I thought I knew how electrolysis worked [video] | Hacker News Reader

I thought I knew how electrolysis worked [video]

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125 pointstambourine_man20 comments

What a time to be alive, to find such ultra high quality and inspiring materials for free. When I was young I spend so much time with an illegal copy of Encarta (which sparked my career as a scientist) and already considered myself to be fortunate... What a time to be alive.

Today I learned Encarta was not free.

In a sense it was (set?) free. And that led to a lot of good things, imho.

It cost $100 in 1993, after they dropped the initial price. That is about $235 now.

What about like educational licenses? Esp late 90s

Thanks. I'm Irish, no idea what the price (in Punt, it would have been!) should have been at. A family friend hooked us up with software that should have cost money (mostly Office software, but some games and Encarta included) via the usual means.

I have fond memories of the, I think 1995, Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia. I think it was given away with new computers, like Encarta and Grolier's. I think I did buy the Compton's CD, but at a huge discount, since I bought it grey market (not bundled with a PC, but from a PC retailer).

> inspiring materials for free

Minus ad watch time! The cost is directly proportional to how you value your time.

There exist adblockers and extensions like SponsorBlock to block in-video sponsor segments, tangents, intros, outros and other time wasters.

I gave you clear clues, but you still overlooked my comment. These blockers are a hit or miss on any given day; remember, it's a continuous fight between both sides.

I have watched literally zero ads on Youtube since I installed uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock many years ago. If it’s a continuous fight then it’s one that adblockers continuously win.

No, they've been working just fine for years, maybe you should actually have experience with them before making such false equivalences.

Also no need for the snark in your first sentence, if you're going to say something then say it, instead of giving people "clues" and trying to fault them for failing to read your mind for some reason.

I learned more about electrolysis in this short YouTube video than I did in years of science classes at school.

Seriously. I was such an information hog too at that age (still am). I would read the entire encyclopedia, every science book I had over and over and explore the encarta cd a lot.

I didn’t know how electrolysis really worked, and probably still don’t but I know a little more, and these cheap ion filtering membranes are absolutely wild, and turning the graphite fire blanket into a super high surface area electrode is super interesting. I remember when he re-made the “lost” aerogel-like substance a while back and wonder if we can make graphite aerogel-likes using similar processes somehow for super high surface area electrodes. Sometimes I think I’m more interested in practical materials science than software engineering, but at 39 years old I am probably past the point of going to university to actually study. Of course, unless we all get UBI quickly because of Claude 8.5 taking everyone’s jobs.

> at 39 years old I am probably past the point of going to university to actually study.

That largely depends on your financial situation. If you have a strong technical background and you've already secured your retirement you could certainly do a masters or phd. But if you aren't financially secure then yeah, accepting (somewhat worse than) minimum wage for the next 5 years followed by a high degree of uncertainty sounds like a really bad idea.

That said materials science is something of a bastard child of inorganic chemistry, applied physics, and engineering. The theory side of it can be absolutely brutal. Before embarking on an adventure I'd suggest looking over the coursework for physical chemistry to see if you can handle the quantum mechanics stuff.

Current 39 year old finishing their PhD in solid state theory who left a software engineering job to do so, feel free to ask any questions.

What got you interested in the field?

What kind of job are you after?

The problems I was interested in led me to the techniques in the field. I guess the idea was data science, but might need to pivot into LLM or AI engineer.

You know what splits water molecules? Photosynthesis. The oxygen released by plants comes from water molecules.

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