YT2095 Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 sometime just friends of people that work in Factories will get you things too, it`s all up to you to ask about and make contacts with folk it`s even better when you don`t have to pay for the stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdurg Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 Take a look at this link here. It's a picture of my element collection that I took a while ago. Since then, a few of the samples have been upgraded. The Strontium, Bromine, Chlorine, Iodine, Iron, and a few others have all been upgraded. (The fluorine, technetium, and promethium are pictures I found online. I don't own those elements). But I have that periodic table up on the walls of my cubicle at work, and every single day I get people stopping by in awe of the elements. I have all my elements in labelled jars or ampoules and just like to admire them. My favorites are Osmium because of it's blue color and incredible density; Bromine because of the deep red-brown vapor it gives off and the fact that it's a liquid; Cesium because of its gold color and the fact that it liquifies if I hold the vial; Potassium because of the purple oxide color; Chlorine because of the green color of the gas; and Iodine because of the purple vapor and fun you can have with it. I got nearly all of my elements from E-Bay, or from a very good dealer named Dave Hamric. He has a website at www.elementsales.com where you can get almost everything. I also have multiple allotropes of each element. I have large samples of graphite and diamond for carbon, and samples of Red, White, and Black Phosphorus. (You can get man-made diamonds fairly cheaply, and uncut diamonds for a steal as well). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lance Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 cool' date=' which ones are best? this sounds way better than collecting coins or something like that [at the moment, i dont collect nothing'] btw, dont say uranium or something, coz im not really gonna be able to get a big lump of it and put it on my shelf! but which are the best just for looking at, that are also easy to get. I really like bismuth for some reason. You can melt it at low temperature and make bismuth crystals. If you break a piece of bismuth it’s nice and shiny. It’s heavier than lead and the heaviest element with a stable isotope. It’s ferromagnetic so you can make magnets levitate. It’s also dirt cheap. Oh and it expands when it freezes. I really like all the low melting point elements. They are fun to mix together and make alloys that melt at REALLY low temperatures. Indium is also fun because you can scratch it with a fingernail. jdurg: Oh man I'm so jealous. That’s really cool. I hope to have a collection like that some day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
budullewraagh Posted September 23, 2004 Share Posted September 23, 2004 have you ever worked with wood's metal? i haven't but i've heard it's really interesting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lance Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 I decided not to make woods metal because it contains lead. I did however make a tin-indium-bismuth alloy that melts near the same temperature. It will melt in hot water. I got metal oxides stuck on the inside of one of my boiling flasks because I dropped a piece of the alloy in boiling water. I had to get it out with sand. If you mix gallium with the alloy it will melt below room temperature. The alloy will also stay molten well below its melting point so you can touch the molten metal and a thin layer dries on your finger. Very odd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdurg Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Bismuth is really nice because the crystals it makes are so beautiful looking. Also, if you hold it near a pure white metal like silver, palladium, or rhodium, you can see a nice pink tinge to it which is a bit different. Indium is another fun one because it's about as soft as lithium or sodium, but it won't blow up in water or burn your hands. It also maintains its shine indefinitely. Having a collection of elements is neat, but it's also pretty expensive and requires a lot of responsibility. For instance, you CANNOT have your halogens anywhere near your alkali/alkaline-earth metals unless the halogens are completely sealed up in an ampoule. My chlorine, bromine, and iodine are now permanently sealed in borosilicate glass ampoules, so I can finally have them in the same area as my other metals. But there's still the risk that if they break, bad things can happen. That's also why you don't want too much of the really nasty ones. If there was a flood, there would be quite the BOOM coming out of my storage cabinet. That is also why I don't have a few ounces of each of the metals. lol. I also have them stored inside a cabinet and not out in the open so that sunlight won't cause any damage. It took a lot of planning, but the few thousand dollars I've spent has been well worth it. (And having quite a few good nights playing poker with my buddies and at casinos helped fund nearly all of it). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 "also, i think it would be quite cool talking point to have lump of U-235." Heh, I bet. Too bad it's highly regulated (yes, it's the fissionable one). "I really like bismuth for some reason." Well who doesn't? It's strange how only the purest element can make beautiful multicolored crystals. Bismuth "eggs" are cool too. It's an interesting element in just about every aspect, especially for it's weird stability: It was before considered to have a stable isotope, but nowadays it's known that it's most stable isotope is "metastable", and has a half-life of about 2x10^19 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r1dermon Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 lol, U-235 would be a cool talking point until the govt comes after you and puts you on charges of treason, blah blah blah, they'll say that you had ties to osama and all that good stuff, then you'll be locked in a prison pending lawyer selection and then when your trial starts you'll be sentanced to death, but then you'll appeal like 50 times and on your last appeal you'll die in prison at the age of 82 1/2. sounds like fun huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Heh, didn't Marie Curie get 1g of pure radium when he got the Nobel prize? I can imagine how unhealthy that must have been. Edit: And didn't the guy who discovered plutonium keep it in a matchbox in his pocket? Canceriffic! