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Gilded

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Well, I don´t know about the accuracy of the MSDS.

 

24 years ago I purchased a glass ampoule of 2 grams of Sc, and a palstic bottle with 20 grams Y from Johnson Matthey. (today, the same stuff from the same company would be tremendously expensive!).

 

The MSDS said that yttrium metal was pyrophoric! Oops...!

Well, I tried a small piece of yttrium in a bunsen flame, and waited for the metal to ignite.

It didn´t. Not even at red hot temperature! The metal piece oxidized (not surprising) but never ignited.

So much for that hazard.

 

I have a MSDS for bismuth saying that it is sooo dangerous...

 

If you buy a piece of lead pipe in a hardware store, you just pay for it and go.

But if you buy the same piece of lead as a laboratory chemical, it´s suddenly classified as extremely hazardous, carcinogen, toxic, etc, the purchase has to be registered and controlled, the seller need an endless amount of permits and applications etc etc.

 

Thats the world of chemistry.

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A lot of MSDS sheets fail to mention that a 'pyrophoric' metal is generally only pyrophoric if in a finely divided state. Magnesium metal won't readily ignite if in a large block. If you have small shavings or ribbons, then it will ignite. But try igniting a two pound brick of magnesium with a standard lighter and you'll have a very difficult time getting it to catch fire.

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Particle size certainly is important for reactivity.

 

Zr and Hf usually are produced as very finely divided powder. In this state these metals are pyrophoric, and are stored and handled under water.

 

But the solid, compact metals are very resistant to corrosion.

They are practically impossible to ignite in solid form.

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would you have it any other way ?!

 

Well, actually; yes I would!

 

If I buy a piece of wood, I won´t get a MSDS saying that "sawdust is dangerous to your health and may cause cancer". And if I´m buying a piece of aluminum tubing, it would be inapplicable to receive a MSDS that says that "aluminum dust is dangerous to inhale, and may present a fire and explosion hazard".

 

Even more surprising is the double standards about chemicals in household articles. I am not allowed to buy some pure crystalline paraphenylene diamine. Carcinogen and toxic etc. But I can buy a bottle of black hair dye, containing the same toxic chemical.

 

I would like some logical consistency in the field of chemistry, pure and applied.

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The main reasoning behind why the hair-dye doesn't warrant an MSDS is probably because of the amount of the chemical in there, and the trouble you'd have to go through in order to extract the stuff. If I have a chocolate brownie, I can extract the sugar from the brownie, but damn would that take a long time. :D

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I agree that the hair dye example is not the best.

 

Maybe better examples:

Some silver polish solutions contains rather high concentration of thiourea; carcinogenic. And I have seen insect repellants with up to 15 % of derivatives of aromatic diamines. Definitely carcinogenic.

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Hey btw collector, have you purchased any of your elements (or chemicals) from http://www.svenskakemi.nu, as it seems like a nice site. I thought about ordering from them too but the minimum amount for an order (excluding shipping) is 3000 SEK, over 300 euros (which is a little bit more I'm willing to spend at one time).

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Gilded

 

No, actually I have made all of my element purchases the last 5 years through eBay.

 

The best one is Hamric:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZhamric

In almost every case he enclose a certificate of analysis. Only a few exceptions. He also very clearly informs about the shipping rules according to USPS publication 52. Because of this some few elements are shipped to United States only. Examples are Ca and Ba.

 

 

Another excellent seller is Emovendo:

http://stores.ebay.com/Emovendo_Elements_W0QQcolZ2QQdirZQ2d1QQftidZ2QQtZkm

 

Some more common metals (Al,Zn,Pb etc), very low price:

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQsassZourQ2dhousecatQQsojsZ0

 

And some special items:Silicon wafers:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4660&item=7505136124&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

 

(Try a search for "silicon wafer*")

 

In Sweden there is som domestic auctions sites ("tradera", "blocket").

I have never found any elements there!

 

Where on the planet can I find anyone selling osmium, not as the usual dirty black powder, but as solid metal pieces?

The answer is eBay!

 

Even 1kg ingots of solid praseodymium!

