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.

Aluminum

Aluminum is a very common metal, and has a light dull grey color. It is fairly easy to melt and cast, and scrap is easily available in many forms.

Atomic name is Al, number is 13, weight is 26.981, and it sits in the "poor metal" section of the periodic table. Most common Isotope is Aluminum-27 with 14 neutrons, but traces of Aluminum-26 have been found and are very slightly radioactive.

Aluminum is one of my favorite metals, as it doesn't easily corrode due to a protective oxide layer which forms quite fast, but doesn't flake off like rust on Iron, keeping the Aluminum under the surface safe from corrosion. It's melting point is only 1220 F, which can easily be made by a wood or charcoal fire if you keep good airflow.

Aluminum is generally very common construction material, being fairly cheap, far lighter than steel, but still good strength. It's used in many airplanes or helicopters for these traits. It is also an extremely good electrical conductor, 2/3rds as good as copper, but 1/3rd as heavy, making one of it's most common uses electrical power lines.

Almost all structural Aluminum is alloyed with small amounts of most commonly Copper and Zinc, to make it less prone to cracking. The most common alloy is known as "6061" Aluminum, and can have up to 1% of Silicon, Iron, Copper, Manganese, Magnesium, Chromium, Zinc, and Titanium, but most times contains less than 5% other metals.

Here are my samples

Sample 1: These are all items I cast myself, from right to left: A water-cast blob, made by pouring liquid metal in water, a "medallion", made just for the fun of it, and the result of pouring aluminum into a hole in loose soil. The large lump is what I had left over, so I poured it all into a cooking pan.

Sample 2: This is a small heat sink from something electronic. Aluminum conducts heat very well, similar to electricity, so by putting aluminum vanes on a hot object, the heat is carried out the vanes and dissipated into the air. Used quite commonly in computers, because the processor chips get hot.

Sample 3: This is an aluminum plate, I don't know what it was for, but my dad got a pile of them as scrap from a former job (Same job as the copper slab)
Sample 4: One of the easiest samples, Aluminum foil (Sometimes called Tin foil, but it's been made out of aluminum for quite some time now)

Sample 5: Soda can, another easy one to get, however it doesn't really show what the surface of aluminum looks like, because there's a label on the outside and a thin plastic coating on the inside.

This is another sample of Aluminum, a good example of structural aluminum, a 30 foot antenna tower my dad owns. My dad has lots of interesting stuff, doesn't he?

All in all, Aluminum is quite a useful metal, and not hard to get a sample of. I have many more samples than this, some are quite large though, so I left them out.

Thanks again for reading!

~Ben

Coming soon: Lead, Thorium, Radium.

Molybdenum

Molybdenum is a metal quite similar to lead in physical properties, it is heavy, and has a greasy feel to it's surface. It has the 6th highest melting point of any element at about 4,800 degrees F. It's name comes from ancient greek for Lead, because it's ores (naturally found compounds) where confused with lead ores when first discovered.

Molybdenum's atomic number is 42, and atomic weight is 95.94 consisting of a mix of Isotopes from Molybdenum-94 to Molybdenum-97 (The number at the end is the "Isotopic number", and means the atomic weight of that specific Isotope, Molybdenum-94, having 42 protons, would have 52 neutrons, for a total of 94) It's electron layers go 2, 8, 18, 13, 1.

Molybdenum is almost never (or extremely rarely) found as a native metal, meaning it is always in a compound in nature, not pure form. It has a wide range of uses, most being either heat resistance or alloying for strength, Molybdenum can be alloyed with steel to make armor grade steel for military vehicles, and is also used as support wires for some incandescent light bulbs for it's high heat resistance, and this is one of the easiest ways to get a small sample(see images below).

This is a burnt-out incandescent lamp. The two thickest wires are a copper alloy, but the thin wire on the right side is Molybdenum. The spiral-shaped pieces are fragments of the burnt-out filament, which are Tungsten. Before you break the bulb, let me say that some larger bulbs have no support wires, meaning no Molybdenum. Look in and see if it has supports like I described. I've seen some light bulbs with 4 or 5 support wires, but also lots with none at all.

Broken bulb. You can see the wire structure more clearly here, the thinner, taller wire with a loop at the end is the Molybdenum. Please be careful breaking glass! The safest method I've found is to put the bulb in a zip-lock plastic bag, then drop 2-3 feet onto concrete or stone(Not wood floor! It might scratch it). If it doesn't break, drop it slightly higher until it does. Make sure you clean up any glass fragments! It is a nightmare to get them out of your toes.

This is all the molybdenum I could get out of it, and since the bulb was burnt out, the Molybdenum was brittle and cracked. Not much of a sample, but enough to say you have some!

These small spirally pieces are fragments of the filament, and are Tungsten, not Molybdenum. You might want to save these too as Tungsten is an element, but you can get much nicer pieces from un-used lightbulbs.

This concludes my post on Molybdenum, thanks for reading!

~Ben