A great day for my collection!

[jdurg]

This has been a FANTASTIC day for me. I came into work today and the person in charge of the payouts for my football pool had a nice surprise for me in my mailbox. I wasn't expecting to get paid for my winnings until about March, but today I found my check for $535 dollars. Also, one of my many element dealers that I frequently talk with is able to get me a troy ounce of Iridium for a very good price, so with my winnings I'll be able to get myself a nicely polished 35 gram lump of 99.9+% pure Iridium metal. Finally, I found out today that I will probably be able to add my first pure radioactive sample to my table: Depleted Uranium. Somebody I know does a lot of dealing with E-Bay and had mentioned to one of his customers that he had a friend who collected elements. That customer was then able to send him some depleted uranium turnings that are about 95% U-238 and 5% Molybdenum. My friend is going to get a geiger counter to verify the radioactivity, and then he'll let me get a sample of the Uranium if it's legit. In the meantime, I need to get myself a lead lined box to keep it in, and perhaps pick up a cheap geiger counter. (I could ask my dad to let me borrow one since he works at a nuclear power plant, but he'd probably freak out if I told him that I have some pure uranium). So all in all, today's been a great day.

[ed84c]

out of interest how old are you?

 

also how much does this cost?

[jdurg]

I turn 25 later this year, and the Iridium will cost be about 390 dollars for a about 1.20 troy ounces. The uranium is still up in the air. I know that I will just want to get one of the 0.5 gram turnings, so I still don't know how much that will cost. (The turnings have a pretty nice surface area, so you can definitely see the metal, but they are also pretty small in mass so the radioactivity is 'relatively' minimized).

[budullewraagh]

grats on your purchases. out of curiosity how much have you spent on elements?

[jdurg]

grats on your purchases. out of curiosity how much have you spent on elements?

 

 

Hmmm. Let me think about it. I've spent over 1000 on my precious metals (Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium, Rhodium, Ruthenium, Osmium, Iridium, and Rhenium) alone, plus quite a bit on my other elements. So in total, I've probably put over $4,000 into my collection over the past four years that I've been collecting.

[Giacomo525]

not bad, cheaper than collecting politicians...

[Crash]

Ah, ive just (well several months ago) started making my own element collection, ive got 35 elements so far..... how are you containing the radioactive substances? and do you think you'll ever get thorium?

[ed84c]

how did u get 35 is so short time?

 

I started at a similar time, and apart from regular elements (Al, C etc.) i have only got Berillyium as well.

[CMN]

Does anyone have a near complete or complete collection of elements?

And when you collect them what do you do with them? Do you display them in cases or what? Is it not kinda dangerous to have so many different types of

elemnts near eachother???

[jdurg]

If you do a search on the web for The Wooden Periodic Table Table, you'll come across a website by Theodore Gray who has a very impressive collection. He has a sample of just about every element you can expect to have a sample of. I myself have a sample of every element that has a stable isotope. (Except pure fluorine. I only have a salt of that). I will also be getting some Uranium in a few months once all the details and pricing are worked out. What do I do with my collection? Well, it's kind of like a coin collection. You just have them and are happy to know that you own them, and if you'd like to display them you surely can. All of my elements are in some type of container to help keep them labelled and safely stored. The really dangerous ones require special storage such as sealed glass ampoules or shielding from the light. For the Uranium, while it will only be a small 0.5 gram turning of it, I will have it stored in a lead lined box which is about 3"x3"x2" in dimension. There will really be nothing to worry about in terms of radiation. Having an element collection isn't any more dangerous than having a collection of guns, or even having a gun in general. In the hands of the stupid and ignorant, it can be very dangerous. In the hands of people who know what they're getting into, it's perfectly safe. Small quantities are also good idea. You don't need two pounds of sodium or bromine to see its properties. A few grams of each is plenty enough to see its physical representation. My ultimate goal is to build a display cabinet where I can have it divided like a periodic table with a compartment for each element. Sadly, I can't do that until I move out of my parents' home and I frankly don't have the money to do that. (I even talked with a real estate agent to try and look for a very small house or condominium I could buy, and she laughed and said that on my salary there is no way I can afford my own place).

 

Anyway, if you want to see my collection, it can be downloaded from http://www.chemicalforums.com/~jdurg/FullPTP.zip

[badchad]

Sounds dumbn, but here at my University they have plastic bins for radioactive waste. Those might be nice since you coiuld see through the case and store radiation in it.

 

It's interesting to me because the radioactive materials the university receives are tightly regulated. In this day and age I'm a tad surprised you can get these materials.

[jdurg]

It's all a matter of quantity. If you have small amounts, like the .5 gram samples my friend obtained, the government really has nothing to worry about. It would take a great deal of time and a great deal of money to make anything even remotely dangerous out of that. Depleted uranium has no potential for producing fissionable material on its own, and anything that could lead to the generation of fissionable material is regulated. So the government doesn't care, and rightfully so, about a few grams of depeleted uranium shavings out there.

[HNO3]

I got Thorium from old propane gas lantern mantles. I'm still in the purification process.

[Gilded]

"Depleted uranium has no potential for producing fissionable material on its own"

 

There is a disintegration branch for U-238. I recall about 0.0005% of overall atoms going through spontaneous fission, while the rest goes through alpha decay. So it has very, very very very little potential, but potential anyway.

