Chemical Forums
General Forums => Generic Discussion => Topic started by: jdurg on June 16, 2004, 07:35:19 PM
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Having an element collection gives you a good idea on what the temperature is like outside. You see, just slightly above comfortable your cesium will begin to melt. So if your cesium is solid, then it's fairly nice out. If your gallium begins to melt, then it's hot outside and air conditioning would be nice. If your rubidium starts to melt, then it's hot as fu** outside and you need to cool off quick. Today it was a slightly melted gallium kind of day. ;D
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lol, that observation would only be appreciated here. :)
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About that element collection... how do you store everything and where do you keep it? Is that something you can stash in a pile of boxes in a garage? Just curious cause one day I want a collection too.
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I have a fairly large five-foot wide desk that my computer resides on in my room, and on the left hand side there is a cabinet area with a shelf in the middle. I have my elements all stored in there except for bromine. My bromine is stored in a crush-proof can surrounded by vermiculite in the corner of my closet so that if it escapes, it won't destroy my collection. The cabinets are well vented, and I'll soon be putting an air-conditioner into my room to keep everything cool as well. (Though I'm not worried about the gasses exploding since in order to seal off the ampoules they're in, they had to be heated to very high temperatures to melt the glass. The air temperature here in New England will never get that high, so I don't have to worry about the gas pressure increasing to the point where the ampoules blow).
I would NEVER store an element collection in a bunch of boxes in a garage. It should be stored in a dry, somewhat climate controlled area and be very organized. You would't want your alkali metals getting flooded with water, or your transition metals corroding away. All my elements are in labelled borosilicate glass vials and very well organized in my cabinet. Once I've got my own place, I plan on building a very nice wooden display cabinet and storing them in there. ;D
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I'm gonna start an element collection myself ;D, jdurg, how do you keep your actinide elements? is leaded glass a good option? where can I pick up lead glass like that?
Maybe making a wooden box with ceramic lined compartments for each sample would work :)
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I do not posses any radioactive elements for multiple reasons.
1). I like being fertile. I don't need to be sterilized by constant exposure to radiation.
2). I like being alive. Having a bunch of radioactive metals in and around where you eat, sleep, and live is not a good idea.
3). It is illegal to posses many radioactive elements. If you attempt to buy any quantities of plutonium, for example, not only are you crazy but you can expect to spend many years in prison.
4). Cost. Radioactive elements are not cheap due to all the safety precautions and other procedures needed to purify them.
5). Reactivity. The last thing I want is to have some Uranium oxidize and flake off into my surrounding where I may accidentaly ingest some of it. On the outside, uranium isn't too bad. Internally, uranium is fairly lethal.
6). Storage. What good is an element if it's so nasty that it cannot be displayed? Lead glass is incredibly expensive, and the shipping costs on it are nuts. It would cost a good couple thousand dollars to get a nice lead glass container for your elements.
7). Existance. Many, many, many, many of the radioactive elements will only last for a short time before they have decayed into something else. Do you really want to spend a lot of money on something that will decay into nothing in only a matter of a few years? Also, with many of the radioactive elements if you had enough of it to see it, you'd be dead.
So I do not posses any radioactive elements. My collection is complete at Bismuth. (Minus Tc and Pm). The only "nuclear" elements you could possibly posses in a "pure" form are U-238 and Thorium. Those can be purchased, but again, the radioactivity and reactivity of them makes them very expensive and very difficult to safely display in an element collection. ;D
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You could probably get plutonium, by bombarding uranium powder with alpha radiation in an inert atmosphere so it didn't do its nasty pyrophoric thingy on you ;D
A safe enough sample of americium could be had from a smoke alarm,
tritium from bombarding 6Li with alpha rays,
you could get polonium I think, from bombarding bisthmuth with alpha radiation (again with the alpha...) first forming 210At then decaying into polonium.
Radium paint anyone?
I think promethium is used in certain special paints, but theyre not at all common, or cheap i guess :'(
Any idea about neptunium Jdurg? would alpha bombardment of 239 Pu do it?
I think it's still worth it to collect low halflife elements (within reason lol) such as 3H, just have to replace the samples every so often :D
I suppose you could safely keep your thorium and uranium if you treated them like alkali metals and kept them in sealed glass vials though, apparently thorium is about 2-5% or something in thoriated tungsten welding electrodes, easy to extract by dissolving the electrodes in H2O2, leaving ThO2 and reducing with Mg, Al, Li etc. ;D
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You could probably get plutonium, by bombarding uranium powder with alpha radiation in an inert atmosphere so it didn't do its nasty pyrophoric thingy on you ;D
A safe enough sample of americium could be had from a smoke alarm,
tritium from bombarding 6Li with alpha rays,
you could get polonium I think, from bombarding bisthmuth with alpha radiation (again with the alpha...) first forming 210At then decaying into polonium.
