A great day for my collection!

[jdurg]

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.

[YT2095]

Cerium`s great fun!

 

have you tried rubbing a peice of it on a file?

it`s the same stuff used in lighter flints (albeit as an alloy)

[jdurg]

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.

[YT2095]

forgive my ignorance here, but after a certain mass, shouldn`t the counts per min remain at a constant avg?

 

lord help me if these lead boxes still have Pu testing needles in them or whatever was supossed to in them in way of Pu. I expect the counter will go ape sh!t.

[Gilded]

"forgive my ignorance here, but after a certain mass, shouldn`t the counts per min remain at a constant avg?"

 

And why would this be?

[YT2095]

for the same reason Caesium beam clocks use the count as a perfect timer, the quantity use (if sufficient) will remain at the same count/frequency.

[jdurg]

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.)

[Gilded]

Note to self (and owners of magnesium bars): Burning solid and thick Mg is hard. Really hard. Tried to burn the other bar today with a butane lighter (probably somewhere near 1000 Celsius), the poor lighter didn't stand a chance. But soon I'll buy a 1600 Celsius pocket torch, and then we'll see who has the best laugh! <Insert psychotic laughter here>

[jdurg]

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.

[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.

[Gilded]

*Sigh* I wish I could get 0.5g of DU somewhere under 95$.