat. It is just the bridge for those 2 points, and it keeps your components from dying from overheating. Now a thermal paste can vary on its composition and structure, which affects how efficiently it transfers heat from said point A to point B. One that particularly caught my eye was a relatively old, yet still effective paste, AS5 (arctic silver 5) Which is a silver based thermal compound. It is made with 99.9% silver, along with aluminum oxide, zinc oxide, and boron nitride on a poly synthetic oil base. Metals themselves are great conductors, The silver, aluminum, and zinc are great conductors of heat but that is not the main takeaway, another reason why the heat conductivity is so great, is because of the shapes of the silver particle composition, so that it allows for maximum particle to particle contact after about 200 hours of "breaking in" period. The paste itself is a composition of various structures, both ionic and covalent and even organic, which affects the heat conductivity, this being a a metal based silver compound means that it has an ionic structures in it. The particles are packed so closely that they can more effectively transfer the heat energy more quickly and easily between one another from one end to another, these structures are what make such a thermal paste such as this such a good heat conductor for computer components, the electrons can more easily move between the cage structure and it is what makes the metals themselves such great conductors, of course this also introduces the fear of electrical shorts, because where its a great heat conductor it would also be a great electric conductor right? Yes and no, as stated earlier it is not all metal, it is all based on a poly synthetic oil base, and oil is so scarce when it comes to charged ions, which makes it in a word...a DULL conductor, but it is still stated that it does have the potential to conduct if it is allowed to make close enough contact with the micro circuits and transistors. So are metal based pastes worth it? Here is the bottom line, if you have enough experience and you know what you are doing, go to town, if you don't, stick with non-metal based carbon compounds. One question that i am very interested in knowing the answer to is, what do you think would make up an effective thermal compound?

Using Non-conductive fluids in water cooling may not be as safe as you think?

        Ever since the concept of water cooling has been introduced to the PC community all those years ago, the fear of their failure unfortunately hitched a ride right along with it. I came across an interesting article that depicts various fluids that can potentially be used to "Faliure-proof" your PC, you can read that right here     http://www.bittech.net/modding/2008/02/16/watercooling_fluid_shootout/2. People fear that with these types of coolers, the scary idea of leakage would be introduced right along with them, but we as the human race believe that for every dilemma and every obstacle, there is a solution to remedy it, and so to counteract this particular dilemma, the folks who made these coolers would come to use non-conductive fluids, to effectively eliminate the risk of the coolers leaking and shorting out all of the precious electrical components. Now in a sense what the liquids are, are simply put, pure compounds, that show very low ionization, such as water for example, because of the fact that it has very low ionization, it means it doesn't carry electrical current through very well such as for example, a metal like iron, or copper would. Now the most common non conductive liquid used is distilled water, because its pure, cheap, and initially not conductive, notice i say "initially", this brings me to the point of this post, you've so far heard me talk about why and what substances are used to prevent damage, but never heard me say yet why its dangerous, well here it is. The reason these supposed non-conductive fluids are dangerous is because as they move through your water cooling loop, they eat away at all of the metallic parts inside your loop, essentially picking up the one key component to electrical conductivity, you guessed it! Ions... These little particles of metal essentially turn your safe, non-conductive liquids, into deadly, component killing, conductive, computer poisons! All of those little ions makes the liquids become more and more ionized, therefore increasing it ability to allow the flow of current through itself, effectively making it more dangerous to your PC. Now you are probably thinking, "Well with all of these scary statements, there must be a solution to this problem right? RIGHT?"...No...unfortunately there is no way in this day and age to prevent this inevitability,
with coolers such as AIO closed loop water coolers, there is virtually no way to prevent the ionization of the liquid, unless you build a fully custom loop, which introduces maintenance, but will essentially allow you to drain your fluids and replace them from time to time, but that is so time consuming and tedious that it is just not worth the effort. To sum it all up, if you are looking for something that will make your water cooling 100% safe, I've got disappointing news for you, and recommend you stick with traditional air cooling, because ionization is just one of those little annoyances that you just can't get rid of, especially when it comes to liquid cooling. So do you think that non conductive fluids are worth it for the safety, even if it means having to switch it out every month or so?