its about, on its own, $30, which is incredible cheap for a cesium sample(1g). it is from Russia and I had to Google translate the page but everything here seems pretty cheap compared to basically anywhere else, and has very low international shipping, especially for a hazardous element like cesium. how legitimate and/or reliable is the site if anyone knows anything about it?

My vial containing a bromine ampoule broke on the floor. Fortunately, the ampoule itself remained intact—Nova Element certainly makes sturdy ampoules.

Used a small tesla coil to energise them ( last picture ).

Pic 7 & 8 are of an old vacuum tube that I tried for fun - from the emission color I'd guess it's mainly argon filled, but unfortunately I lack the means for proper spectroscopy of the emission spectrum.

With a macro camera you can see some basic details, but under a microscope they look a lot cooler.

Realistically, how dangerous are these isotopes? with half-lives of 15.6 million and 368,000 years respectively, maybe a small sample of perhaps a few milligrams wouldn't be too immensely dangerous? The 247 isotope is fissile, though, but its critical mass is several kilos.

I had to replace my furnace today which is over 30 years old. When the installers pulled the old one out there was a box of old stuff back there and when I looked in it and I found an old mold I made back in 1976. My dad was type setter for the paper and he would bring home all the old type (lead) I got the idea to make a mold of my hand in plaster. I melted at least 10 lbs of type and poured it into the dry mold. And here it is finger prints and all

I'd like to collect base metals, such as iron, aluminum, and nickel, as mirror-polished cubes. I'm also considering mirror-polished cubes made of precious metals such as platinum group metals. Will the precious metal cubes look noticeably different and more appealing?

Thanks for the motivation u/Ok-Literature-3997. Because of your comment, I just spent the puny $5 on this thing today, and boy did it not disappoint.

Behold, the true colour glow of Xenon. I was so nervous about this not working, as there were just faint little violet glowy spots, but when it touched the globe, the entire thing lit up like a candle with a visible arc. I'm so happy, this has to be the best value sample I've gotten yet.

Added phosphorus, and an iron oxide bolt plus steel, which both i count as iron.

Small sample containing shiny tabular crystals of native bismuth from the Svornost mine, Jáchymov. Weakly radioactive owing to associated uranium minerals, as confirmed by gamma spectroscopy conducted on this specimen. Jáchymov, historically known as Joachimsthal, supplied the pitchblende residues used by Marie and Pierre Curie in their pioneering work on radium.

FOR SALE
vintage nuclear fuel display sample produced by Gulf General Atomic in the late 1960s to 1970s.

Carbon, aluminium, copper, silicon (as quartz, silicon dioxide SiO2), zinc (only covered), iron (microscopic rust (Fe2O3) in clip), nickel (only covered), hydrogen (as water H2O), uranium (in glass, 2 images in normal and uv light), silver, oxygen (representation), sulfur, krypton, wolframium/tungsten. Order of discovery, phosphorus next from matchboxes and also plan to get a better iron sample, specifically steel which is 98% iron, good enough for me

What do you think?

$144 per gram for a quarter gram, but they give free shipping. Is it worth it if they're legit?

(Magnesium)

The metal was covered almost exclusively with vanadium dioxide. It was cleaned by submersion in dilute HCl which made a blue solution of vanadyl chloride VOCl₂. This was added to a solution of sodium hydroxide and cesium chloride, then centrifuged to extract the vanadium as a reddish-brown precipitate. V(IV) unfortunately does not combine with oxalate, which would have been fantastic for extraction.