Gilded

By the way, for those who don't know, cesium is a really important element because of it's use in atomic clocks (1 second = exactly 9,192,631,770 complete oscillations of a cesium-133 atom).

The hobby of the noble; collecting every naturally occurring element. As a hobby it's an expensive one, but hey, atleast there's not a steady flow of new ones like there is with stamps, trading/gaming cards and such. I must admit that I have just started and don't really have any elements but my radium and tungsten sample are on their way. Any fellow collectors?

How pure does nitric acid have to be to be explosive grade? >90%? *remembers promising YT2095 not to mess with high explosives* Err... *runs off muttering about pine table disintegrating* Edit: *mutters also about posting in wrong threads*

Whoops! I just saw "Cleveland" and thought it was Cleveland, Ohio. But apparently it's the state of Cleveland in England. Edit: Hmm, it's got "the strongest ammonia money can buy" and iodine crystals on the same page. Time for some nitrogen tri-iodide!

Well why don't you try the piranha solution and pour it on a pine table. That's what I would do. Or maybe you could catch a squirrel and bleach its fur. Though that would probably make the other squirrels laugh at him. :/

That kno3 looks great, but still, it's in USA. And jsatan, oh how I tried! But all the sellers are in USA. Recently, I mailed to an American pyrotechnics company and I think they thought I was a freaking terrorist or something.

Well YT's profile says "Good Ol' England" so I have doubts of him being an American. However, I would also be interested in just about every kind of cheap chemistry related stuff in the EU area, since these days it's almost an impossibility to get any nice stuff like aluminum powder or such from USA etc. because all the goddamn pyrotechnics companies are American. :/

Well hit me in the head and call me Cthulhu. I had no idea that that much francium has been generated. Cool machine they got there.

Gee, thanks mister. Pretty cool page, should help a bit. Edit: Wow, can a single neutron really go through beta-decay and become H-1? How cool is that.

Yeah I sure noticed it, just wanted to share the beautiful aspects of francium with those that don't know about it.

YT, I meant that you can melt it with your body temperature (melting point about 29 degrees Celsius).

Hmmph. If francium is the king of elements, "long live the king" doesn't really matter since its most stable isotope (Fr-223, beta- & alpha decay) has a half-life of 21 minutes or something. So, if you had a visible amount of francium, you wouldn't get to tell anyone about it since you would die of radiation poisoning rather quickly. :/ Same goes with astatine and radon. Although, a quite large amount of radon has been isolated (1g or something?), it's not actually visible since it's a colorless gas.

Hey, does anyone know a site made with Java or Flash where you could click on different isotopes and then it shows their particle-structure and if it's an unstable isotope it goes through decay? I found one but I think it had only from H to oxygen. A list page would also be nice, with like "americium-241 | alpha decay into neptunium-239".

Ahh cesium, the king of elements. Well, maybe not the king but it's cool anyway. A) It's the closest thing you get to liquid gold (except for actual liquid gold) B) It goes KABOOM nicely C) You can melt it with your body temperature! However, holding cesium with bare hands is not recommended, since it burns through your skin, your flesh, and your bone, if it doesn't explode, that is. If you require a liquid metal to play around with, choose gallium. It's NEARLY non-toxic (I think you could eat a bit without experiencing any harm), though it leaves nasty stains. :/ The best way to store cesium is in a noble gas atmosphere (usually in glass ampule, in an argon atmosphere). Mineral oil is also good, but you won't get as good liquid-gold-effect as you do in an ampule (though the mineral oil/motor oil method is waaay easier). It's a nice element indeed, and if anyone gets it isolated and especially if someone is going to throw some in a bucket of water, please tell me. PS. That molten-Na-ball-up-nose-thing sounds sort of painful. As bud said, be careful with this sort of things.

The decays (all of them?) are alpha, beta+, beta- and gamma. Look them up. For example in alpha decay, a heavy particle (a naked helium nuclei) of two neutrons and two protons is released, that's so heavy that it even won't penetrate your skin, nor a piece of paper. Beta is a bit more piercing, going through your skin but not through your body, but will be stopped by a sheet of aluminum. Gamma rays on the otherhand, pierce even thick blocks of concrete. Be careful with them.

