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Topic: So what exactly ARE these resources? (Read 16122 times)
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Falaris
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More uses for Precious metals: Silver has the lowest "pure" resistance of any known metal (although it only beats out copper by somewhere between 10^-8 and 10^-9 ohm-meters, it's still about half of gold, the next best). There are cheap-to-manufacture alloys, only slightly more expensive than buying silver, which have resistance another 10 or 11 powers of ten behind it, but if resources and energy are a problem, then refining, manufacutre, and experimentation wouldn't be a possibility. For the curious, most of the alloys are Copper or Bismuth based, the one I was forced to memorize was Bi-Strontium-Calcium-Cu-Oxide
Gold, along with being the third best pure conductor, is very ductile and malleable, meaning it's much easier to make into thin sheets or exact wires. Emergency replacement parts for the ship as damaged in battle (why do you think it never loses performace as stuff blasts away?) that work almost as well and go up quick are better than asking for a three-hour "time out" while you try to get the gun hooked up again.
Platinum is THE inert metal in electro-chemistry. Meaning, if you're trying to make a battery and both or either of the ions in solution don't turn into a plain, uncharged metal, then you use platinum. Since the ions in solution determine the voltage and they're not all metals, if you need an exact voltage you sometimes don't have a choice (and, since it doesn't let the ions bond to it, the problem of losing voltage as time goes on doesn't occur). And again, if you don't have time to make something perfect and it's fried in mid-fight, can just stab attach a Pt rod in place of whatever was there, and it'll work better.
Wow... It's sad I could recall all of this (except the relative resistivities of Silver and Gold) off the top of my head. At least I don't know many practical applications of Lanthanide/Actinide series metals. Many.
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OldSkoolGamer
Zebranky food
 Offline
Gender: 
Posts: 8
"There's no fighting in a war room!" - Strangelove
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Geez, I used to think I was smart until I read this post. Color me stupid. I didn't know Jeopardy's writers played SC2. One of you guys needs to spend a little time and come up with a cure for cancer. At the very least, invent hover-boards, or something.
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