jdurg

"IT" has arrived. Amazing stuff. Hard to believe that it's just a typical metal like lead or iron. I can't wait to photograph it and add it to my gallery. Even though it's only ~1.75 grams, there's plenty of surface area and you can feel some heft to the VERY thin turnings. Hard to believe that by looking at it I've irradiated myself. lol.

I got the idea of pyridine from the yellow color of the crap and the fish-like odor. I did a search on the web for fish-like odor and yellow, and pyridine kept coming up. The pyridine did not come from the glycerol. What is more likely is that the oil which I used had some pyridine, or pyridine-like, structure in the triglycerol chain. As the sodium saponified the oil, it cut loose the pyridine (or pyridine like compound). There's another possibility that it could be methylamine, but I highly doubt it. The best way to find out would be to have access to a GC/MS, but I don't have that at my disposal.

Based on the odor and the color of the 'soap' and 'gunk', I'd have to say the offending smell is coming from liberated Pyridine. Blech. Nasty smelling crap. I only wish I had access to a GC/MS because then I could fully analyze this stuff.

Also, whatever you are using the plug the hole at the bottom of the reaction chamber, make sure that it's boiling point is FAR above the reaction temperature of the thermite. A very bad thing is when the thermite gets going and your metal plug actually boils from the heat sending the molten iron all over the place. I also want to give you some major points of respect for how thoroughly you're thinking this out and doing your research before going through with the thermite. Far too often on these internet chemistry boards you get the idiots who come in saying 'THERMITE TOTALLY ROCKS! HOW DO I MAKE IT? I WANT TO MAKE A TON OF IT AND WATCH IT GO BOOM! THAT WOULD SO KICK BUTT!'. It's a nice change to see someone come here who has done their research already.

I think I FINALLY figured out why some of my sodium is bright and shiney and why some of it has turned into the typical gray sodium oxide/hydroxide color. When I was first starting out my element collection, I didn't really pay much attention to the different densities of the elements. So when I saw some sodium metal for sale on E-Bay I decided to get two ounces of it. Little did I realize that 2-ounces is a helluva lot of sodium metal. Even worse, when the sodium arrived via UPS it wasn't under oil. It was just sealed in a water/air-proof baggy. Suffice it to say, it was HEAVILY oxidized. I had some spare mineral oil from a different element I had bought and a spare vial as well. So I took the sodium and put it in the vial and snapped the lid on. It has remained there ever since. However, I had a lot of sodium left over so I had to put it in another jar. This time I used a canning jar but I was out of oil. I went on E-Bay and got some dirt cheap oil from some soap maker. (A fact that I just now remembered). The oil arrived and I poured it in the canning jar with the sodium. Then I just let it be. A few months later, I was writing an article on sodium and decided to take some out. As can be seen on the picture above, the two different storage containers produced two vastly different types of sodium. In the picture, the sodium photographed is that from my soap-making oil jar. The other sodium didn't change at all and looks like typical sodium. The other sodium became bright and shiney, and turned reddish upon removal of the oil. Also, there is this yellow 'gunk' around the sodium and a nasty amine-like fish odor to it. It was driving me crazy trying to figure out how that sodium retained its bright, metallic luster while all other sodium I've seen has turned the typical dull gray. Again, I just ignored it and continued on my ways. Today I decided to photograph that metallic sodium for posterity reasons. I opened the jar and noticed that it still had a strong fish odor to it, but the yellow 'gunk' all settled down to the bottom of the jar. I took some tweezers to pull a piece of metallic sodium out, and it wouldn't budge! I then realized that all the yellow gunk had solidified and the top of it was a clear oil. It then clicked; the yellow 'gunk' is soap and the clear oil is glycerin. I had simply made soap! I remembered that I had bought the oil off of someone who sells soap making stuff, but it wasn't labelled as a soap making oil. It was simply listed as 'mineral oil'. The fish odor has probably come about as the result of some organic contamination. The sodium turned metallic and shiney because the outer oxide/hydroxide layer had saponified the oil creating the yellow soap and the clear glycerine. The soap/glycerine then adhered to the metal surface and prevented further oxidation. As a result, the sodium stayed nice and shiney. Finally, I've figured out why the metal didn't grow duller, and instead became very lustrous. Now if only I could conclusively determine where that nasty smell is coming from.