 

Btw, iridium's great. And so is depleted uranium (although I currently have only ore). But when I turn 18 I'm going to buy uranium and thorium pure metal samples from RGB, and probably radium and promethium too.

[budullewraagh]

aaaah careful man. dont get cancer or anything

[jdurg]

Thanks for the concerns, but I have a greater chance of getting cancer from the cigarettes I quit smoking than from a 0.5 gram sample of depleted Uranium. The radiation given off from Uranium isn't all that vicious. Uranium ore is actually more dangerous than uranium metal due to the daughter products of the naturally occuring uranium. The presence of radium and other high intensity gamma emitters in uranium ore makes it incredibly dangerous. Uranium is actually a good source at blocking harmful radiation. Also, with the density of uranium metal so high, 0.5 grams is only a thin shaving of it about 2 cm long and maybe half a cm wide. I've also got a small box which will be lead lined just for precautionary reasons, but in reality I could probably put it in a thick glass vial and wouldn't have to worry too much.

 

Amazingly enough, my naturally occuring sample of rubidium is pretty 'hot' so to speak. Natural rubidium is made up of about 72% Rb85 and 28% Rb87. Rb87 is radioactive with a half-life of 4.75x10^10 years. It decays via Beta decay to Sr87. I had read somewhere that if you take some pure rubidium and place it by some unexposed film it will expose the film after a few months. Of course I had to test this theory out. So I took a few pieces of unexposed polaroid film and placed one in a far corner of my room, and the other one right underneath my rubidium ampoule. I let them sit there for a month. I then went and 'developed' the film. The one in the far corner was not exposed at all. It was just 'nothing'. The one by the rubidium, however, had a nice outline of the ampoule and while it was fuzzy, you could see that it was exposed. So that was really neat to see. (I tried to scan the images, but the 'exposed' film was just too faint to scan very cleanly).

[Crash]

how did u get 35 is so short time?

 

By spending my weekends at the shops buying all different sorts of chemicals and then converting them to there elemental form, started with making H2(g) by electrolysis and then i stored it, not knowing what to do with it then decided after reading an old thread on this forum (those collections you can buy) to start making my own collection..having trouble thinking of viable ways to get Li,Na,Ca i thought of electrolysis of seawater but i dont know all the details yet

[budullewraagh]

get Li from batteries. get Na by electrolyzing the fused chloride. for Ca, electrolyze the fused chloride, altho it will get a bit nasty

[Crash]

che che man, by the end of next week i will definatley be sitting at 38:)

[budullewraagh]

be careful with electrolyzing alkaline earths and alkaline below sodium

[jdurg]

On the bright side, you should be able to generate some chlorine at the same time.

[Crash]

already got chlorine gas, can i electrolyse ZnCl? to form Zn(s) and Cl(g) graphite still the best and most affordable electrodes here? side note, what would be a good catalyst for lowering the activation energy for Zn + S?

[Gilded]

Hmmh, I guess I'd rather make even sodium or potassium myself rather than gasses like hydrogen or chlorine, they're eeeevil. At least the ones you can't see. Also, I'd like to add that I personally have came to the conclusion that the only exception I'll make with the "museum/lab grade rule" is with extremely short-lived elements (which means that a uranium block is a good sample of radon for me, but a nail from a hardware store isn't a good sample for iron ). And by the way, toss any New Year's tin out of your collection's tin locker if you're interested in pure samples as I am. They usually have great amounts of lead and bismuth and who knows what in addition to tin.

[budullewraagh]

im resistent to chlorine:\

if it's remotely dangerous you'll see the greenish-yellow colour of the gas

 

i'd rather not make potassium. it's really nasty to electrolyze. the hydroxide and chloride spit and hiss and all that, launching molten balls of potassium around. many of them catch fire as well

[jdurg]

The one good thing about the halogens and other toxic gases like HCN and hydrogen sulfide is that the human nose is incredibly sensitive to them. You can smell cyanide gas, hydrogen sulfide gas, chlorine, bromine, and iodine long before they reach toxic concentrations. The only problem is that many of these toxic gases will 'anesthetize' your ability to smell so shortly thereafter you are unable to smell them. (This is somewhat gross, but it explains why after a short while you can't smell a nasty fart, but if someone else walks into the room they can quickly notice it. )

 

With chlorine, you easily smell the chlorine gas escaping from a bottle of bleach, but it is such a vanishingly small quantity that it poses no danger. Same thing from a swimming pool. In college I did an inventory of my school's chemical supplies and spent a few hours down by the cyanides and thiocyanites(sp?). I could easily smell the bitter almond odor coming from them and had a nasty headache for a few hours afterwards. In my toxicology class in college, my nose actually helped avert a major problem. We were doing analysis of arsenic poisoning samples, and had to do some procedure which generated arsine gas. We were told before hand to do all of this in the fume hood due to the toxicity of arsine. The professor also mentioned to us that it had a garlic-like odor. Well, halfway through the lab I noticed a VERY faint odor of garlic. I told the professor, but he didn't smell anything. However, he looked around the lab and saw one 20 mL vial which was out in the open by accident. It was indeed generating a little bit of arsine. So we quickly put it back in the fume hood and all was averted. So when working with chemicals, it's crucial to have a good sense of smell. This is why I always avoided doing anything potentially 'dangerous' when I had a stuffed up nose. Removing your sense of smell can lead to major trouble.