jdurg

Lol. In a twisted sort of way, I think we might be. How about we both say that we're right and we rule?

That's because ethanol and water form an azeotrope at about 95% ethanol. However, at that point it's no longer a solution of ethanol in water. It's a solution of water in ethanol. When you're talking about moonshine, the solution at that point is basically all ethanol with a little bit of water. This is able to form an azeotrope. At this point, however, saying that the alcohol has lowered the boiling point of water is fictitious since nearly all of the water is gone from the solution.

I came up with 3999960. (There are 120 possible permutations of 54321, and each number will be in one of the columns 24 times during those 120 permutations. So you take (24x5)+(24x4)+(24x3)+(24x2)+(24x1) to get 360 for each column. Now just multiply by the proper factor of ten for each of the columns and add them together. It's been a while since I've done any type of intense math, so please tell me where my logic went wrong if it is incorrect).

Well, once you get above a certain mass the radiation levels go higher than the detector can 'detect'. The CPM is a measure of how many counts of radiation you detect per minute. More mass of radioactive material means more CPM. Having ten tons of radioactive material will give off more CPM than 1 ton because you have more substance in the process of decaying. That is why the use of CPM to determine the radioactivity of something isn't the best thing. If you correlate it to the mass of the substance, then it becomes a bit more informative. (Therefore CPM/unit-mass is a better indicator. That will tell you how many counts per minute you get per unit-mass of the substance. Since my Uranium sample will be about 0.5 grams, it would have a CPM of about 1360/gram.)

Both are correct. It all depends on the type of decay they use. If they emit an alpha particle (Which is a helium nucleus), their atomic number goes down by 2 and their atomic mass goes down by 4. So when Th-232 decays into Ra-228, it does so via alpha emission. If an atom decays by beta emission, it does so by releasing an electron as a neutron decays into a proton and an electron. The mass will stay the same, but the atomic number will go up by one. When Pb-210 decays, it decays into Bi-210 via beta-decay. If an atom undergoes Electron Capture, it would be the same as beta decay but in the opposite direction. The nucleus would take an electron and combine it with a proton to form a neutron. Therefore it's atomic number would go down by one, but its mass would stay the same. There are many different ways that an atom can radioactively "mutate" so it's a good idea to study up on that in any general chemistry/physics book you have.

Yeah. Makes a nice sparkley shower. Plus, it reacts with water pretty similar to calcium does. I'm going to have fun "descaling" my existing oxidized lump. I also got some great news about the uranium I've obtained. The person did a bunch of testing with a geiger counter and got some nice data in regards to the metal and my lead-lined containment box. Background radiation was measured at ~20 CPM. The bare exposed DU brought a reading of ~680 CPM. With the DU in a glass vial, the reading dropped to ~190 CPM. In the lead-lined box, the reading was back at background levels. He sent me a really cool chart of the data which I hope to upload later on to let everyone see. It was really neat seeing how much of the radiation is alpha and how little is gamma. (I calculated the % based on the number of CPM. The Alpha was responsible for 74.25% of the measured radiation and the Gamma was repsonsible for 25.75%). Also, the 680 CPM wasn't really all too great. I can only imagine what a larger sample or a more radioactive isotope would do.

I just upgraded another one of my element samples. I've upgraded my ~20 gram lump of Cerium metal to a nice, fresh, 102 gram lump. For only $33.00, including shipping, Emovendo will be delivering me a nice new lump of Cerium. This will look pretty nice next to my green oxide covered chunk I currently have. I'll have to make sure to take a picture while the metal is still fresh.

100% correct!

Heh. Well don't worry. You need a good deal of clearance to get near those places. Actually, there's a place about 12-14 miles from me that probably has a ton of fluorine. Dow Chemical has a major manufacturing plant located a few towns away and I know they use elemental fluorine a heck of a lot. Heh. I should apply for a job there.

It's not the dry ice that is smoking. It's that the CO2 sublimating off of it is so cold that it causes any water in the air to immediately condense, so the 'smoke' you see is just water. If you have super dry air, then you will see no "smoke".

Go to ANY uranium enrichment facility and you'll find more fluorine than you could ever possibly imagine.

Heh. Put me in a room with hundreds of tanks of it and I think that'd be great. (It must be a helluva lot of fun to work in a Gaseous Diffusion uranium enrichment plant. hehe).

