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 Replies: 23 / Views: 6,108 |
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Valued Member
United States
456 Posts |
Awesome info Sap. Thank you!
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
548 Posts |
What do you suppose would happen if you drank it?
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Valued Member
United States
239 Posts |
Hm.. Well with a warm body temperature, it should remain liquid until it expels or you die.
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Pillar of the Community
United Kingdom
4208 Posts |
You would probably survive, if you went to hospital. that being said, the MSDS doesn't list much under the ingestion section. Gastrointestinal irritant - perhaps you'd be alright afterwards.
Gallium is funky. You can buy spoons made of it which melt when you stir your coffee. Magic trick stuff, mostly. Its swollen in price way too much, I reckon - as people say, its got no use but as a parlor trick. Mercury can be frozen using dry ice or liquid nitrogen (I believe both are obtainable stateside) and this can do the same - albeit a bit more dangerously.
I tell you what though - if you could mint designs onto gallium rounds(easy to do as they are soft but difficult to keep temp down I'm guessing) then they could be pretty collectable. They'd melt in many place, even inside a slab. Would represent a cool investment - they'd get more and more collectable as global warming sets in!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
807 Posts |
The importance of gallium, outside of some applications in laboratory equipment, lies in its use in so-called III-V semiconducting materials, such as gallium arsenide & gallium arsenide antimonide. These materials are "tailorable" for properties that natural semiconductors such as germanium or selenium, or simple doped silicon, do not have. These materials allow the creation of transistors for microwave amplification (used in satellite TV receivers & cellular telephones), short-wavelength laser diodes (used in Blu-Ray players), & a variety of other devices, demand for which is growing every year. There has even been talk of widespread deployment of high-efficiency GaAs-based photovoltaics (already used on spacecraft) for electric generation, although that is a terrible idea for any number of reasons.
As a result, it's hard to set a limit on potential world consumption of this element. Not unlike the so-called rare earths, it's not terribly rare in the crust of our planet, but its extraction is non-trivial. It doesn't have any real ores, being produced only as a by-product. Helium has the same problem â€" the government dumping its Strategic Helium Reserve onto the market has kept prices low enough that natural-gas producers haven't bothered to install helium separators.
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
Now here's why you shouldn't hold it in your hand: low surface tension. Mercury beads, which makes it a lot more fun - but it is toxic and volatile (any liquid evaporates over time, so always keep mercury completely enclosed!). Gallium isn't as toxic, but its surface tension is low enough to stick to glass. So you can actually paint little mirrors out of the stuff - but your hand is full of tiny ridges for it to get stuck in, so holding liquid gallium in your hand will end up staining your skin. Reportedly, this will turn your hand either gray or brown for weeks, and water won't help (gallium isn't very soluble). So keep your hands off it!
On that element coins page, most of the really nasty stuff is enclosed in resin - like thallium, which is about as bad as arsenic but less famous. But I wouldn't buy anything that you aren't familiar with before at least Googling it.
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
3670 Posts |
I think like this gallium or Rhodium or any of these liquid based metals should be kept in a sealed container always and put it away and forget about it like any pmz.....
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3670 Posts |
This link here seems to be the best place to buy these rare metals at the lowest wholesale price. And again most of these most rare metals have more of a place in a science lab or product research and development department, but that does not mean one cant invest in them. And you can bet a very low number of the pop buys and invests in such rare metals.... Most of us buy silver and gold and overlook platinum and palladium. Well I can promise you those two markets are great to tap into as very little competition. Try and find abundant 1-10 platinum rounds on ebay, it does not happen. Way scarce shy of 200.... http://www.rotometals.com/99-99-Pur...ice-s/67.htmEdited by Silverhawk74
08/01/2013 10:57 pm
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
2805 Posts |
Quote:
I think like this gallium or Rhodium or any of these liquid based metals should be kept in a sealed container always and put it away and forget about it like any pmz..... Rhodium is a standard platinum group metal with a high melting point, like ruthenium and rhenium. Yes, they're hard to keep track of - but all are rare in the Earth's crust and worth watching (especially because they have a few real applications). |
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Pillar of the Community
Japan
666 Posts |
do plutonium and uranium melt in man's hand?
want to see youtube video ))
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Pillar of the Community
Canada
746 Posts |
I've never heard of gallium staining skin or being toxic, but I have heard that gallium nitrate (a common variant), has anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial properties. It's used to treat horses for navicular disease. When diluted in distilled water, it is used as a treatment/remedy for arthritis, pain, and even frozen shoulder. It's also used in oral meds & topical creams for arthritis, as well as dental technology. Here's a link to some interesting research: http://george-eby-research.com/html/arthritis.pdf |
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21788 Posts |
Plutonium does NOT melt in your hand. IT melts your hand instead!
ALL isotopes of Plutonium are dangerously radioactive, as well as dangerously poisonous.
Pure U238 reasonably OK, but I would stay from it, because U235 is present with it, in natural occurence.
Uranium mining requires safeguards but is only present in minerals in relatively trace amounts, so that Uranium mining can be comparatively safe.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
807 Posts |
The radioactive element polonium (isotopic weight 210), formed in the same decay chain which produces radium (isotopic weights including 222), is so energetic that even a sample the size of a pinhead generates enough heat to melt itself. Very few substances are so active.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3670 Posts |
Uranium 238 is what they use to make some of the most powerful bombs known to man correct? Via the hydrogen bomb for example....
Most interesting topic these elements of our Universe. They have no mind or conscious but they always were and always will be, even if they change forms many times along the way....
Where as we are all organic and most temporary yet neither would have any significance without the other....
Metals in many forms are the gateway to the advanced technical age, sure the stone and copper age we advanced in many ways and so on, but when did we really excel as a species?
In my opinion it was when we incorporated industry and metals and the assembly lines, and combined that knowledge with all the engineering and mathematical and scientific formulas that countless amounts of smart people who spent their ENTIRE lives studding just working on one tiny piece of the pie/equation. Why, drive something drove them to seek out their destiny....
Humans are as smart a creature that ever crawled out of a hole on any planet in any place or time, but in the end we are masters of the COPY CAT. Everything we say and do is a thought or IDEA of another or others who have all long since died and turned to dust. Its our COLLECTIVE sense of KNOWING to preserve that most cherished information and pass it along to others that are most close to us via our children etc., so as they can pass it on to theirs and so on that makes us so special as a whole....
And with every life, the collective grows stronger. Crazy all this could be so possible in such a chaotic Universe by nature, but for what ever reason that is the crazy world we all share....
Edited by Silverhawk74
08/02/2013 01:27 am
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21788 Posts |
U235 is the isotope used for the core of atomic weapons, if plutonium is not used.
It needs to be about 85% pure to sustain a runaway chain reaction with sufficient speed, to produce enough heat to initiate the 'secondary' in a thermonuclear device.
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Replies: 23 / Views: 6,108 |
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Posted 08/01/2013 10:51 am
