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Poster sample. This is the same sample as the one from the RGB set above, as it appears in my Photographic Periodic Table Poster. The sample photograph includes text exactly as it appears in the poster, which you are encouraged to buy a copy of. Source: Max Whitby of RGB Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB Acquired: 25 January, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 0.2" Purity: <5% |
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Real visible fluorine. I used to think that there was no known transparent container that could contain fluorine without getting eaten by it. Then I got this email: Now, respectfully, I must take up a little bit of a qualm with your claim in fluorine...You mention that "There is no transparent container that will hold it." Granted that is true if you're talking a "forever" time scale, but I strongly believe on a "realistic" scale (a few decades) it can be done...albeit with some difficulty and great time placed into it. The way best to do it is first to get yourself a pure, single-crystal quartz tube...Now that means one with an extremely high amount of surface Si-O-Si bonds and VERY few Si-OH endcaps. The best way to do this is to take the inside portion of the quartz tube and silylate it. Then anneal it at the highest possible temperature that your annealing oven can stand...This will drive off essentially ALLLLLLL the Si-OH end caps. Because remember, the real killer in fluorine gas for Si-O's is not the fluorine, but the OH's and their ability to start a chain reaction with small amounts of HF in the fluorine gas. So, the first thing you need to do is get rid of the Si-OH's which that should take care of as best as possible. Now, being absolutely certain that your quartz tube is flamed and ultra-dry, there's another step...There was a fluorocarbon grease that DuPont made many years ago that was ultra-high-purity completely fluorinated, medium-high mol.weight fluorocarbon grease (like a lower-molecular weight teflon)...Take that stuff and literally melt it into the tube...It's clear and translucent and won't affect the optics after the next step...So then take a high temperature vacuum oven and turn the tube upside down and melt the grease back out...What this does is leave a verrrrry thin, essentially invisible layer of fluorocarbon grease layer on the inside of the tube. This layer acts as a secondary "buffer" layer to the quartz. So IF there are any Si-OH's left on your quartz, they are difficult to get at by the fluorine gas because the fluorine gas has a difficult time penetrating the grease...This step will add years to your fluorine gas display. Then the more difficult thing to do is to make sure the quartz tube has a high-purity teflon screw-top stopper to it so that it can seal ultra-tightly. (again, pure fluorine gas without any water/HF in it may "trade" fluorines with teflon, but you still have teflon; same goes for the grease, the grease may "trade" fluorines as we've seen in some isotopic studies, but it remains a carbon-fluorine bond).I stand corrected! Not only that, he actually sent me one, it's beautiful, and just for good measure it's the 500th element sample added to my collection. He'll even make you one, if you're willing to pay the price, and based on the description above I'm sure you won't mind paying him the very reasonable couple of hundred dollars he asks. Click the Source link for more information and a link to his eBay auctions. Source: Greg P Contributor: Greg P Acquired: 18 April, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 7" Purity: >99% |
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Sample from the Everest Set. Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (except gasses) weigh about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid. This sample is not marked as being a dummy (as the radioactive ones in the set are), but it obviously is. Elemental fluorine cannot be contained in ordinary glass: It eats the glass. Although it's possible to store fluorine in special containers (see the next sample) it's quite obvious that this is not such a container. To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order. Source: Rob Accurso Contributor: Rob Accurso Acquired: 7 February, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 0.2" Purity: 0% |
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Sample from the RGB Set. The Red Green and Blue company in England sells a very nice element collection in several versions. Max Whitby, the director of the company, very kindly donated a complete set to the periodic table table. Almost all the samples in the set are very, very nice, but this one I have to tease a little bit. No doubt the glass ampule did at one time contain elemental fluorine: You can tell because it ate the glass on its way out. Glass will actually burn in a stream of pure fluorine (video coming soon). So there may be some silicon fluoride lining the inside of the glass, but there is virtually no chance that there is any element fluorine still inside. To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description or the company's website which includes many photographs and pricing details. I have two photographs of each sample from the set: One taken by me and one from the company. You can see photographs of all the samples displayed in a periodic table format: my pictures or their pictures. Or you can see both side-by-side with bigger pictures in numerical order. The picture on the left was taken by me. Here is the company's version (there is some variation between sets, so the pictures sometimes show different variations of the samples): Source: Max Whitby of RGB Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB Acquired: 25 January, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 0.2" Purity: <5% |
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Freon-22. Freon-22 is Chlorodifluoromethane, or CHClF2. Not quite as much fluorine as teflon, but still quite a bit of it. This sample isn't exactly in the table, but it's over the table, in the air-conditioning system on the roof of our building. Source: Ed Pegg Jr Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr Acquired: 11 September, 2002 Price: $0 Size: 18" Purity: 44% |