Well, first off Marie Curie was female. (Yes those french/polish armpits can be deceiving, but there are other anatomical features that can distinguish them. ) lol. Anyway, there are some pitchblende samples which contain a massively high amount of uranium oxide in them. But on average, one can only expect to have about 10-11% U3O8 in their ore sample. So to get an ounce of uranium, you'll have to have about 304 grams of pure pitchblende. One also has to remember that you're not going to have a high purity sample all the time and there will most likely be a lot of other stuff. So on average I'd say that you'd need to have about a pound of pure pitchblende in order to get an ounce of natural uranium.

For a brief moment I was going to say use some fine baking flour in there, but then I realized that it would be a pretty major fire/explosion hazard if you did.

I could not agree more. (In fact, a post a made a while ago in this topic said the exact same thing. Bravo. )

The RGB sample actually contains almost no fluorine. They just fill little glass vials with the fluorine gas, and it soon eats its way right out. At most, there may be 0.0005 atm of F2 inside there. Also, the more the glass is eaten the less fluorine you will have. In order to eat the glass it has to react with it which diminishes the amount you have in the sample.

Uranium ore is no problem at all. This is because in order to extract any of the uranium or other radioisotopes out of it, you would need some VERY expensive machinery, a ton of chemicals, and a hell of a lot of space. It's not something someone can setup in their backyard and succeed with. (Or do without being noticed by the government). Another interesting thing I read while looking up information about Plutonium is that they are finding the cancer rates in areas around Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl to be 'higher' than typical, but not significantly so. Apparently the cancer rates they are seeing aren't much different than the typical rates found in people of that age and background. It's just certain types of cancers that are more prevalant than a normal population. Interesting data indeed. (I think in the next 15-20 years we'll start to get better data about Chernobyl. Next year is the 20th anniversary I believe (though my dates may be off) and the effects of the genetic mutations and cancers will start showing up in the children and grandchildren of those affected at the time). Another neat thing that was read during my plutonium research was about how cavalier scientists are with depleted uranium. I guess the energy given off by the uranium is ridiculously low. They talk about how even when they enrich it the radiation levels aren't anything to be severely worried about. The big thing I heard was that a sample of uranium ore is far more dangerous than a sample of the metal due to the equillibrium with the daughter products in the ore. That makes me feel a bit safer about having my depleted uranium now.

You could also neutralize the solution by using hydroiodic acid, but that would almost be like cheating as well. (since the KOH would be neutralized to water and KI).

lol. Yeah, I can just imagine how the discussions went. Government Official: "Hey guys, now that we've processed all this uranium for our bombs and power plants and submarines, what are we going to do with all this waste?" Military Scientist: "Well, we could turn some of it into plutonium, but the rest of the world frowns on that. <whispers>Let's do that in secret</whispers>. For the rest of it, how are we going to deal with all that radioactive waste?" Clumbsy Uranium Refiner: "Oh crap. I just opened up a can of the waste uranium and it suddenly caught fire! Is that bad?" Government Official: "Hehe, it went BABOOM and caused a fire. huh-huh-huh. That's cool." Millitary Scientist: "I just had an idea! Why don't we make bullets out of this waste? It would be dirt cheap since it's waste material anyway, plus we'll be able to get rid of our nuclear waste by vaporizing it over those damned middle-eastern countries. Who gives a crap about those people anyway? Sure we might cause cancer and various other problems to anyone involved in the war, but we'll have some pretty cool weapons and an easy way to get rid of our garbage!" Government Official: "Heh-heh. Fire! Fire! Heh-heh. That's cool." President: "So you guys have a way to get rid of nuclear waste, make effective weaponry, and have it cost us nothing? Sure. Go do it. NOW!"

Heh. I'd put Pu up there with Zirconium in terms of its pyrophoric nature. With Zirconium, if it's in a powder form it's very likely to burn quite violently. In the form of the solid metal, it's actually quite stable. With plutonium, in a powder/sponge form it is very likely to catch fire. In a much larger solid-ingot form, it won't catch fire as easily but the intense amount of energy given off by the radiation will bring the temperature up to an amazing level and be quite deadly. For use in batteries and calibration needles, they tend to use PuO2 in order to avoid that pyrophoric problem. Pu is also quite colorful when in a solution. (As can be seen by that link I gave a bit earlier).