Comments on: Iridium is not a phone company

Iridium is not a phone company

pxe2000 — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:27:32 -0800

A Blog entry about a guy who melted a kilo of Iridium in New Jersey with Oliver Sacks. There are also pictures and movies of the 200,000 eV electron beam furnace in action. Theo Gray, co-founder of Wolfram Research was there too (the pictures are all his). For any laymen who may have wondered in, Iridium is not a phone company, it is a precious metal that shares an element group with the likes of Platinum and Rhodium.

By: Pretty_Generic

Pretty_Generic — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:32:26 -0800

That is liquid awesome.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:49:22 -0800

I thought element groups were vertical in the periodic table, not horizontal.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:50:23 -0800

Did Sacks mistake the melted lump of Iridium for a hat?

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:53:27 -0800

Thanks, pxe2000.

By: ajr

ajr — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:54:26 -0800

Iridium is - by far - my favorite element.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 05:59:34 -0800

Can it be used for dental fillings?

By: a3matrix

a3matrix — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 06:03:51 -0800

That was an interesting read. Good post pxe.

By: bashos_frog

bashos_frog — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 06:21:26 -0800

I need more friends like that.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 06:23:26 -0800

I like his "near death experience" with one of the buttons too. His description of the machine is a little off. Those big green things numbered 3 have to be high-vacuum diffusion pumps. They're scary-big, but they cannot be anything else. Maybe the mad russians were having their fun with him. angry modem you're entirely correct, the rows are usually called series. Rhodium is the element above Iridium, with Cobalt on top, group 9. Platinum is one proton more than Iridium, just to the right in group 10. However, the late-series, high-mass transition metals all have more or less the same chemistry, so calling them the same group, while not technically correct, is close enough for most inorganikers. Ir is fairly inert so it probably would make decent fillings, though they'd be four or five times heavier than zinc-mercury amalgam. I have no idea how you'ld fit one though---as far as I know, the noble metals don't form cold amalgams like mercury.

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 06:37:37 -0800

*scraps planned FPP on Theo Gray's Periodic Table Table* Really. Saw some links on BoingBoing a while back, then went exploring in hopes of putting together a good post on MeFi. Nice job!

By: Sinner

Sinner — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 07:33:36 -0800

Great post ... Thank you!

By: riffola

riffola — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 07:58:11 -0800

Wow that's cool, thanks for pointing it out!

By: angry modem

angry modem — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 08:00:56 -0800

whoa bonehead, thanks for the explanation. :-)

By: shoepal

shoepal — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 08:09:03 -0800

Vidiot, I saw it on BB too and really found it all quite fascinating. Nice work, pxe2000.

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 09:42:47 -0800

Holy batshit, that's fun bloggery. Don't miss the followup post.

By: fishfucker

fishfucker — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:10:50 -0800

wow. fascinating post. and it should be said I'm typically bored to tears by scientific undertakings.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:22:22 -0800

Huge amounts of finely focused kinetic energy, a pound of metal the size of a postage stamp, Oliver Sacks running around like a giddy schoolchild with a jelly jar full shiny, heavy things, batshit Russians scientists peering into viewports, throwing switches and turning knobs amid a backdrop of random de-shirting, vodka, and giant bugs. What's not to love? And what's with all the mad scientist posts to MeFi in the last day or two?

By: Ethereal Bligh

Ethereal Bligh — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:56:03 -0800

This was great. And digaman knows Sacks, too? I hate digaman. Digaman fills me with deep, troubling envy. (Be sure to scroll down the page to digaman's Sacks anecdote.)

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 11:43:54 -0800

Truly, a fantastic LJ entry, easily beating all of my entries about my cat. The entry about nearly being killed by iridium is even better.

By: nylon

nylon — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 12:57:19 -0800

bonehead's right, those green things are oil vapour diffusion pumps. they use supersonic jets of hot oil to drag air through them, and are capable of pumping the chamber down to about 10^-10 mbar pressure (10¹³ times lower than atmospheric pressure). the rotary pumps (marked 2 on the diagram) just take the air that the diffusion pumps suck out and deal with it. they're not capable of producing much vacuum by themselves. still, that minor quibble aside, a fantastic post and a fantastic article. oliver sachs is a wonderful guy.

By: nylon

nylon — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 12:58:47 -0800

oliver sacks, on the other hand, is a cad of the highest order. ooops.

By: bizwank

bizwank — Tue, 31 Aug 2004 17:03:41 -0800

what's this "blog" crap? that's livejournal. ps cool link