Yes they did. Either in the baggies, or in heavily bubble-wrap filled vials.

Yeah, and oddly enough it was some lanthanides as well. lol. Really, it's difficult for them NOT to break. The metals have to be contained under oil, and they are pretty hefty in size. So during shipping they are being thrown around against the inside of the container and eventually they are bound to break.

Yes. Make sure that absolutely NOTHING can get into the molten iron while it's still liquid. A drop of water, or even a piece of a leaf, can suddenly cause a little 'burst' which will fling molten iron all over the place.

Yeah, I saw that when it first came out. They used a P4 3.4GHz CPU to do the overclocking. The architechture of the P4 (Northwood) they used is a good architechture that can run at 5+ GHz under EXTREME conditions. So that is possible. Any CPU which is designed to run at 333MHz, however, does not have the physical ability to run at 5+ GHz. That was the thing I was disputing in my first post.

If you put 'CRICK' in between CLICK and TRICK it all works out fine. BLACK CLACK CLICK CRICK TRICK TRICE TRITE WRITE WHITE And CLACK is a real word. It means to abruptly make a sharp sound with two objects. Like 'clacking' a rock against another rock.

I'm not so sure that 'BLERT' is a word. It is an Acronym, but not a word. (According to any dictionary's I have access too. BLURT is a word, but not BLERT). Also, BLAKE is a proper name and not a word. However, it is in the dictionary so I guess that one would have to work.

Hmm. Well, I don't have any nitric acid so that wasn't able to happen. What I did do is take the cerium oxide and make a paste out of it with some of the mineral oil that was there. I then took this paste and rubbed it on the iridium button I have, the zinc and tin cylinders I have, and basically anything else I wanted to polish up. It worked like a charm! Once I finished rubbing off the oil and took some rubbing alcohol to clean up any residues, the shine coming off of these things is amazing. So I didn't waste the oxide at all. (In fact, it felt kind of good making good use out of it. )

Well, this weekend I had a fun experience with cerium metal. lol. My purchase of a 102 gram block of cerium arrived in the mail on Friday, but it had broken the glass jar it was in during shipping causing oil to slowly ooze out of the crack. Since this would just create a big mess, I decided to take the cerium out and place it in the vial that had my other lump of cerium metal. (The Ce I previously had was a nice, smooth lump of the metal which had a complete coating of green oxidation on it. My new lump is kind of ragged but a LOT bigger with some areas of clean metal and some areas of oxidized metal). Anyway, I went to put my new metal in the jar with the old one only to see that it was a smidgen too big. Damn. Now I had to make some alterations so it would fit and not oxidize away outside of the oil. (Meanwhile I've made a mess with a bunch of oil all over the place. lol). I saw that the reason it wasn't fitting was because there was a little flange on one side that was making it too big for the opening of the vial. I couldn't snip it off, so I brought out the hacksaw. I started to cut the metal and everything was going fine because the oil was acting as a lubricant and holding all of the dust. Suddenly, the oil barrier went away and it was metal on metal. A shower of sparks came off of the cerium and ignited a small lump of shavings/dust that had accumulated. The fire quickly burned itself out and left me with a pile of polishing compound (Cerium oxide), but it kind of caught me by surprise. It was actually pretty neat to see. lol. I tried to get it to ignite again, but it just didn't work. Still, the shower of sparks was fun to play with.

That's if you define 'day' as the number of hours in which the sun is present, which depending on where you live can be up to 6 months. If you define 'day' as the time it takes for a full revolution of the Earth, then I'm not sure exactly when that is. (The 'day' you are defining Newtonian is caused by the tilt of the earth on its axis as it moves around the sun).

Perhaps it could also have to do with testosterone production? Even infants produce testosterone, it's just a matter of how much.

That is absolutely impossible. There is no way that a 333MHz chip can run at 5GHz no matter how cold it gets. The chip architechture simply cannot run that fast. There comes a point where the temperature of the CPU does not matter at all. It's like saying that you can get your minivan to go 300 mph if you put racing fuel in it. It's just not going to happen.

