Re: 1991 ranger brake problem - CO2 & O3

On 15/11/2024 13:20, Jim Wilkins wrote:

Chemistry is too complex for simple explanations. My 4 year degree in it qualified me only to understand further education which the Vietnam draft prevented, though the knowledge of matter, energy and quantum mechanics gave me a boost into other fields like semiconductor physics.

I dunno. I only did a three year (Hons) degree ;) Can do some quantum stuff, and pde's, sometimes, but failed conic sections till years later. Perhaps because they have little to do with chemistry. i digress.
If you keep it to atoms made of nuclei and electrons, without going into the quantum physics but with a little electron cloud handwavium, it can be fairly understandable. But often l o o o o n n g, especially if you include reaction mechanisms.
One of my favourites is when in  a house to describe the rooms as electron clouds of atoms, each with one nucleus - just barely visible to scale - in each room.
But even if you do get it all in there, and get it understandable (and correct, of course), does it help the average citizen or even tekki-sheddi? Possibly not. So it squirms back into the murk of knowledge which is never going to be used.
Or gets relegated to Google storage - keep the outline, search for details if/when needed. Especially in chemistry where there are over a billion entries in the Beilstein/Gmelin/Reaxys database...
In places like this I try to curate for a curious intelligent person, with a smattering of science, to feel that I answered a question or they learned something, hopefully light enough to float in the murk... or an outline worth remembering.
Peter Fairbrother