![]() Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. The sample photograph includes text exactly as it appears in the poster, which you are encouraged to buy a copy of. I chose this sample to represent its element in my Photographic Periodic Table Poster. Just be very, very careful not to break the ampule! It will react explosively with any moisture (e.g. (It's also very difficult to photograph: This picture does not do it justice.) And the color is also quite remarkable: There are very few metals that are anything other than gray or silvery in color, so the delicate gold color of cesium is a real treat. ![]() The fact that cesium melts in your hand makes it one of the most fascinating element samples you can have: I never cease to wonder at the beauty of it. These operating instructions and brochure provide more details.Īnother beautiful cesium ampule from David Franco: He plans to offer these for sale on eBay along with a very similar rubidium ampule. Wax, plastic, etc, would hopelessly contaminate the vacuum. And second because nearly all other substances that have a low melting point also have a low boiling point, and/or are fairly volatile at normal temperatures. Why indium rather than any number of other substances with low melting points, like wax for example? Two reasons: First, it's completely air-tight, allowing no diffusion of air or moisture, and completely stable in air. The tube has wire strips leading off both ends of it: When an electric current is applied to these leads the indium melts, exposing the cesium inside. These cesium sources solve the problem by using a plug of indium, which has a fairly low melting point, to plug one end of the tube. The tricky part is designing a package that can be opened by remote control inside the vacuum chamber, without introducing any contamination. Cesium is highly reactive: Exposed to air it oxidizes within seconds, so it must be kept in tightly sealed containers. Various experiments require a source of small amounts of cesium vapor introduced into an otherwise completely evacuated chamber. Their purpose and design is quite interesting. This can contains a batch of small tubes full of cesium, permanently closed at one end and sealed at the other end with a small plug of indium (see next sample for a close-up of one of them). Watch the "Spin" video to really get a good view of this thing. This is a closeup view of the component tower in the cesium atomic clock on a chip described in the previous sample. I am extremely grateful to the Cabot Corporation for very kindly sending me a bottle full of this rather expensive compound, as well as jugs of cesium formate brine and suspension. ![]() Because cesium is such a heavy atom, it makes up most of the weight of the compound even though the formate group contains four other atoms. The "purity" figure below, 75%, refers to the weight percent of cesium in cesium formate. These solutions are extremely dense, allowing them to "float" rock chips and dust to the surface from the bottom of a deep well as it is being drilled. What you see here is a magnesium bicycle part floating on a glass full of cesium formate brine.Ĭesium formate, dissolved or suspended in water, is used as a drilling fluid for drilling deep oil wells. Very few clear liquids are denser, one example being cesium tungstate at about 3 g/cc, dense enough to literally float rock. (The density of magnesium is 1.7 g/cc.) If it were just a hair denser, 2.7 g/cc, even aluminum would float on it. This cesium formate brine, very kindly donated by the Cabot Corporation, is so dense, 2.2 grams per cubic centimeter (water is one g/cc), that metal parts made of solid magnesium will float on the surface. The purpose of these dissolved salts is simply to increase the density of the fluid, to make it better able to lift rock chips up from the bottom of an oil well as it's being drilled. In the oil well industry, where this amazing liquid is used, the term "brine" refers to a clear fluid containing fully dissolved salts such as calcium chloride, calcium bromide, or if you're lucky, cesium formate. If the ampoule were to break in your hand, the resulting explosion would be extremely unpleasant.Ĭlick here to buy a book, photographic periodic table poster, card deck, or 3D print based on the images you see here! The cesium in this ampoule melts if you hold it in your hand for a minute, yielding the prettiest liquid gold. Pictures, stories, and facts about the element Cesium in the Periodic Table H ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |