Thorium

Thorium in pure form is a rather normal looking silver metal, and can be rolled and stamped just like aluminum or steel. However Thorium is radioactive, and most likely you'll run into it in the form of Thorium Dioxide, a grey powder, which is used because it can withstand extremely high heat.

Thorium's atomic name is Th, and is atomic number 90, the most common isotope is Th-232 (With a half life of over 14 billion years) which occurs naturally, almost as commonly as Uranium (which is actually quite common, relatively speaking).

Thorium is commonly found mixed in with Uranium ores, but is not currently used for much commercially, so there is lots of Thorium in the world as a by-product of Uranium purifying. Because of this abundance, some scientists have recently thought up a way to use it as a nuclear fuel, possibly replacing Uranium in this respect, but few nuclear power plants actually employ Thorium today.

Thorium was widely used before the 1950's or so, sometimes it was used simply as a metal with no regard to it's radioactivity in an alloy with magnesium called Mag-Thor, which was used in some missiles for it's light weight and strength.

Another common use was in old gas lamp mantles, which where coated in Thorium dioxide to make them glow more intensely with the heat of a flame, but since the 1960's it's been replaced with Yttrium oxide. Yet another use was mixing it with glass, this glass was then used to make expensive high-grade camera lenses due to superior optical qualities of "Thoriated" glass, however it has not been used for this since well before 1980.

Today one of the only sources I could find was in an electrode for "TIG" welding, these electrodes consist of a rod of Tungsten about 7 inches long and 1/16th in diameter, and if you search for long enough, you can find Thoriated electrodes with up to 4% thorium content. I bought a few of these electrodes, and proceeded to try to dissolve the Tungsten to leave just the Thorium Dioxide, the result was a dirty green crumbly layer, probably not very pure Thorium Dioxide.. But it is still radioactive, meaning in a way, my experiment worked. Both this green product and the original Thoriated-Tungsten electrodes are shown below (The dime is just for scale, dimes have 0% Thorium content.)

This concludes my Thorium post, thanks for reading.

~Ben

Radium

Radium in pure form is a radioactive metal with a slight blue glow, but it is very very rare to see it in pure metal form, or in any amount bigger than "Tiny".

Radium has the atomic name "Ra", atomic number 88, and the most common isotope is Ra-226. It's at the bottom of the Alkali-Earth metals, and is chemically similar to Barium.

It was discovered in 1898, when radioactivity wasn't very well known, by Marie Curie, found mixed in with a Uranium ore known as Pitchblende, once the Uranium was removed from this ore, the by-products, which where mostly Barium with traces of Radium, where still radioactive.

In the 1930s or so, radioactivity was considered a big deal, Radium was a popular word, and was quite commonly discussed by the general public. It was used in countless useless applications because it was thought to be healthy at the time, at one point you could buy Radium drinking water, Radium hand lotion, and a number of other bogus products.. Some of which really did contain Radium.

One actually useful application of Radium was discovered in the fact that the radioactivity of Radium(And Radium compounds, such as Radium Chloride) would react with the chemical compound Zinc Sulfide, and produce visible light, similar to "glow in the dark" items, but would last 20 some years without recharging in sunlight.

A company known as the the United States Radium Company(among other companies in various countries) manufactured a paint containing these chemicals, and it was used on wrist watches, switches, dials, anything that needed to be signified in the dark. Many military meters and gauges used Radium paint. However, in the 1960s, girls employed to hand-paint these items began to contract bone cancer from the exposure and light consumption of Radium (They used their mouths to re-shape their paint brushes), which lead to a lawsuit against the company, and a world-wide end to Radium paints.

I, however, was lucky enough to buy a broken watch from the 1920-40s off of Ebay containing this very paint. The risks of Radium to the wearers of these watches is much less than to the painters, and many where worn 24 hours a day with no side effects, but still, I won't be wearing mine.

I'm not sure how old this watch is or where it came from, but it is swiss made, and I think before 1960. On the left is the glow AFTER being charged with ultraviolet light, the Zinc-Sulfide in the Radium paint won't glow from radiation after about 20 years because it breaks up crystals vital for the glow, and it doesn't glow for very long under ultraviolet, just long enough to show what it might've looked like years ago when it was still good.

That's my post on Radium, thanks for reading!

~Ben

Americium

NOTE: Americium is a radioactive element. Please do not "play" with radioactivity unless you are very well informed to what you are dealing with, and always keep in mind there is ALWAYS some risk.

Americium (am-er-ee-see-um) is a fairly normal looking silver-grey metal, I have no experience working with it as the only piece I can get is a tiny piece of foil, and melting or sanding would prove quite hazardous. The name, oddly, came from a former element named Europium after the continent of Europe, the discoverer decided it worthy to name it after the Americas because of this.

Americium's atomic symbol is Am, number is 95, and the most common isotope is Am-241, having 146 neutrons, and a half life of about 450 years. It appears in the Actinoid section of the periodic table, directly after Plutonium, which is quite a dangerous bomb-making element.

Being an Actinoid metal (Most of which are radioactive or synthetic), it is quite unusual, and I believe completely synthetic, meaning never occurs in nature. It is rare in the fact that it is very commonly used in nearly every house in America, crimped into a steel bead, in all common smoke detectors.

For safety sake, I'm not going to tell you specifically how to get it out, but I will say the entire smoke detector I used was only $4.50, so it must not be to expensive to make today.

Americium emits Alpha particles and low energy Gamma rays(See Radioactivity), Alpha particles are quite weak and can't penetrate even a thin piece of paper, and the Gamma rays are so low power that they do no harm for only short term exposure. Smoke detectors have shielding which makes them completely safe, but if you somehow got a piece of this inside you (In the form of sanding dust, which is why I never sand or grind my radioactive samples) it would probably do some damage just because the exposure time could be your whole life if it got stuck in your system.

