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[Graknorke]

The sulfur truck was probably transporting it probably to create sulfuric acid, which has a number of industrial uses.

Sulfur apparently mostly comes from the refinement of natural gas or petrolium, and 85% of the world's supply gets converted to sulfuric acid (I did not know these things before I looked them up).

I don't actually think it's actually very dangerous in it's pure form. Though it smells awful.

But why ship it molten? That involves some fairly significant heating costs, if nothing else.

EDIT: And chemically dangerous or no, molten sulfur would give some pretty serious burns on account of being a bit warmer than boiling water and there being an entire tanker full of the stuff.

Actually, given liquid water's ludicrous heat capacity, water just below boiling (so 100 degrees) would burn way more than sulphur would. I won't calculate it though.

PPE:
Okay nevermind Wolfram Alpha makes it so easy.
Since we're going burns, I'm assuming human body temperature is where we're going, and that there's an entire tanker of liquid transferring heat into a person because it's easier. An example sulphur trailer I found contains about 14.385m^3, so that's how much liquid there is.

Liquid sulphur has a density of 1819 kg/m^3, so that means there is 26166.315 kg overall.
Water is easier to calculate, being 1000 kg/m^3, so 14385 kg of water.

Water boils at 100 degrees and sulphur is kept at 140. In both cases their temperature will drop to 37. So for water that's a drop of 100-37=63 degrees, and for sulphur it's 140-37=103 degrees.
Specific heat capacity of water is 4184 J/kg°C, while liquid sulphur is 705 J/kg°C.

That makes the energy transferred from the sulphur 26166.315*705*103=1.9*10^9 Joules transferred.
For water it's 14385*4184*63=3.79*10^9 Joules transferred.
So the water transfers just under twice the energy as the same mass of molten sulphur (at boiling and transport temperatures respectively)

So yeah, boiling water would still be worse than the molten sulphur.
And yes I realise that I didn't need a specific volume and that my rounding is inconsistent, but the point gets across.

[Bauglir]

Fair enough. I'll still wager that my earlier claim was technically correct, though, with only a twofold difference and boiling water having more than enough energy to get the job done. >_________>

[ChairmanPoo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxbP7UzaDzM#t=94

[Furtuka]

That would probably be the dry van with heavy-duty locks on the doors and "RADIOACTIVE" hazard placards plastered all over it. Better believe I gave that one a decent amount of space.

Niiiiiiice.

Although it's possible it didn't have anything radioactive in it right at that moment. I have seen people in overalls putting chemicals from a high school lab storage room into barrels marked "Hazardous Material", with biohazard signs  and all.

Nope. Legally, a truck containing hazardous materials needs to display warning placards showing what it is. Likewise, a truck that contains no hazardous materials CAN NOT display placards. You can get hit with very hefty fines for having it the wrong way.

...speaking of, will you tell us now what the secret thing you were transporting a while ago was, but didn't tell us after it was done because you liked how theorizing we were and please please please I want to know so bad T_T

[Sirus]

That would probably be the dry van with heavy-duty locks on the doors and "RADIOACTIVE" hazard placards plastered all over it. Better believe I gave that one a decent amount of space.

Niiiiiiice.

Although it's possible it didn't have anything radioactive in it right at that moment. I have seen people in overalls putting chemicals from a high school lab storage room into barrels marked "Hazardous Material", with biohazard signs  and all.

Nope. Legally, a truck containing hazardous materials needs to display warning placards showing what it is. Likewise, a truck that contains no hazardous materials CAN NOT display placards. You can get hit with very hefty fines for having it the wrong way.

...speaking of, will you tell us now what the secret thing you were transporting a while ago was, but didn't tell us after it was done because you liked how theorizing we were and please please please I want to know so bad T_T

You sure you want to know? I guarantee it'll be a bit disappointing :v

[Hanslanda]

I bet it was something mildly dangerous (Toxic or some such) but relatively boring. Like a large amount of a caustic substance, like muriatic acid or something.

[SealyStar]

Hydrophosphoric acid?

[Gunner-Chan]

Lolicon manga?

[Sirus]

I bet it was something mildly dangerous (Toxic or some such) but relatively boring. Like a large amount of a caustic substance, like muriatic acid or something.

You're severely overstating how interesting it was.

It was....*drumroll*....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Printers. An entire trailer of printers and other assorted computer stuff. I *guess* the ink they contained could be considered toxic or something. The only reason the load was considered high-value, from what I can tell, is because unlike big bulk rolls of paper or something equally bulky the cargo could easily be carried off piecemeal and sold.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The only reason the load was considered high-value, from what I can tell, is because unlike big bulk rolls of paper or something equally bulky the cargo could easily be carried off piecemeal and sold.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, printer ink is worth about a million times its weight in gold, so...

[SealyStar]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The only reason the load was considered high-value, from what I can tell, is because unlike big bulk rolls of paper or something equally bulky the cargo could easily be carried off piecemeal and sold.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, printer ink is worth about a million times its weight in gold, so...

Printer ink is worth about jack shit in reality, but a few companies corner the market for it, so they can price it however they want to. Kind of like diamonds, only even more of an inflation.

[Frumple]

... somehow, in the process of closing, Quickbooks managed to suspend itself. I have never actually seen a program do that. Other programs suspend the program in question, yes -- I do it all the time with process explorer, and BES basically works its magic by stutter suspending, s'far as I can tell -- but I've never seen a program bug out and inflict the status upon itself. It also apparently managed to crash so hard window's crash reporting thingy just kinda' threw up its hands and gave up. Loaded up in the background, closed back down, not a pop-up or notification in sight.

At least in confronting this horrifically coded piece of digital manure, I'm getting to see things break in new and novel (to me, anyway) ways. It... it's something.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I got so sloshed I didn't sleep last night. That's unique.

[Lord Shonus]

The forums I frequent seem to rotate the "does not work" status. For a few weeks, this one was so laggy and hard to connect to that I could barely use it, while GitP worked fine. Now Bay12 is working fine, and GitP is almost unusable.

[Akura]

Apparently, 16th-century Germans played Dwarf Fortress.