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But what would I do with it?
May. 17th, 2005 07:07 pmI've just discovered the vendor 'emovendo' on ebay.
He sells Weird Metals; for example, eleven ounces of 99.9%-pure erbium. There are a few other vendors; put in "elementname element" in the box and you'll get a fair number of hits for most reasonable materials (though not thorium or uranium; I guess ebay has a blanket 'no radioactives').
As someone who learned the periodic table aged nine to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon, I'm sorely tempted. It even says "use some of the pieces for experiments and some for display".
But what experiments can one sensibly do with common-to-moderately-odd household equipment, chemicals obtainable without being arrested on assumption of amphetamine synthesis, and three ounces of solid erbium?
A few oddities: rhenium is surprisingly cheap for an element that near platinum, though maybe I remember its rarity as exaggerated in, umm, the Doc Smith novel with the metal dowser and the planet of flying superalloy-clawed tiger-monsters. Rhodium is absurdly expensive (forty quid per gram, so say 4x gold), ruthenium the cheapest of the platinum-groups, with a factor ten between them.
Even-Z rare earths are no more expensive than lead in sufficient bulk: a quarter-pound of neodymium is twenty quid. Scandium is more expensive per-gram than gold despite being five thousand times as abundant in Earth's crust, basically because there's so little demand for it.
He sells Weird Metals; for example, eleven ounces of 99.9%-pure erbium. There are a few other vendors; put in "elementname element" in the box and you'll get a fair number of hits for most reasonable materials (though not thorium or uranium; I guess ebay has a blanket 'no radioactives').
As someone who learned the periodic table aged nine to while away a lazy Sunday afternoon, I'm sorely tempted. It even says "use some of the pieces for experiments and some for display".
But what experiments can one sensibly do with common-to-moderately-odd household equipment, chemicals obtainable without being arrested on assumption of amphetamine synthesis, and three ounces of solid erbium?
A few oddities: rhenium is surprisingly cheap for an element that near platinum, though maybe I remember its rarity as exaggerated in, umm, the Doc Smith novel with the metal dowser and the planet of flying superalloy-clawed tiger-monsters. Rhodium is absurdly expensive (forty quid per gram, so say 4x gold), ruthenium the cheapest of the platinum-groups, with a factor ten between them.
Even-Z rare earths are no more expensive than lead in sufficient bulk: a quarter-pound of neodymium is twenty quid. Scandium is more expensive per-gram than gold despite being five thousand times as abundant in Earth's crust, basically because there's so little demand for it.