I don't know the process for manufacturing Americium, and I don't know of any uses besides smoke detectors, or general "check sources" (set radiation levels for testing or calibrating radioactivity sensing devices). I have seen it used in a nifty device called a Spinthariscope, which shows radioactive decay by using any radiation source (Commonly Americium) and a chemical or compound that lights up in contact with radiation, releasing small flashes of green light whenever an Alpha particle hits it.

This is my Americium, crimped into a steel bead. It's hard to see, but there is a slight indent in the top of the steel bead, at the bottom of this indent is a very tiny piece of Americium foil, held firmly in place by steel that has been crimped around the edges. I wouldn't try to remove it from this steel bead, as it is safely stored, and fine for any experiments I might want to do with it. I might get a better picture if I have time.

Thanks for reading!

~Ben

Radioactivity

Here I'll teach you the basics of radioactivity, which comes in handy for a good number of the elements I might collect.

In all simplicity, a radioactive atom(which is just a small particle of an element) is an atom who's core (Protons+Neutrons) is unstable, and, given a certain time, will decay into an atom of a different element. synthetic (man-made)Isotopes, or atoms with different numbers of Neutrons than normal, are quite often radioactive and depending on what kind of atom they are they will decay either one element forward in the periodic table, or one element back.

The decay of these elements is in the form of either Alpha particles, Beta particles, or Gamma rays. Further description below:

Alpha particles are basically Helium cores, being two protons and two neutrons, but with no electrons. Alpha particles are generally the least dangerous, as they can barely penetrate a few inches of air, and are easily blocked by even a thin piece of paper.

Beta particles are free electrons, but in a different form than normal electrical voltage. They can be slightly more hazardous than Alpha particles, and penetrate air easily, only being stopped by a sheet of metal.

Gamma rays are high energy Photons, the same stuff normal light is made out of, but they are invisible and of much higher energy. These tend to bet he most harmful type of radiation, because they can penetrate even semi-thick metal, but are easily blocked by a thick layer of a heavier metal, such as Lead. Because of this Lead jars or boxes are often used to contain radioactive items, and Lead bricks are used to construct radiation-proof walls where needed.

A very basic radioactive molecule is Tritium, which is a name for Hydrogen-3 (Or Hydrogen with 1 proton, 2 neutrons) has an atomic number (number of Protons) of 1, and will decay into Helium-3(2 protons, 1 neutron), which is a unusual, but not radioactive, isotope of Helium. Helium's atomic number is 2.

This decay isn't linear, meaning it doesn't decay at a set rate of some number of atoms per year, but binary, meaning that by the time half of the material is decayed, it will decay half as fast. Example 1 gram (or any measurement of weight, pound, ounce, doesn't matter) of Hydrogen-3 will take 12.43 years to decay into .5 grams of Hydrogen-3, and .5 grams of Helium-3(This time for half to decay is called it's "Half life". I will reference this later). However if you wait another 12.43 years, you won't have no Tritium at all, but you'll have half the tritium you had 12.43years ago, or .25 grams.

Half lives of elements can range from microseconds for Synthetic elements (Like Lawrencium) to hundreds of millions of years for very lightly radioactive elements (Like Bismuth, which isn't considered radioactive it's radiation level is so low)

Technetium, atomic number 43, which is a Transition Metal, has no stable Isotopes, meaning every form is radioactive. Some Isotopes are short on Neutrons, example Technetium-96,(42 protons, 54 neutrons) so they decay back from atomic number 43 (Technetium) to atomic number 42 (Molybdenum). But some have too many Neutrons, example Technetium-98, so decay up a number to atomic number 44 (Ruthenium).

Notice all Isotopes of technetium decay, but stable elements such as Gold (Atomic number 79), who's common Isotope is Gold-197(79 protons, 117 neutrons), also have isotopes with more or less neutrons that decay up or down one element (Gold-196 decays into Platinum, Gold-198 decays into Mercury)

Some Isotopes of elements are extremely radioactive, so even their decay product (What they decay into) is radioactive, and in turn, decays even further. Some elements have long chains of different elements they decay into, example Radium-222 decays into Radon-222, which decays into Polonium-218, which in turn decays into a stable isotope of Lead.

You can also create synthetic elements by artificially adding neutrons to an atom. In theory, you could take something like Mercury, and add enough neutrons for it to slowly decay into Gold, but the price of this process is far greater than the profit from the Gold produced.

Please notice that I am not a specialist on radioactivity, I only learn enough to understand how my elements work, and to keep my curiosity at bay. There is alot I haven't explained here, I suggest if you want to find out more, simply search "radioactivity" and you should find lots of pages explaining in much greater detail.

Thanks again for reading!

~Ben

Some News

I just ordered 122 small glass vials to store my samples in, I won't be able to post gas elements until they get here, as I cannot store them. Because I ordered so many vials, they where relatively cheap per piece, but quite the price for the whole batch, and if anybody needs just one or two, I might consider resale.

I will also be putting a slideshow of a few of my favorite samples on Youtube soon, probably by tomorrow, just to show what's coming. Link will be posted

Also I've put a tab to the right that is my current list of interesting samples I'd like to purchase. Unfortunately, I can afford practically none of them as of now, but most are not necessary samples, merely interesting uses or Isotopes. If you really want to see me get them, you can donate through paypal at the bottom of the list, there is no minimum donation, and everything goes towards this blog.

All the best,

~Ben