Radium paint anyone?
I think promethium is used in certain special paints, but theyre not at all common, or cheap i guess :'(
Any idea about neptunium Jdurg? would alpha bombardment of 239 Pu do it?
I think it's still worth it to collect low halflife elements (within reason lol) such as 3H, just have to replace the samples every so often :D
I suppose you could safely keep your thorium and uranium if you treated them like alkali metals and kept them in sealed glass vials though, apparently thorium is about 2-5% or something in thoriated tungsten welding electrodes, easy to extract by dissolving the electrodes in H2O2, leaving ThO2 and reducing with Mg, Al, Li etc. ;D
If you were to try and attempt to synthesize any of the transuranic elements, you'll need a good lawyer to get you out of all the trouble you'll be in. You need massive licenses for that stuff, and in many countries it's downright illegal. :P Thorium and Uranium can be obtained in displayable forms, but again, you'd have to spend a LOT of money to safely store and show them off.
With the Americium, yeah there is some in every smoke detector out there, but it is a fantastically small amount. (Only 0.9 MicroCuries per detector). So while you can say that you have it, it's not really something you can display. For me, the point in having an element collection is so that you can see and hold and feel the elements. An element is really no good to me if you can't see it or hold it in your hand. Or if the element is some tiny crystal or two in a sealed vial. I want some size with my elements. ;D That's why I've got large samples of nearly evey element, and those which aren't as massive as I'd like are slowly being upgraded.
So while you can go and get some of the shorter half-life elements, the legality of obtaining/making them is very questionable, and the amount of money needed to responsibly posses and show them off is astronomical. (And a normal collection of the non-radioactive elements ain't cheap. heh. I must have spent close to three thousand dollars on my collection thus far. :o)
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I wouldn't probably get caught if I were to do all the synthesis myelf though, but as for the Am, better have it than not eh ;D
What about neptunium, I have heard that there are nonradioactive isotopes of Np, is this right?
or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
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I wouldn't probably get caught if I were to do all the synthesis myelf though, but as for the Am, better have it than not eh ;D
What about neptunium, I have heard that there are nonradioactive isotopes of Np, is this right?
or am I barking up the wrong tree here?
I think yer barking up the wrong tree. :P Bismuth is the last element with a stable isotope. Anything past Bismuth has zero stable isotopes. (Actually, even Bismuth isn't stable. I think it was recently discovered that it actually has a half-life of a few billion, billion years. lol).
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uranium is stable enough, you can usually find uranium as glazes in pottery from the 1950s.
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uranium is stable enough, you can usually find uranium as glazes in pottery from the 1950s.
It's still radioactive though, and long term exposure to the radiation will give you cancer. Plus, it's decay products are very unstable and emit high levels of radiation. That's precisely why a sample of isotopically pure U-238 is MUCH safer to posses than unrefined Uranium or Uranium ore. (Then again, that's like saying light cigarettes are healthier than regular cigarettes. lol) In the future, I may decide to acquire some U-238 once I can afford a good lead lined box with a lead-glass window on it. Sadly, the cost of all that would be astronomically high. :(
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Isn't the U238 the weapons grade stuff? I thought there was no way you could legally possess that.
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Uranium 235 would be the bomb grade stuff, just out of interest, the would the old hiroshima-type gun design nuke work for both uranium and plutonium> or is it specific to uranium?
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Uranium 235 would be the bomb grade stuff, just out of interest, the would the old hiroshima-type gun design nuke work for both uranium and plutonium> or is it specific to uranium?
The design is independent of the nuclear "fuel." It will work for any fissionable material. The object of a nuclear bomb is to take two subcritical masses and combine them into a solitary critical mass before the explosion blows everything apart. You could use any fissionable material in the gun-type design and it would work with horrificly frightening results.
Also, U-238 is not fissionable. U-235 is the fissionable material used in weapons and power plants Corvette.
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Ah yes, I get the two of them mixed up quite a bit.
