Distillation is a general term for several different processes, all of them involving elevated temperature relative to the materials to be separated boiling points.  It is generally a separation process, but in some cases actually involved chemical reactions to create new materials during the process.

Distillation as we generally think of it is a method used to separate two or more liquids, but it is much more general than that.  It also is a term that is used, by extension, to take a large amount of information and extract the most pertinent parts of it into a concentrated form.  Indeed, distillation is often used to concentrate a minor component of a mixture to pure (or at least more concentrated) material.

The Geek usually does not write about history, but he will make an exception.  First, Easter this year coincides with my father’s birthday.  He was born on this date in 1919.  If he were still alive, he would have just turned 91 years old.  My granddad on his side lived to that age.

Second, Easter is by proclamation the highest of the Holy Days in the Christian tradition.  Christmas is also joyful, but everyone is borne and only One has, as tradition and religion insists, been resurrected.

Third, the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences insisted on a well rounded education before anyone could be graduated.  Whilst I am a scientist, I appreciate literature, art, architecture, and especially history.

On a historical note, today is the date on which Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968.  On a more personal historical note, my father would have been 91 today, but he died in 2005.

There was no Pique the Geek last week because I was preparing for Youngest Son to visit.  We had a great time last week, cooking, eating, throwing darts, and rebonding.  For those of you interested in what we ate, I hosted What’s for Dinner last evening, here.

It is not either possible nor feasible to attempt the fusion that Sol does here on earth because of the impossibility of gathering enough mass to make a very slow reaction work (remember, fusing two protons to a deuteron requires the involvement of the weak nuclear force, and that is a very slow process), nor the temperatures required to make that happen.

Please see the two previous installments of this series here and here, to make things more clear.

Youngest Son came to visit this week (the reason why there was no Pique the Geek last Sunday, getting ready for his visit).  He is 20 and is in culinary school.  I am actually sort of pleased, as cooking good food is as important as being a scientist, and actually involves a lot of science to do it well.

We had a great time!  After the 10+ hour drive, he was pretty tired, but hungry.  I made Frog Sandwiches for both of us late Monday night (recipe available on request), talked, joked, went meet my dear neighbors across the street, and threw some darts.  Neither of us were very good at darts Monday.

If you missed the initial piece, you can find it here.  This is a fictional body that incorporated vampires into science as it is understood, and gives them some humanity as well.

Athene is a very ancient vampire, and actually punched Aristotle in the nose once.  Tricia was just brought across, because Athene feel in love with her and would not allow her to die.  Athene is around 26 years old, except for the millenia, and Tricia is a real 23 years old.

The first installment of this series may be found here, and it gives the basics as to how nuclear energy works.  The way that the stars generate their energy is interesting, and we shall consider it in greater detail this time.

Young stars almost always fuse hydrogen into helium.  There are several reasons for this, amongst them 1) hydrogen (protium, see the previous installment) is the most common nucleide in the cosmos, 2) more energy is released by fusing protium into helium nuclei than any other known process, and 3) there are multiple processes to accomplish it.

We are very misunderstood.  We can not fly.  That would violate the principles of physics.  We can not vanish, for the same reasons, and our reflections actually do appear in mirrors.

We are quite a bit stronger than most humans, but it is with at a cost.  Oh, the stake in the heart is no more fatal to us than it is to humans, but that is pretty much uniformly fatal.  Our similarities are much greater than our differences, but there are a couple or three big differences.