Gilded

"nor uranium for that matter." Uranium is easy to get hold of. And if you happen to visit Europe, there are certainly some areas packed with uranium slugs burrowed in the ground, just waiting to be found. (Hey that even rhymes!) And thank you swansont for mentioning David Hahn as I would've done so eventually. I also recall seeing a longer and more comprehensive article somewhere, and if you want everything you can get, buy the Radioactive Boyscout -book from Amazon. ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/037550351X/002-2686854-3502413 )

Man, I hate it when the precipitate is or looks like something completely different you thought it was going to be. :S And in this particular case, it could have been anything from impure reagents to the beer bottle you used to heat the stuff in. But hey, KOH and tincture of iodine are pretty inexpensive so perhaps you should start a glitter-business.

Once again, I have underestimated the power of the nice men at customs/post (I love you all! ). The order came today (and it appeared that the calcium was on a so called beta-list which I then changed to something else, so no calcium this time ), and the samples are great! The beryllium pearls are really mindblowing - I've seen blueberries that are 1/4 the size and weigh as much. The iodine jar-type of container seems to be sealed with black duct tape (so there's probably argon inside) and now I'm very, very tempted to open the container and get just a wee little bit for NI3 purposes. The magnesium bars are also larger than I expected, very light and shiny. The gold and rhenium are also nice, and so is the tungsten (about 9mm bullet size, so this one I'll probably use for some nifty rail gun experiment ). And now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to grind some shavings off the other Mg bar. Edit: Damn, magnesium is a pretty tough bugger. A pinhead-sized shaving I managed to grind off the bar lighted pretty nicely though.

"they VERY easily dissolve in basic solutions" Time to make some Fish Megadeath with Mr. Muscle and beryllium. Btw, D. Hamric told me in an e-mail that he posted the stuff on Tuesday. In that case, I'm lucky if they'll be here this week (as it's 0:07 Monday here now). I'm also starting to wonder if I'm being monitored by SUPO ("Finland's FBI", just lazier though) or something with all these suspicious orders.

Yum yum, chemical pneumonitis. BeCl2 is good for making pure beryllium through reduction with potassium though. And you could probably kill quite a few fish with it too.

I don't think if it's too much harm if you just heat a solid pearl in a low-O atmosphere and I recall beryllium oxide being non-toxic (correct me if I'm wrong, please don't try to eat it anyway ). Beryllium powder as mentioned many, many times before is just pure evil, and even small amount of fine powder can contaminate several thousand cubic meters to hazardous levels. Edit: It appears beryllium oxide is so insanely toxic that about 40 milligrams would kill me. Bugger.

"I'm just hoping you didn't spend too much on it." Yeah the bar was indeed over-priced (I recall the national market price of palladium being somewhere around 300$/troy ounce last time I checked). I bought a small pearl, as it looked very cool and didn't cost too much. And for the arrival, stuff within EU moves rather quickly (the Smart Elements/RGB orders arrived in three days every time IIRC), but from U.S. it takes quite a while, so they'll probably be here next week, hopefully on Monday. And then I'm off to borrow some ammonia from my 8th-9th grade chemistry teacher. Also, I wonder if one could melt beryllium into disc or plate shape without an argon atmosphere or vacuum, as I'm not sure how easily it oxidizes.

These came on Tuesday: Bromine (very nice, about 3ml, fun to watch), cesium (just a 50mg micro-ampoule, looks cool though), tungsten (cool and heavy, long but thin cylinder, probably good for a rail-nail-gun type of cannon ), palladium (quite shiny) and iron (electrolytic chips, very beautiful and funny shaped considering it's just... well, iron ). Coming from David Hamric, ordered last Thursday: Phosphorous, iodine (I can't resist making some NI3 as it's in a jar instead of ampoule ), beryllium (1g pearls 2x, other for neutron experiments), magnesium (3g bars 2x, other for burning and stuff ), gold (1g pearl, finally ), rhenium (1g pearl), tungsten (yeah I know I got it already, but as it was cheap I decided to buy another one and see which one fits better for gauss gun or similar experiments :> ) and calcium (an ampouled bar). Yay.

As I mentioned somewhere, I got a periodic table for Christmas. It has statistics about the most abundant elements in the atmosphere, Earth's crust, sea and human body. And indeed, oxygen is even more abundant in the crust than in air.

I usually check Chemistry first. If nothing new or interesting is going on there, usually physics after that, and if I have nothing better to do then GD.

Hmmh. Perhaps a solubility separation method would be the best? I don't know how much their solubilities differ though, but just an idea.

You mean like you have a mix of both and you just want to get rid of the other?

"we're not interested in teaching kids how to make bombs" Quite right. And for the making of potassium nitrate, I can't believe why people can't a) use the search system on the forums/google b) learn some chemistry or c) buy some KNO3 from a goddamn gardening store. :S Depends a lot on where you live, and what time of the year it is, though.

"in this case 975 is the largest 3 digit number divisible by 25 :)" Yep. It's odd how 999 can of course be divided by 25, but you wouldn't call it a number that's divisible by 25 (don't know about your English buggers and your math terms, I'm getting a severe headache even at Finnish high school grade geometry ) ).

Double-bah. I really need to buy some elements to relieve the pain.

Damn high school! Boring. All work and no play makes me a rather dull boy.

I wonder if Finns count. ) We're a very odd bunch of people, but here goes: 1. Age? - 16 (born on 13.4. 1988) 2. Gender? - Male 3. State? - Err... Länsi-Suomi or Western Finland 4. Natural hair color? - Blonde 5. Natural eye color? - Grayish-green 6. Do you dye your hair? - No way, I'm a proud blonde, at least currently 7. Do you have colored contacts? Or what color would you prefer your eyes to be?(you don't have to pick a different color) - No glasses, but I'd like red-black contacts though, but that's just to scare the hell out of annoying kids 8. Heritage? - Some ancestors were Germans if I remember correctly (and my surname used to be Heidenstrauch which is a rather German name )

"if he asks how to make nitric acid dont tell him :\" Lol. Btw, I'm starting to wonder if anyone ever tried the bacteria-decomposition thing with human excrement. I recall YT using bovine manure or similar, in a large barrel or something, but I've probably just had hallucinations... again. Oooh look at the pretty colors.

This is getting really tiresome. I seem to get them on a daily basis.

Bah. Politicians and terrorists are ruining the future of humble element collectors.

"Well, Smart-Elements is a ripoff, I'm sorry to say." Two words: Compare prices. There's Smart Elements, there's RGB, there's Emovendo, Metallium Inc., random eBay sellers, several chemical providers... I always check rather many sources before buying anything, to get the best price.

"There are still a few VERY high purity, VERY large samples that I would love to get" Rofl, talking about expensive high quality samples, there was a NASA-rocket part made of tantalum on Smart Elements that was somewhere around 1000$. )

Got to find me a source of cheap/broken smoke detectors and then dissamble them. I prefer more radioactive elements though, but americium and neptunium are certainly something you're not going to find anywhere else except smoke detectors or nuclear waste. Got to admit I'm starting to get rather jealous at jdurg's collection. ) Well, when I get my Visa in about 1 year 3 months, I'm going to show everyone... Yes... Yeeees! Mwahahaha! *scuttles off laughing hysterically*

"Cold fusion- Contratiction-ometer- 10" If it's on a 1-10/0-10 scale, then I'll give an amen to that. )

That's not cold fusion. Sounds like a displacement reaction, but it certainly ain't cold fusion, which as far as we know, is a phenomenon only existant in science fiction.