vanillity Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 hey I'm a teenage kid and dont know a lot of what I'm talking about or where to ask but... how do I tell how much/big 5 grams of gallium would be? I want to buy some but not if its not as big as I'm thinking.
akcapr Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 i dont think u could buy 5 dollars worth it would be like alot more than that even for the minimal size, but 5$ worth would probably be around the size of a raisin when solid, correct me if im wrong.
H2SO4 Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 becuase gallium is elite as hell ecoli. Plain and simople. IT MELTS IN YOUR HAND. How can anything be any cooler than that. But ya galliums expensive try ebay ttheres probaly someone selling some. I know they have sodium and crap their but i have never bought any. Ive bought plently of chems on ebay though.
woelen Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 Also a word of warning with gallium. It wets everything like hell, when it is molten. It is not like mercury, which forms little globules, which do not stick to anything. Gallium is more like water. Your skin will become wetted by it. It forms a kind of silvery layer, which is VERY hard to remove. And trust me, even 1 gram of gallium is sufficient to make you look like a robot or alien from one of those cheap and ugly SF-movies from the seventies. I certainly would not recommend playing around with gallium like this. You may regret it. One positive thing: gallium is not very toxic, so, even if you look like an alien, you do not have to worry about health effects. IIRC the density of gallium is somewhere around 6 to 7 grams per ml, so, an amount of 5 grams will not be very much. You'll have a piece at the size of a small marble.
YT2095 Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 And it`ll also form an alloy with many metals at room temperature, so keep it away from anything valuable!
[w00t] Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 Kinda reminds me of when i played with Silver Nitrate at school. My whole hand went brown/black for 2 weeks. Gallium is rather intresting. Wood's Metal unitednuclear sells looks better, you can probably cast it on your skin but im not sure about how bad its lead content is. Anyone have a video of NaK reacting with water?
insane_alien Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 ahh silver nitrate fun stuff that i got a nice new stain from that today. just look up the density of gallium and then you can work out what volume you'll get with 5 grams. i don'r expect it to be much.
jdurg Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 Head over to http://www.elementsales.com and take a look at the amounts of Gallium that Dave Hamric has for sale. The prices aren't that bad and you get a decent amount. In my element collection (http://www.chemicalforums.com/~jdurg/FullPTP.zip) I think I have about 10 mL or so of Gallium, I believe. I'll have to look up exactly how much I have a bit later when I get home from work/golf.
vanillity Posted April 19, 2006 Author Posted April 19, 2006 well thanks for your help, yeah I think it'd be awesome to have a metal that melts in my hand, but $30 for a small marble in size I may reconsider, Is there anything else like gallium thats non toxic and melts at room temp? I guess it's also used in a lot of super computers (deep blue especially) I don't know EXACTLY how but I think in place of silicon EDIT (woelen): Merged two posts.
woelen Posted April 19, 2006 Posted April 19, 2006 It probably is used in the form of gallium arsenide. GaAs is a semiconductor, which allows faster circuits to be built than silicon. It is, however, much more expensive and it is harder to obtain a large component density. So, it only is used in places where speed is an absolute premium and where cost is a less important criterion.
vanillity Posted April 20, 2006 Author Posted April 20, 2006 well I found some for pretty cheap ($50 for 30g) I'm also considering buying some white phosphorus and potassium, after all, I am a teenage kid...
H2SO4 Posted April 20, 2006 Posted April 20, 2006 If you want lithium you can take apart some Li energizers and youll find a foil. It gets hot if you hold it in your fingers! Duh. I got a good piece of foil, which i threw in water because i couldnt resist. You can get a rather large piece of Na on ebay for 50 bucks. And too bad Hg is toxic.
Darkblade48 Posted April 20, 2006 Posted April 20, 2006 well I found some for pretty cheap ($50 for 30g) I'm also considering buying some white phosphorus and potassium, after all, I am a teenage kid... I would do some more research if I were you, before coming into possession of white phosphorus.
woelen Posted April 20, 2006 Posted April 20, 2006 well I found some for pretty cheap ($50 for 30g) I'm also considering buying some white phosphorus and potassium, after all, I am a teenage kid... You will have a hard time finding a supplier for white P and potassium metal. If, however, you find some, please do not simply buy these things. White P is VERY toxic (50 mg may kill you, even 5 times as toxic as cyanide). It also ignites when the whether is somewhat warm. I have a small piece of white P for my element collection and while I was transferring it from one container to another it immediately started smoking, as soon as I took it out of its container. This was really scaring ! Potassium is another dangerous beast, which will certainly bite you badly, when you do not know how to handle it correctly. It is MUCH more reactive than sodium metal and reacts almost explosively with water. It also easily ignites in air, making an almost impossible to quench fire. Besides that, it can form peroxides on storage, which are insidiously explosive.
jdurg Posted April 20, 2006 Posted April 20, 2006 If he's purchasing the White Phosphorus and Potassium from http://www.elementsales.com then there's really nothing to worry about. The White P is sold as a tiny amount sealed within a glass ampoule which is sealed within a resin casting. There's virtually no way to get it out. If he's purchasing potassium, then he better be prepared to drive and pick it up as Dave does NOT ship the alkali metals.
YT2095 Posted April 20, 2006 Posted April 20, 2006 I was interested in the Mercury (esp as he does PayPal) but it`s well over priced! and I`m not sure he`ll send to the UK now that you`ve said that does he?
jdurg Posted April 20, 2006 Posted April 20, 2006 I believe he ships internationally, but with things like Mercury it gets a bit iffy because mercury can't be transported in an airline. (Since if the mercury leaks out it will eat right through the aluminum body of the plane which would be bad). For the price, well the man does have to make a profit somehow. If you're curious about whether he'll ship overseas, just shoot off an e-mail and ask.
woelen Posted April 20, 2006 Posted April 20, 2006 If you want mercury, try http://www.kno3.com. They sell it at 380 gram quantities for a very reasonable price and they are UK (Scotland) based.
vanillity Posted April 21, 2006 Author Posted April 21, 2006 I know the dangers of both, there were some stupid kids awhile back at our highschool that tried putting a potassium block in a pool. you already know what happens next.
H2SO4 Posted April 21, 2006 Posted April 21, 2006 my eighth grade science teacher called me a month ago (im a ninth grader now) to ask me if I stole her large jarred up collection of Na she has in her back room. that scared the shiznitt out of me. I guess i was just stereotyped out from the rest of the group. But still some fag boy stole her sodium and that hella pisses me off. I personaly think she lost it. Anyway I dont know why i even wrote this here
vanillity Posted April 21, 2006 Author Posted April 21, 2006 yeah... by the way, whats used in alkaline batteries?
encipher Posted April 24, 2006 Posted April 24, 2006 A good alloy that is both non-toxic and has a low melting point is Field's metal. It melts at around 62 degrees Celcius and contains bismuth, indium, and tin. I don't know about pricing though.. i recall buying like a foot of that stuff for 40 bucks. Not too cheap.. something a bit cheaper would be bismuth.. although its melting point isnt that of room temperature (272 degrees celcius) you can still melt it over your stove and you can do some pretty cool stuff with it. Make crystals of it etc..
YT2095 Posted April 24, 2006 Posted April 24, 2006 yeah... by the way, whats used in alkaline batteries? Potassium Hydroxide and Zinc are the main players in these types.
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