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Dave Hamric is a GREAT source of elements. I met him through E-Bay when I purchased some selenium from him and then we got to talking through e-mail. As a result, I have purchased a lot of elements from him. His website www.elementsales.com has virtually anything you could want. He is currently working on melting and ampouling the alkali metals inside argon sealed containers so that people can purchase a 'forever shiney' piece of sodium, lithium, and potassium. He's shown me some progress and I have to say that it's turning out great. Dave is also a great seller because he can custom make any size sample you want. If you want a one-pound lump of Osmium, provided that you have the funds to do this, he can get it made for you if you give him some time. Because of some 'extra pay' I received at work and from playing cards, I recently submitted an order for a 50-gram Rhenium button and a Troy Ounce Ruthenium button. Those should arrive today. Can't wait to see them. Now I just need one-ounce buttons of osmium, rhodium, and platinum and I'll have an ounce of every PGM. :) (Hell, I'd even go with just 20 more grams of Rhodium. I've already got one nice-sized 11 gram nugget).

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One ounce?? Of each of the platinum metals?

Eh..., that will cause som pain in the wallet, I assume. In my wallet it would.

 

I saw your pictures, a beautifull collection. How much did you pay for that huge Ir ingot? Impressive.

 

The only platinum metal I purchased in larger quantity was palladium many years ago. It was a rather low cost metal in 1981, about $90 for a one ounce Credit Suisse ingot.

Today that ingot would be ...expensive, to say the least.

 

But I am thinking of buying some larger ingots (~10g) from Hamric.

 

Some other metals I would like to have in 100g ingots are the lantanindes.

Smart-elements have 100g and 200g lots of the reactive lantanides under argon at a low cost:

http://www.smart-elements.com/index.php?element=Ce&arg=show&PHPSESSID=2abe2474a4309c7383e74f9d8df8cf96

 

*digging in my wallet*

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"But I strongly suspect that it is an imported version of the RGBco set"

 

Yeah, the similarity is indeed disturbing. :)

 

And wow, the huge lanthanide pieces at Smart Elements went unnoticed by me earlier. Although I am quite happy with my current lanthanide set (excluding promethium), I wouldn't mind a 200g block of lanthanum or cerium. :)

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One ounce?? Of each of the platinum metals?

Eh...' date=' that will cause som pain in the wallet, I assume. In my wallet it would.

 

I saw your pictures, a beautifull collection. How much did you pay for that huge Ir ingot? Impressive.

 

The only platinum metal I purchased in larger quantity was palladium many years ago. It was a rather low cost metal in 1981, about $90 for a one ounce Credit Suisse ingot.

Today that ingot would be ...expensive, to say the least.

 

But I am thinking of buying some larger ingots (~10g) from Hamric.

 

Some other metals I would like to have in 100g ingots are the lantanindes.

Smart-elements have 100g and 200g lots of the reactive lantanides under argon at a low cost:

http://www.smart-elements.com/index.php?element=Ce&arg=show&PHPSESSID=2abe2474a4309c7383e74f9d8df8cf96

 

*digging in my wallet*[/quote']

 

Thank you for the compliment. It's taken quite a bit of time for me to put together the collection, and I have upgraded samples quite often when my samples just didn't 'look' right. I would LOVE to upgrade some of my transition metals to the VERY smooth and reflective E-Beam samples that I frequently see for sale, but right now I just don't want to spend that type of money. (About $100+ for a small, 10-20 gram button. While I'm sure the price is worth it based upon the photos, I just can't bear to spend that much on something like tantalum or niobium).

 

My Ir button is approximately 35 grams and cost me $400. I had won a football pool last year, so I took some of my winnings and got an ounce+ of Ir. With the other 5 gram button in there, I have approximately 40 grams of Ir. I'd LOVE to get the same amount of Os, but that will take me quite a bit of time. I was able to get my Pd back when it was around $180 an ounce. Right now it's fluctuating between 190-230 an ounce. So you bought it at a good time. :D The PGM that really jumped in value for me after I purchased it was Rhodium. I bought my ~11 gram nugget when Rh was at $800 an ounce. So it cost me around $250 bucks. (Even at that price I got a GREAT deal when I bought it). Right now, Rh is at about $1550 an ounce. I'm happy I bought it when I did. For my PGMs, this is what I currently have. (I've included a picture of them below, and if you click on it you'll get a slightly bigger picture).

 

Rhodium: 11 gram button.

Ruthenium: Troy Ounce Button + ~5 gram button.

Palladium: Pamp Suisse 1-ounce ingot.

Silver: I probably have a few pounds of silver in various forms.

Rhenium: A 50-gram button, a 10-gram button, and a 1 gram sintered pellet.

Osmium: A 5-gram perfect button.

Iridium: A 35-gram button and a 5 gram button.

Platinum: A couple of 1/10th ounce coins, some Pt wire, a 1-gram ingot and a 5-gram ingot.

Gold: A BUNCH of various sized coins, bars, ingots, and nuggets. Total weight is about 1.25 ounces.