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r1dermon Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 hahahahaha, these, the geniouses of our time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 WOW, a useless post on my part sure, but Geez, look how big this thread`s got!!! LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Oh they grow up so fast. One day you're talking about hydrogen peroxide and the next you're talking about element collecting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r1dermon Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 here's what god intended hydrogen peroxide for. http://www.ad6uy.com/sac-l5/motor-test.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Wow, quite a thrust! And maybe if it were to be launched off a pine table... Mmmm... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lance Posted September 24, 2004 Share Posted September 24, 2004 Wow, quite a thrust! And maybe if it were to be launched off a pine table... Mmmm... What is it with you and destorying pine tables?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YT2095 Posted September 25, 2004 Share Posted September 25, 2004 I think he had his Ikea store cards revoked or something ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 25, 2004 Share Posted September 25, 2004 Well I do hate Ikea. And in Finland you have too much wooden furniture lying about. Just gotta do something with them. And a pine table is also a good testing platform; if something breaks it by itself, that is most likely also capable of breaking your bones and sending your limbs to orbit the Earth. And I also have a theory that pine tables are hostile aliens disguised as wooden furniture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
r1dermon Posted September 25, 2004 Share Posted September 25, 2004 did anyone watch the vid of the rocket? the piston at the top of the stand that measured the thrust got cleanly blown off the whole apparatus. lol. it looked like a gun shot it. thats a sick rocket, but for that amount of money, i can get a single use J motor which will do fine and cost me like....200 bucks. plus, i wouldnt be messing with hydrogen peroxide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5614 Posted September 26, 2004 Author Share Posted September 26, 2004 well, seemingly i better not try and buy any U: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3690506.stm some guy tried it and has been arrested! the police couldnt find any radioactive material or bomb making equipment, seems they could have just been innocent element collectors looking for an unusual element - which just happens to be radioactive! with this rocket powered by H2O2, isnt there better alternatives to H2O2 that compress more, allowing more pressure, allowing more power to the rocket? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lance Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 well' date=' seemingly i better not try and buy any U:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3690506.stm some guy tried it and has been arrested! the police couldnt find any radioactive material or bomb making equipment, seems they could have just been innocent element collectors looking for an unusual element - which just happens to be radioactive! [/quote'] No.... "The newspaper claimed it sent in an undercover reporter posing as a Muslim extremist following a tip-off that a Saudi sympathetic to "the Muslim cause" was willing to pay £300,000 for a kilo of powerful, radioactive red Mercury." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 Ah red mercury. It's almost a legendary compound. Red mercury antimony oxide is the only I know of, Hg2Sb2O7, about 35.000$/kg. Everyone keeps telling me that red mercury can replace the fission explosive in a neutron bomb. If this were true (which I hardly think is), you could make a baseball-size neutron bomb with mainly red mercury and lithium deuterate, that would provide so much neutron radiation that it would kill every living thing within a couple of blocks! Scary stuff. FBI etc. tell that Russia manufactured loads of it during the Cold War, but they seem to lack any evidence. The "briefcase bombs" are also said to use red mercury, but once again, no evidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
5614 Posted September 26, 2004 Author Share Posted September 26, 2004 .... that would provide so much neutron radiation that it would kill every living thing within a couple of blocks! Scary stuff. FBI etc. tell....that is what a neurton bomb is supposed to do, i dont think that it would any more powerfull than a current neutron bomb, although apparently research on neutron bombs had stopped quite a while ago now, it may have started up again though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 Yeah, but making such a small bomb isn't possible with a fission device to provide the necessary heat. I think the supercritical mass for plutonium (best choice for a fission device) is about 10kg, so a neutron bomb (which is basically a fusion bomb without the U-238 coating), can't be of a very small size, UNLESS you have a material that can provide the necessary heat for deuterium-tritium fusion in relatively small amounts, which is what red mercury is said to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
budullewraagh Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 i'm not so familiar with red mercury. can anybody shed some light? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilded Posted September 26, 2004 Share Posted September 26, 2004 A) It's _very_ radioactive B) Its composition isn't too well known to public C) Generally it's thought it can, when exploded, generate enough heat to start a deuterium-tritium fusion, thereby making the plutonium "starter" in fusion/neutron bombs unnecessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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