Yes boris you are correct. I got it from some not-so-good-source-of-info like the cookbook, and I noticed that it wasn't too safe. But hey, I was pretty close to bud's instructions (and if you manage to find acid proof duct tape then you're all set). "get sulfuric from car batteries" I thought about doing that (to make perhaps permanganic acid or try the "piranha bath"), but those things are darn expensive! How much acid is there in one normally? I wouldn't want to spend too much cash for just a few drops of H2SO4.

So the 30% solution is the one they use in hair dying?

I think you're supposed to have two bottles (thick glass or something), put the potassium nitrate and H2SO4 in the other bottle and leave the other bottle empty, then connect them with a hose and seal any openings with duct tape. Then place them so that the empty bottle is lower than the other bottle, and then place something cold under the empty. This a) just might work b) just not might work because there's a some sort of problem with nitric acid's forming (just can't remember what it was) or c) I remembered it wrong and the distillation method I told is freaking nonsense. :/ Hope someone who knows more about this sort of things can answer this. YT? bud?

Yeah, the instructions I saw said that 60 degrees Celsius was a good temp. for drying the AN. And about the fps thing, isn't 18k enough to cut steel? Or maybe it was 24k. By the way (again), with a blade sharpener or something, could you make fine aluminum powder by sharpening a sheet of aluminum with ease or would the sharpener just get filled aluminum? I mean, fine enough for a thermite-grade powder, because it seems that most aluminum powder (atleast superfine German black and other pyrograde powders) are somewhat regulated. :/

I think there was a thread/conversation about this, but it turned out that... eh, there was a problem with the forming of nitric acid or something.

Heh, yeah, the IBM-drawing is brilliant (25 xenon atoms on a nickel crystal, if I'm correct). But it doesn't really prove that subatomic particles like neutrons exist (even though, other experiments have proven their existance as swansont stated).

"the denatured alc is a bit alien to me though" If I remember correctly, you're supposed to soak the AN granules in denatured alcohol until they turn deep brown and dry them, then mix them with nitromethane. I wonder if it does any good.

Join the army? In Finland we have three options: army, non-military service (no thanks) or jail (no thanks). So even if I would hate explosives, basically I'm going to have to deal with them. Great. By the way, I've seen a formula of a "plastic high explosive" that's made with ammonium nitrate, nitromethane and denatured ethanol (+ optional aluminum powder) and should provide a 18,000fps explosion. I have doubts of it actually working, and since making it is pretty dangerous (heating the nitrate etc.) I'm probably going to leave it alone. Have you ever heard about or tried this formula, YT?

I didn't exactly ask anything about capping anything (just gave an example that stated that messing around with HE is not a lot of fun without proper capping and fusework). I was just wondering which compounds are suitable to be ignited with just a 1,5V-3V current. I am truly sorry if I gave another impression. And I admit that my knowledge about explosives (especially high explosives) is rather limited and that I have no interest in messing with them right now.

Well, do you have any idea how expensive good blasting caps and fuse are? They cost like... Many euros! No really, I just want to know alternative ways for it (because sometimes you just don't have fuse and blasting caps with you and you got to pull a MacGyver). And YT, even though you seem to be the Grandmaster of All Things Pyrotechnics & Stuff, it makes me rather sad when someone goes "ROFLOL! lame thread, thiz d00d doesn't know about hiex n blasting caps". "oh, and by the way, you may try your Ni-Chrome and MonoNitroCellulose (ping pong ball stuff) you STILL won`t set off HiEx with it , nor with a 14 lb lump hammer and a box of matches etc.. ROLFLOL )))))" Perhaps we are not thinking of the same thing when we see the words "high explosive"? It's just an explosive that causes gases to expand faster than... well, a low explosive. And there are indeed some high explosive materials that can be set off with just a match...