I never pay attention to any of the 'this stuff will give you cancer' news. Frankly, if you're going to get cancer you're going to get cancer and there's nothing you can do about it. Now things like cigarettes and drinking benzene, I do avoid that because those things are controllable. But every day some new thing is said to give you cancer which people use in their everyday lives. I've been a diabetic for about 23 years now and have used Nutrasweet, Aspartame, and all the other artificial sweetners that supposedly cause cancer. For about six or seven years I built model cars in my room with little ventillation and a LOT of paint and glue fumes. I smoked cigarettes for about 5 years at a rate of a pack a day. (I quit smoking cigarettes for good two months and one day ago). I drink milk on a daily basis, and they now say that milk can cause cancer. With all of the stuff I've been exposed to, I should be a complete tumor. Especially with how long it takes cancers to grow. I should at least have half a dozen tumors all over my body.

Alpha radiation is actually the most damaging form of radiation, but it's also the least penetrating form. If alpha particles had the penetrating power of gamma rays, we'd all be mighty dead and/or cancerous. But as long as your alpha source is properly stored inside a glass container, at the minimum, you really don't have to worry. Gamma rays aare pretty low in terms of damaging power. They are neutral in charge so they have a rough time ionizing things unless they get a perfect hit. That is also why their penetrating power is so high. Sure you don't want to be putting them near yer genitals, but having a gamma emitter around isn't the end of the world. Like everything in life, it's all about moderation.

Hehe. Magnesium is INCREDIBLY difficult to ignite when it's in a bulk form. Thank god for that, otherwise all these Mag Wheels people have on their cars would be huge fire hazards! I got my cerium metal today and had some 'fun' with it. The metal arrived in a jar filled with mineral oil. Sadly, the metal clanging against the jar during shipment cracked the vial, so I had to find some new storage for it. I thought I could put it in my previous vial of cerium metal, but it was slightly too big. (Figures). I decided to see if I could use some metal cutting scissors and cut the little flange off of the side and fit it in the jar. Nope. That didn't work and now I have mineral oil all over the place. The next idea was the fun one. I took my hacksaw and started cutting off the flange. Cerium is moderately hard so it took some effort, but when the oil was gone from the surface it ignited in a shower of sparks. All the little cerium pieces were smoking and burning in the air. It was really fun to play with. I eventually got the metal flange cut/ground off and the new 102 gram chunck of cerium is in with my other piece. The visual contrast is neat. My first piece of cerium is pretty small and can be seen in my periodic table file. Its surface is very smooth and has a beautiful green color to it. The new piece is MUCH bigger and is not very smooth at all. You can see how it was broken off of a bigger ingot. The outside has a wide range of colors to it due to the differnt magnitude of oxidation on it. I can't wait for it to turn the same green color as the older piece. In other news, my DU will be coming to me either at the end of next week, or early the following week. I cannot wait! The person who got it for me will be doing some final tests with the ~2-gram piece that I'm getting. He'll test it all out and get some updated charts to show how effective the box works on a larger piece. I'm very happy that the DU is in the form of a metal turning because that will give me a MUCH greater surface area to view and will prevent any chance of the glass vial breaking during shipping. (From the hard metal rattling around inside the glass). The vial will be sealed inside the little lead coffin I bonded to the lead lining inside the box. There will be a hell of a lot of packaging inside the box to ensure that the pieces don't move inside. I can't wait to get it and take a picture. I think I'll take the DU picture as a separate file in my periodic table download, and maybe even as a separate file on its own.

Okay, now I'll go with Boron. It's atomic number is the only prime number in the bunch. (Boron=5, Carbon=6, Neon=10, Silicon=14, Arsenic=33, Xenon=54).

Yes, but generally in order to get the seeds out you have to take some of that white 'attache' so if you were to scour up some seeds from some peppers you'd still be able to get quite the "kick" out of them. What hurts really bad is eating a habanero and getting a seed with its attachment stuck behind your tonsils. OOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

Carbon because it has an even number of letters in its name while Arsenic, Silicon, Xenon, and Boron all have odd numbers of letters. (As=7, Si=7, Xe=5, and B=5. C=6). Neon was also removed because it has 4 letters in its name.

Yeah. Just take some peppers/pepper seeds and soak them in some grain alcohol for a while.

I think ground up habaneros are a great idea. Those things are soooooooooo easy to grow that only a few plants can give you a few pounds of peppers. Plus, they are INSANELY hot so if you pureed them you could easily extract the capsaicin and make a horribly nasty concoction.