But what would I do with it?
May. 17th, 2005 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fivemackI'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.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-17 10:53 pm (UTC)Current world production of scandium oxide is in the 2,000 kg per year range. Current consumption is in the 5,000 kg per year range, and growing quickly. The balance is met from Soviet era stocks. Obviously these will run out at some point, a few years hence.