 

PGMSmall.jpg

 

I now have that picture as my desktop background. Amazing how that small amount of metal is worth so much. I also want to say that my picture of Phosphorus will be used in an upcoming General Chemistry Textbook. A publisher got ahold of me a few weeks ago and wanted to get my permission to use the Phosphorus photo in their textbook. The book will come out later this year. I'll probably make a new thread to get into the specifics of that. :D

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^^OMG^^ :eek: holy shit! Well at least you no longer have to wory about that pesky wallet being to heavy :D

 

On serious note Your Irdium + Ruthenium looks ?Oxidised? is it just the picture or aren't they that shiny?

 

~Scott

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Rhenium

 

Unfortunately, my platinum metal ingots are just small 1g samples. Will do for a while.

But once I got the opportunity to buy a very special form of rhenium ingot.

A swedish guy once produced large amounts of rhenium (metal and perrhenate) for industry, the production ceased in the 80:s. But from this production he got som small Re flakes which he collected. And at the end he had about 100g if it. So he made a sintered ingot of these flakes, and arc melted this ingot under argon. The result was a cigar shaped ingot of a bit more than 100 g Re. Purity was analyzed to be at least 99,93%, the main contaminant is tungsten (the material of the other electrode).

He offered me a piece of this ingot. I purchased a piece of approx 15 g.

 

The interesting thing about this piece is the different surfaces. One surface is the arc discharge surface, where the crystalline metal surface have a very prominent crystal structure. The surrounding side are slightly oxidized, but still shiny. The back is where it was cut of from the large ingot, so the shiny metal surface is exposed. And a small sharp edge where the ingot was finally teared off by force, resisting mechanical tear.

Must have been a tough task to cut and rip off a solid piece from that ingot.

 

This piece shows a set of surfaces and edges, even crystalline metal surface, treated in different ways. The ingot feels incredibly heavy, with almost twice the density of lead.

 

Much more illustrative than a thin metal foil would be.

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One odd thing about Re.

It is the only element with at least one stable isotope, but with a natural isotopic composition dominated by an unstable isotope!

 

I once calculated the activity, it is slightly more than 1000 Bq/g metal (natural isotopic composition). This should be compared to U 238, with the activity slightly more than 12300 Bq/g.

 

But natural Re is not classified as radioactive material, maybe because of the very low energy. Actually it is very difficult measure of the radiation accurately, because of the low energy.

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Suspicious

 

When talking about PGM, I remeber that I have seen even now on the net some strange suppliers offering Os 187, for half a million dollar per gram!

But why on earth spend a lot of energy (and money) on separating the Os isotopes? What is the use of this isotope? Does not make sense.

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And more...

 

...oddities. What was the fuzz about "red mercury"? I once saw that it was a compund Hg2Sb2O7. And the use was claimed to be in - nuclear devices!

It was said to "enhance" the nuclear reaction.

 

Of course som people tried to smuggle this stuff from Russia, when the Soviet Union fell apart.

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I think the whole red mercury thing is a load of hooplah IMHO. Also i dont know why any1 would want Osmium 187 its not the heaveyest or lightest isotope of Osmium and its stable kind of boring realy!

 

~Scott

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^^OMG^^ :eek: holy shit! Well at least you no longer have to wory about that pesky wallet being to heavy :D

 

On serious note Your Irdium + Ruthenium looks ?Oxidised? is it just the picture or aren't they that shiny?

 

~Scott

 

Hehe. Well, when you start getting really good at playing poker, you suddenly have some spare money that just cries out 'spend me'. I consider the PGMs my reward to myself for playing proper poker. :D With the Ir and Ru, they are nice and shiny but the photos have a hard time picking it up. It's just that the Os, Ag, Pd, Re, and Au are INCREDIBLY shiney so they seem to stand out a bit more. With all the vials next to each other, it takes up a bunch of space and I only have one overhead light for the lighting. If you look closely at the Ru, you can see the reflection of the smaller bead on the larger button. That smaller bead is incredibly reflective as well. The larger the sizes of the buttons, the more difficult it is to get a uniform 'shinyness' on the piece.

 

Collector, that's a neat little bit of info about Re. I was unaware that Re had that property. I do know that the property exists for Rubidium. In fact, if you take an ampoule of Rb and place it next to some unexposed film for a month or so, when you develop the film you'll see a hazy picture of the Rb ampoule. I've actually done this and it's pretty amazing. It takes some time, but Rb is fairly radioactive due to the large presence of Rb-87.

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