About the gun-design nuke, I think the main wad of uranium also has beryllium or something like that in it. Right smack in the middle. When the pellet is shot out of the gun, it hits the main ball, and somehow lets the beryllium (or whatever) do its thing and emit neutrons. Gives the reaction a good kick in the pants, and since you now have a critical mass... let the fireworks begin.
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Ah yes, I get the two of them mixed up quite a bit.
About the gun-design nuke, I think the main wad of uranium also has beryllium or something like that in it. Right smack in the middle. When the pellet is shot out of the gun, it hits the main ball, and somehow lets the beryllium (or whatever) do its thing and emit neutrons. Gives the reaction a good kick in the pants, and since you now have a critical mass... let the fireworks begin.
I'm fairly certain that is incorrect, because when a mass goes critical, it's instantaneous. It's not like a reaction which slowly gets going and then goes "BOOM." As soon as criticality is achieve, the fission takes place so fast that there is no time for anything to absorb a neutron and convert into neptunium, then decay into plutonium, then fission. Generally speaking, the area around where the "fuel" combines is composed of U-238 shielding since U-238 is a VERY good neutron/radiation blocker. If a neutron escapes the fuel, it will be bounced right back in there. Some of the U-238 will indeed turn into plutonium, but the metal will have been vaporized so quickly that it's really inconsequential. Another reason why I think the Be core of the bomb is false is because in order for criticality to be achieved, all of the mass has to be in one confined area. By putting in a Be core, you're lessing the chance that the subcritical masses will form a critical mass, and increasing the chance that you'll have a very expensive dud. :P
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well that sounds logical, but I remember reading something about a core in some book on nuclear weapons. not that books always tell the truth. now isn't it with a nuclear weapon, once you have a critical mass you want as much fission to go on before the explosion blows whats left of the fuel all over the place? I think the first nuclear weapon only had something like 5% of fuel that went through fission... could be wrong though.
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http://people.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb5.htm
Both gun-triggered fission bombs and implosion-triggered fission bombs use a neutron generator such as a beryllium/polonium generator to start a chain reaction. Just because something is a supercritical mass doesn’t mean it just blows up, it means it can sustain a chain reaction.
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apparently thorium is about 2-5% or something in thoriated tungsten welding electrodes
actually you'd be better off using lantern mantles. just torch them all and reduce with an alkali metal or alkaline earth metal.
as for your neptunium problem, i'm here to help with my handy chart of the nuclides published by a handful of professional nuclear chemists/physicists to whom i know ;D
alpha bombardment of Pu 239 would be certainly sketchy considering you'd get curium 243 which has a half-life of 29.1 years. the Np isotope you are looking for is 237 as its half-life is 2.14*10^6 years and it releases a bit less gamma than say 234 which is just insane. fortunately, you can get to Np237 from Am241 although it'll take you a great deal of time. alpha bombaerdment of Pa235 wouldn't work because its half-life is 24.4 minutes... there is (somewhat) good news. you could do what david hahn did and bombard thorium 232 with neutrons, have the 233 decay to protactinium 233 and instead of letting it decay to fissionable uranium 233 just alpha bombard it to Np 237. depending on how well thorium 233 and protactinium 233 accept alpha particles, this may even work. best of luck
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The thing is, you can't just sit an alpha particle emitter by a target source and expect the alpha particles to be absorbed. The positive charge on the alpha particles and the positive charge of the nucleus means that the alpha particles need to be accelerated to massive speeds in order to overcome the nuclear repulsion. With neutrons, since they are neutral particles there doesn't need to be any "nuclear force" to be overcome. That's why you can just sit a nuetron emitter by a target source and have the target absorb neutrons. With alpha particles, you really need to figure out a way to increase their energy if you are going to get any appreciable nuclear reactions.
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Could a cyclotron be used to accelerate alpha or beta radiation instead of electrons by substituting a radiation source instead of an electron beam in the center?
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Could a cyclotron be used to accelerate alpha or beta radiation instead of electrons by substituting a radiation source instead of an electron beam in the center?
I belive that's what they use at Los Alamos National Laboratories in their nuclear research. I think their particle accelerator is about 6 km in circumference. Definitely not something you can setup in your basement lab. ;D
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One of the first cyclotrons was only an inch in diameter, I just read this today, not powerfull admittedly, but a cyclotron up to about 40 m wouldn't be impossible where I live (or at least near by).
Besides, say if SWIM was to attempt building one, and doing experiments with elements with obscene half lives, would the power, within limits and so long as the new nuclides were forming, actually matter, the cyclotron could merely be left on for XXX amount of time while SWIM patiently waited for results ;D