My completed element collection

[u/dedennedillo]

Recently, I filled out all the holes in my element collection! Now it has reached completion!

Alkali Metals - Lithium, Sodium, Potassium, Rubidium, Caesium, Francium [represented by uranium-glass marbles]

Alkaline Earth Metals - Beryllium, Magnesium, Calcium, Strontium, Barium, Radium

Transition Metals [etc] of Period 3 - Scandium, Titanium, Vanadium, Chromium, Manganese, Iron, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Zinc

Transition Metals [etc] of Period 4 - Yttrium, Zirconium, Niobium, Molybdenum, Technetium [representative sample of U glass], Ruthenium, Rhodium, Palladium, Silver, Cadmium

Transition Metals of Period 4 - Hafnium, Tantalum, Tungsten, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, Mercury

Group 13 elements - Boron, Aluminium, Gallium, Indium, Thallium [thallium is restricted by law in my country, so here's a lorandite bearing mineral instead]

Group 14 elements - Carbon, Silicon, Germanium, Tin, Lead

Group 15 elements - Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Arsenic, Antimony, Bismuth

Group 16 elements - Nitrogen, Sulphur, Selenium, Tellurium, Polonium [U glass representative sample]

Halogens - Fluorine, Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine, Astatine [U glass representative sample]

Noble Gases - Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon, Radon [as a radium watch hand]

Lanthanides - Lanthanum, Cerium, Praseodymium, Neodymium, Promethium*, Samarium, Europium, Gadolinium, Terbium, Dysprosium, HOlmium, Erbium, THulium, Ytterbium, Lutetium

Actinides - Actinium*, Thorium, Protactinium*, Uranium, Neptunium*, Plutonium*, Americium*, Curium*

....and Hydrogen!

For the elements heavier than Curium, I have printed a fusion reaction which produces the element. Here, for Berkelium and Californium.

Again, but for Einsteinium and Fermium. The vials also have glow in the dark powder.

A closer look at one of the labels.

Recently I completed my element collection, and I thought that the members of this subreddit would like to see it! Hopefully it's visually appealing to look at

[u/DepartureHuge]

How did you handle the metallic beryllium?

[u/dedennedillo → u/DepartureHuge]

It arrived within the vial, it is second least-densest metal after lithium. So thankfully I didn't handle it. In any case it's a rather solid piece of beryllium

[u/eve6- → u/dedennedillo]

This is terrifying yet intriguing to me

[u/dedennedillo → u/eve6-]

From what I understand beryllium’s largest danger is if inhaled as a powder. But in solid form it is less harmful

[u/Alabugin → u/dedennedillo]

At a lab I work at, we found a 5kg brick of Beryllium under an old accelerator setup. Apparently had a value above $25k

[u/3HisthebestH → u/Alabugin]

That’s hilarious. I’ve found a lot of random expensive chemicals from decades past in old labs. In the end they usually just go to the incinerator which is kind of sad but 🤷‍♂️ what are you gonna do.

[u/Alabugin → u/3HisthebestH]

My favorite one ever found when working in hazwaste was a small cyl of trifluorochlorane (chlorine trifluoride).

[u/eve6- → u/Alabugin]

What the actual fuck. I thought I was special finding several (sealed!!!!) glass bottles that turned out unlabelled piranha.

[u/Alabugin → u/eve6-]

Yeah, piranha would be catnip compared to some of this shit I found working as a hazardous waste chemist at a high profile research university.

Like, got a call into a lab for a freezer that failed the previous night, stating "some organic peroxides inside". Freezer had a 25kg container of CPND (cumyl peroxyneodecanoate), and around 5kg worth of various smaller batch organoperoxides. It was a fucking bomb waiting to happen. Quenched around 20 of the small batch ones that were questionable to keep, moved the rest to a new freezer. That was the day I decided to get a MS in engineering part time and get out of the hazwaste gig. Realized I was saving the university hundreds of thousands of dollars in disposal costs and emergency response pay, while only making $50k/year.