Platinum

Platinum is a dull silver metal, most well known for it's resistance to corrosion. It is known as a "Noble metal", similar to the Noble Gases, because it does not react much with anything.

Atomic name is Pt, atomic number is 78 (Right before Gold, which is similar in many respects) and atomic weight is 195. It's electron configuration is 2, 8, 18, 32, 17, 1.

Platinum is most times used for it's resistance to corrosion, and has long been used for jewelry and certain scientific components that require something that will not corrode or rust away after much use. Fuel cells, which mix Hydrogen and Oxygen into water and create electricity as a byproduct, are known to be expensive because the metal that touches these two gases must not corrode in the presents of pure oxygen, so most times, is Platinum.

Some very old light bulbs used Platinum wire to seal through glass, because it bonded well to glass and expanded the same amount as the glass, but this method isn't used due to the price of Platinum. As I write this the price of one ounce(an ounce is about the weight of 6 US nickel coins) of Platinum is over $1,500 , higher than the price of Gold per ounce which is currently just below $1,200.

This is my Platinum sample. The wire is actually Platinum-plated Nickel, as this much pure platinum might cost over $50. These two wires, if un-coiled, are about 6 inches long, and the whole foot of Platinum-plated Nickel wire cost me about $10. I used these in a fuel cell project, because as mentioned above, Platinum works far better than most other metals in this application. There is probably less than 2 mg (milligrams, 1/1000th of a gram, a US nickel weighs 5 grams) of platinum in this whole picture, but hey, I can say I own a few million atoms of it.

Thanks,

~Ben

News: I got a Geiger Counter in the mail today, which is a device to sense radioactivity. It is a kit, and I can't assemble it without a bit of help, but once I get it going I'll do a post on radioactive Thorium.

Experiment: Electrolysis

Electrolysis is a process of using electric current (Generated by any means) to artificially separate elements in a compound. The pure elements (Or new compounds in some cases) can therefor be purified where no chemical reaction can yield them.

One of the most basic electrolysis experiments is electrolyzing water. Water is Hydrogen Oxide, or H2O (Meaning two Hydrogen, one Oxygen). The most basic way to do this experiment is take a 9-volt battery (The small square kind), hook a paper clip on each lead (But don't let them touch!), then submerge both leads in water. Bubbles will form on both paper clips, but one should have twice as many bubbles, as water is "H2O" there is twice as much Hydrogen than Oxygen. If you change the setup a little bit, you can easily make these electrodes go into a container, and store your precious Hydrogen and Oxygen!

This is my setup. It's hard to see because it's in a clear bowl sitting on carpet, sorry about that, but I have insulated wire (coated in plastic) with a small portion of the insulation (plastic) stripped off at the end, because bubbles will only form on the conductive metal part. After making sure my two glass vials where FULL of water, I stuck the wires into them as to catch every tiny bubble of Hydrogen and Oxygen.

I fill the vials with water because one Hydrogen starts forming, I don't want there to be any air mixed in, as air has Nitrogen and Oxygen and it would be impure, but because water is a liquid and not a gas, it is easily pushed out by the Hydrogen. Make sure you put the cap on the vials BEFORE taking them out of the water! You don't want any air mixed with your newly isolated elements.

So this is a very basic process for "Isolating" (purifying) the elements Hydrogen and Oxygen, and can quite easily be done at home. I intend to make a much better system for this though, and maybe sell pure Hydrogen or Oxygen samples later, if anyone wants them that is.

This is not my post on either Hydrogen or Oxygen, because I'm still collecting more interesting samples for them, and want to wait until I have the best array possible. I can get a sample of Hydrogen that's radioactive, and is sealed in a glass vial with chemicals that glow because of the radioactivity! However I can't afford that just yet... So it will be a while.

Thanks for reading!

~Ben