It’s not just him.
Elements!
raises arm in triumphant gesticulation
It worked. I got 2 vials last time. I think they were even cheaper when I finally got them.
I wonder what happens if you pour gallium on a gallimimus.
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Galliano. Please make it be Galliano.
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As a former model maker for advertising, I once did a job for a tech client that required “molten” silver metal. I foolishly thought that we could build a temporary vapor recovery booth in the studio and use real mercury if we were really, really careful. Wrong.
The MSDS for mercury is an amazing and convincing read (did you know that one of the astounding side effects of mercury poisoning is the inability to accept criticism?).
We quickly decided to abandon mercury in any form or fashion and settled for using gallium. We used a gallon or so, which was quite heavy. Getting rid of it properly was actually more work than getting the stuff in the first place.
It wasn’t nearly as much fun as mercury, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. The only downside with it for “play” or photography purposes is that it quickly develops a dark gray scum on the top from atmospheric contamination, so the silveriness doesn’t last that long before you need to skim the top.
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Gallium arsenide, not straight gallium. Gallium is strange stuff; GaAs is very widely used in the electronics industry but in such tiny amounts that world demand for gallium is quite low. But people watch the price because, if it falls, it suggests a slowdown in demand for a number of communications products, as well as LEDs. It has been falling a bit lately, which suggests we may be heading for a recession.
I’m in two minds about this; I’d like a sample to add to my little bottles of indium and iridium, but I would feel bad about dissipating any supplies of a metal we may need for more important things one day.
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I wonder how difficult it’d be to take some of this on a plane…
Gallium? I thought the element was renamed to Libertium?
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will it burn
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OH OH - will it blend???
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Why I hardly even…
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No, that was Francium </s>
More seriously, while Gallium is officially named after France (Gallia in Latin), it was named by its discoverer, a M. Lecoq. Coq is French for cockerel, which in Latin is gallus…
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This is a job for Alibaba!!!
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Trying to find my sample of gallium before the new one gets here. I seem to remember it being deflected from magnets quite readily through the Lenz effect and I can’t tell if maybe I’m remembering a bigger effect than there actually was.
A number of years ago I was involved in the disposal of some plant which had been used with radionucleides, in the course of which I worked with a French engineer who had been involved in a variety of chemical plant using things like tritium, various actinides, and mercury.
He told me that the radioactive stuff was totally unworrying but he used to lose sleep over the mercury. Years later when I had to get insurance on a chemical plant, the first two questions I was asked by the risk assessor were “Will you be using mercury? Will you be using cadmium?”
Given the way it used to be handled casually in schools, it’s a wonder any would be chemists made it to retirement.
Chocolate however…truly a weapon of cocoa mass digestion.
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Let me know when they have gallium that melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
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