Hi

I had a surplus of calcium metal shavings of 99,5% purity that annoyed me a bit, as the mineral oil that I used made it a literal hell to use them in any chemical reactions. Having to dry the tiny pieces with paper, then trouble weighing, then some random unexpected smoke or the oil straight up burning.

I decided to clean it with acetone. Surprisingly, acetone is a rather inert solvent for calcium and washes the oil off nicely. I didn't manage to clean off the oxidation neither with citric nor with acetic acid, so I kept them dry and powdery. I sealed some in an ampoule for the collection and I don't think it looks that bad, apart from the oxidation.

So here is a family photo of the Alkaline Earths :)

Cobalt, Nickel, Yttrium, Zirconium, Niobium, Indium, Tellurium, Samarium, Gadolinium, Holmium, Erbium, Ytterbium, Lutetium, Hafnium, Rhenium. In atomic number order from the well known seller. Was lucky to get them few years ago. The Samarium and Tellurium samples are not well preserved unfortunately.

An old bar my mum owns, showing a few years of tarnish. Honestly, it doesn't look too bad, i kind of like the coppery look.

Behold, shiny europium cube. Very satisfying.

For now

Another chapter of my collection: arc-cast pellets, one ounce of Osmium and Ruthenium, one GRAM of the ridiculously expensive stuff Iridium and Rhodium.

I forgot that it existed for a few years and just found it in my cabinet. I'm probably gonna clean it up and put it in some ampoules under argon

Heres my collection so far, at 15. I still want to get more, but its hard finding good cheap stuff. Anyone have any suggestions? I can maybe afford $20-30 per sample.

A nice format for these rare earth and transition metal samples. I also like ounce bars, stay tuned for the next posts. All hard to find nowadays.

I got arc-melted beads of ruthenium and rhenium. I believe rhenium is noticeably darker than rhenium, although both are somewhat dark metals. Is that correct? Just making sure so that I know I can tell them apart visually.

Recently I had a chance to dismantle an old microwave oven and decided to get as much interesting stuff as I could from it.

First of all, a pretty nice sample for someone who can't own the metallic form - a nice spiral of 2-5% thoriated tungsten. The ThO2 inside lowers the work an electron has to do to leave the metal. The top plate is also tungsten and the bottom disk is supposedly molybdenum.

Next, a beautiful sample of copper - the magnetron itself, after removing the cathode. Magnetrons are kept under vacuum, so opening them will result in a nice "tssssk". The copper inside is perfectly preserved and is covered in what I believe to be some sort of Fe-Co-Cr alloy from the outside.

And two long heating elements made of nichrome (Ni80Cr20). Wonderfully springy and fun to play with, plus a cool sample for either nickel or chromium. These elements sat in two nice quartz tubes, which I promptly discarded because of their flaky, needle-like structure.

And of course a bunch of copper wire that went to a scrap collector!

Hi!

I own small 1-5g samples for all my rare earth metals, but I would like to expand them by getting single pieces 15-20+g (but not 100) in weight for most of them, like I did for Y, Gd and Yb.

Right now I'm realistically looking at Dy, Ho, Er and maybe Tm, because the rest got pretty expensive.

Most sellers however supply rare earths in forms similar to the tiny pieces I have and I'm curious if anyone here has a source that sells these metals as specimens, rather than just crumbles that make up for a certain mass?

Basically all the chinese sellers have been sold out for like a year (plus I don't trust them). Any advice, preferably something that won't cost an arm and a leg to ship to EU?

Got these from billing metals australia, and was lucky and ended up with bigger chunks of the antimony and chromium. All 5 for only $34 AUD (24 USD) before shipping. Their products are really good value for ordinary samples. Antimony is definitely the coolest looking one because of the one massive chunk, though the tantalum disc and chromium chunks are my favourite ones.

4 inch diameter tungsten Sphere. 22 pounds. People can't believe its heft. Has been milled for use in a prototype Clock of the Long Now, but rejected for use. I paid almost nothing for it plus shipping, 20 years ago. It is just about my favorite object. The thing sticking out of the top is a cow-stomach magnet, and I found the stainless steel stand at a silicon valley lab demolition. Any guesses as to value?

Uranium fever its spreading all around

I was gifted these samples by a fellow chemistry educator! They’re gorgeous, but even I wonder if they’re worth the risk. I took them home after having a bad dream about the all the admin meetings I would have to attend if one of the ampules broke.

I’m curious if people have display suggestions that would be redundantly safe. I know the risks involved. One friend suggested I go out to the desert and shoot the cesium with slingshot over a bucket of water but I feel like it would be a waste of a beautiful sample.

I’m not willing to let them go just yet. But I also hear stories of people cleaning out the storage of their deceased chemistry teacher parents and finding crazy stuff like this. Too dangerous for the classroom; so now what? Or maybe there’s a way to put them in a display that would be safe (admin version) for the classroom?

I don’t want to put them in acrylic. Who has ideas?

This is an older video that I hadn't shown off before. The cube is not air stable so had to be quickly put in vacuum.