Gilded

Considering my daily dose of computer related activities since I was 5 or something, it's amazing that I still have a rather good vision and don't need any contacts or glasses. A fun thing to ponder: Do tyrants always have a good vision, or don't they just tell the public that they use glasses? (Talking about Hitler, Stalin and the whole bunch of course, not anyone on the forums )

"Actually my dads a biochemist, moms a genetisist" My mom is a geneticist too. (Although I can't remember the exact title, must've been special doctor of genetics or something like that) OK, some things you could do with the stuff you have (but of course, I also recommend getting a book about chemistry experiments, even though they are usually rather lame ) ): - Some major hydrogen generation with Mg (or Zn) and HCl (and you could extract the MgCl2 afterwards, if you need it for something ) - You could boil that H2SO4 to a higher conc. and then pour a few drops on sucrose. At least YT keeps telling me it's quite awesome - An Al-Fe2O3 thermite, although you have probably tried that one already - http://www.chem.uiuc.edu/clcwebsite/ammvol.html with your ammonium dichromate, rather awesome looking little experiment - Here's an interesting endothermic reaction including ammonium chloride and barium hydroxide (be careful with the BaOH though, it's rather madly poisonous, as you probably know) "Go explore the world of organic chemistry." Bah, stick to inorganic as long as you can.

Hehe good one Ophie. And speaking of which, do you have collegues studying extra terrestrial rocks (on Earth of course ), or have you done such research yourself? "Phosphorus maybe?" White phosphorous does indeed "glow", and rather brightly too, but that's just it reacting with oxygen. It would react and be consumed rather quickly even deep beneath the Earth, not to mention the event when it's dug up.

It is indeed hard to find an ore sample radioactive enough to cause cancer through the basement walls. If the rock was actually green (not just the glow), it could've been torbernite (which can easily reach over 100 000 CPM), but I'd still find it hard to believe that it could cause cancer, except in a very long period while constantly being near it.

The most stable isotope of technetium is relatively safe, and could be easily kept as a pure few gram metal sample. It's just that you won't easily get such amounts anywhere. "When dripping Br onto the metal, it just inflamed and burned with a red flame (!), the bromine drop fizzing around on the metal surface." Interesting. If my bromine ampoule breaks, I won't be throwing my gallium at it that's for sure.

I have very limited knowledge of the alloys they use in car wheels (I bet coquina could tell us a whole chapter about them though ), but I'd imagine that if a car part is of high magnesium content, it will react quite strongly with rather pure HCl, and vice versa only small bubbles of hydrogen are formed on an aluminum part. (Can't recall the equation for H2SO4 + Al though, but I'd imagine Mg reacts more rapidly in that case too). If you're sure the part is either aluminum or magnesium, it's rather easy to distinguish which one it is with HCl.

Quite a collection, collector. I'd be more than happy to take a look at it when I visit Sweden the next time.

"ok, well if atomos (greek right?) is the most basic level, why have sub-atomic then, why not make sub-atomic, atomic, and make atoms macro particles." Atomos means somewhere along the lines of uncut, unable to be divided or something, so when they discovered that stuff was made of atoms they probably thought "Hey, that Democritus-dude said something about fundamental particles" and named atoms, well, atoms, as people thought that that's the smallest it's going to get, and that's what we think of quarks right now (although I don't think a quark will split, no matter how much you cry and scream at it). And anyway, you'll have a lot of angry physicists at your door (possibly armed with portable cyclotrons) if you start messing semantics into physics. Btw ed, http://www.acronymfinder.com is a rather awesome site (and it has some really disturbingly odd acronyms too!).

Aye Skye, got to say that some merging could be useful.

Arrrh, IKEA indeed is the source of many ghastly tile patterns, and hasn't yet realized that it's not for the mortal being to deal with pine tables. Anyhow, I'd say that's some really, really, really old cotton candy.

Heh, the HazMat fees are indeed quite phenomenal. I recall that 450£ is the sum you have to pay if you wanted an RGB element collection shipped to Finland. Edit: And MulderMan, the price for those kno3.com sodium and potassium pieces is quite high too, but it sure is the best I've seen in Europe yet. :<

"but I do think we will be able to travel faster than the speed of light in about a thousand years." You'll never know if one day swansont warms up his particle accelerator and accidentally drops a jellybean in it, tearing up the fabric of space-time, causing it to fold so that you can go to Proxima Centauri in a second. (Although, that still wouldn't be FTL travel, because you travel through less space but technically it's... err, more space.)

"I've got a full set of the elements and I've probably spent over $3,000 on them combined." Ahh, but you're lacking some super awesome elements like radium, thorium and promethium. Although, so am I currently. :/ And Lance, those vials look rather nice! Too bad they only ship to U.S. and Canada.

Damn luxurious rocket kits. Here you got to go through a course and get a license before you're even allowed to buy a kit, or to launch a proper rocket.

Exactly. And it's easy to make a choice between a professional grade 9-iron and an osmium block the size of your fist. (Both are good for "clonking" burglars though)

I recall currently having (if I don't count the radioactive decay trace buggers) 36 element samples (of +99% purity). And I think I've invested about 500 euros in them. And since I already have palladium, gold, iridium and some other rather expensive samples, it's safe to say that element collecting is way cheaper than golf. (Btw, sorry for neglecting SFN for several weeks now. Nothing beats the interest in science out of a person better than Finnish high school. )

"btw, "caps" contain an incredibly small amount of armstrong's mixture: red phosphorus and potassium chlorate. it's incredibly sensitive. never make it, ever." Yep. It's like near the TCAP-level on the scale of craziness. And I can tell you, there aren't many levels after that (at least no one has lived to tell about them).

Dealing with pine tables is something that was never intended for mortals. Damn you Ikea, daaaamn yoooouuuu! And I thought I got over this thread but the fact that someone found a year supply of KNO3 still makes me cry.

<Rather tasteless joke of the morning, before I go to my physics exam preparation class or whatever you call it> Phi for All has a company, and two employees called Sarah and Jack. Unfortunately, the company isn't doing too well and he has to fire one of them, although both are very good at their work. He decides to watch them work for a while and then chooses the one he fires. So one day, Sarah is in his office and suddenly gets a headache. He takes an aspirin and heads for the vending machine to get something to drink. Phi for All walks up to her and says "Sarah, I'm going to have to lay you or Jack off." Sarah replies "Could you jack off? I have a terrible headache!"

Haha, the SFN YT fanclub. )

"and yes, it is green, there`s a great picture of the stuff in the Simsons!" It's not uranium in the Simpsons, it's plutonium! A man of your age should know his Simpsons. Btw jdurg, ever thought about founding Element Collectors' Association?

Quite odd ratio you got there d22k. I wish I had a dollar (or preferably a euro) everytime someone on the forums gets wacky results from experiments. "Like in my element collection, my chlorine will always have a place in my heart" I certainly hope that if you ever get fluorine it won't literally have a place in your heart.

Wow this thread is really educating. Now I know about high-tech cutter making and 4D cube equivalents more than before. )

Uhhuh, so that's what it looks like. And for the 5 and more dimensions, one page told me it's really hard to render even five dimensional shapes in 2D, so I think I'll pass.

I see. Is somewhere near 50% enough?