For all intents and purposes, field garbology in New York City has been made a criminal offense under the Guilliani administration. Several years ago, the courts here ruled that refuse left out for collection by the NYC Dept. of Sanitation is *not* ownerless, but the property of that Department. Persons not authorized by the DS to collect its garbage are subject to arrest for theft. [trulykon]
I've akshully done some work with the premier researcher in the field of garbology (Bill Rathje by name, professor at U of Arizona). He has taken core samples of solid waste landfills, using an enormous coring tool to take samples about 5 feet across down to depths of 90-100 feet. He has pulled up completely intact heads of lettuce that were in the same layer as newspapers from the 50's and 60's - so the landfill had preserved something as fragile and prone to decay (at least in my fridge) as a head of lettuce for decades!
There's a place just below (Weekly Themes) to discuss the current words. I harp on this only because said place is underused, and I'm trying to be, you know, ecumenical an' all, in the interest of oniomaniacs and garbargomaniacs alike....*
--- *It makes reading easier für moi, anyway, if threads are more equally distributed [thinking-of-yet-another-way-to-revive- AWAD-in-Schools e]
Archaeologists seem to revel in finding rubbish dumps. Here in Zild they get down to counting the number of seashells they find in Maori middens.
There was a book written, the name of which I cannot remember (surprise, surprise) in which archaeologists from the 25th century dig up rubbish dumps from the 20th century and speculate on what the various items they found were used for. Toilet seats as objets-d'art. Initially intriguing, but ultimately boring. Cor!
In Baltimore, garbage men (dustmen to Brits) are called "mawmbacks". This is because one of them is always behind the truck calling to the driver, "'Mawm back!, 'mawm back!"
In Columbus, Ohio there is an old garbage dump that they sealed up with soil and vegetation. Some type of pump was placed above it and they're using the carbon monoxide emissions as a power source. Seems to me that more cities should do this.
In the same vein, Cincinnati has a humongous land fill that has been named Mt. Rumpke (Rumpke is the trash/recycling company). I've not seen the dump personally, but apparently it's quite big - big enough that they could seal it up and use it as a ski slope (with fake snow) and get energy at the same time!
It's more likely methane, and this is a very good thing to be doing. Not only does it turn a waste into a resource, but it prevents emissions of methane to the atmosphere, which is important in terms of mitigating global warming. Although there's a lot less methane in the atmosphere than CO2 (the most commonly cited greenhouse gas) methane's impact on a per-unit basis is much, much greater. That is, a mole of methane has about 4 times the impact (IIRC) on atmospheric heat retention than a mole of CO2. So keeping it from getting out is a good thing, and more and more landfills are taking this approach. Now we just need to figure out what to do about cow farts, which are actually a surprisingly significant source of atmospheric methane.
a mole of methane a mole -- i can't do super scripts-- but its a measurement-- 10 to power of 10? a way of measuring the mass (it is mass and not volume, right?) of atoms in? (in ? a given volume?)
Ok, so i forget most of the little chemistry i learned-- but why a mole?
meanwhile, i passed one of NY's Mt gargbage's (the are two "closed" ones-- in the Bronx, and in Brooklyn) and the last remaining one is "Fresh Kills" -- and the smell of it is enough to kill you.. needless to say, that was the one i had to drive past!
oh yay, finally a chance to use what little i remember from my years as a chem major:
You're right about a mole being a measure of atoms; it's actually the amount in grams of a particular substance required in order for the sample to have as many atoms (or basic elements, including ions) as .012kg of the standard C-12 atom (a mole of C-12 weighs 12 grams), which Avogadro discovered is about 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd power. therefore 1 mol = number of atoms in 12g of C-12 atoms = 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd atoms. this grammatical mass constitutes the substance's molecular weight (there's your entymology, helen), which is quite similar to the atomic weights which Mendeleyev used (though in a couple of cases not exactly) to formulate his Periodic Classification of the elements.
It's been a long time since I had chemistry, but I seem to remember that a "mole" is a gram molecular weight of either an element of a compound. To make a mole of sodium chloride, you would take the number of grams equal to atomic weight of sodium, and react it with number of grams equal to atomic weight of chlorine, so that there would be just the right amounts of each.
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