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Teflon thread seal tape. When you screw together cast iron water or gas line pipe, you have to put thread seal compound or tape on the threads first, or else it will leak. The most popular choice is PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene, otherwise known as teflon) tape, which is a soft, stretchable material that is very slippery and very resistant to chemical attack. This particular roll is pink, which is not characteristic of teflon, it's a dye added to indicate that this is thicker-than-usual tape. Amazingly, on a weight-for-weight basis this tape is over 75% fluorine (the other 25% is carbon). Since pure fluorine is violently, explosively dangerous and extremely difficult to store, this was my best fluorine sample for a long time (see below for some real elemental fluorine). PTFE tape is also a curious demonstration of the power of convention. It always comes on a particular kind of plastic spool, with a particular kind of snap-on cover to keep it clean. Every brand, every manufacturer, every store you look in, it's always exactly the same type of container. It would be fascinating to know the story of how this came about, but at this point the convention is so strong that if any manufacturer tried to sell teflon tape in a different package, they probably wouldn't sell more than a roll or two. Those would be returned as purchasing errors, because anyone who is looking for teflon tape will be looking for a particular shape of package, and won't even see any that's the wrong shape. Source: Hardware Store Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 15 April, 2002 Price: $2 Size: 2" Purity: 75% |
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RbMnF3 crystal. I don't even know what you'd call this other than by its chemical name: It's a pretty pinkish little bar of what is probably a single crystal, crudely cut and roughly surfaced, but not polished to any significant degree. It came from a batch of old samples and research materials being discarded by Ethan's university. The fact that it's translucent and colored makes me think it might be intended as some kind of laser material, whether it worked or not I have no idea. The fact that they threw it away may or may not indicate something about its usefulness. Source: Ethan Currens Contributor: Ethan Currens Acquired: 16 March, 2007 Price: Donated Size: 1" Composition: RbMnF3 Sample Group: Ethan Currens Group |
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Vicanite. This small mineral is from the Vica Complex, Tre Croci, Italy, says the label. I bought it for its thorium content. Source: eBay seller ley646 Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 20 September, 2005 Price: $15.50 Size: 0.5" Composition: (Ca, Ce, La, Th)15As(AsNa)FeSi6B4O40F7 |
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Fluorite. This crystal is one I bought years ago but only recently found in a box. It's probably from southern Illinois but I don't really know, having long ago lost the tags. Source: Theodore Gray Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 15 January, 2005 Price: Unknown Size: 5" Composition: CaF2 |
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Fluorite. This crystal is one I bought years ago but only recently found in a box. It's probably from southern Illinois but I don't really know, having long ago lost the tags. Source: Theodore Gray Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 15 January, 2005 Price: Unknown Size: 6" Composition: CaF2 |
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Medium fluorite. (External Sample) This is a medium-sized chunky fluorite crystal from the (now closed) mines in Southern Illinois. Location: John Gray's Collection Photographed: 9 December, 2004 Size: 5" Composition: CaF2 |
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Large fluorite. (External Sample) This is a large chunky fluorite crystals from the (now closed) mines in Southern Illinois. Location: John Gray's Collection Photographed: 7 December, 2004 Size: 8" Composition: CaF2 |
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Very large fluorite. (External Sample) This is a huge, flat slab of fluorite crystals from the (now closed) mines in Southern Illinois. It is illuminated from the opposite side to show the translucence of the crystals. Location: John Gray's Collection Photographed: 3 December, 2004 Size: 24" Composition: CaF2 |
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Fluorite Crystals. The tag that came with sample reads as follows: Fluorite Crystals, Kendall Mtn. near Silverton, San Juan County, Colorado.I traded this sample for a few of my strange copper nodules. Source: Calvin Webb Contributor: Calvin Webb Acquired: 1 September, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 1" Composition: CaF2 |
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Banded Fluorite. The tag that came with sample reads as follows: Banded Fluorite, Sierra County, New MexicoI traded this sample for a few of my strange copper nodules. Source: Calvin Webb Contributor: Calvin Webb Acquired: 1 September, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 1" Composition: CaF2 |
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Fluorite from Jensan Set. This sample represents fluorine in the "The Grand Tour of the Periodic Table" mineral collection from Jensan Scientifics. Visit my page about element collecting for a general description, or see photographs of all the samples from the set in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order. Source: Jensan Scientifics Contributor: Jensan Scientifics Acquired: 17 March, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 1" Composition: CaF2 |
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Apophyllite from Jensan Set. This sample represents oxygen in the "The Grand Tour of the Periodic Table" mineral collection from Jensan Scientifics. Visit my page about element collecting for a general description, or see photographs of all the samples from the set in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order. Source: Jensan Scientifics Contributor: Jensan Scientifics Acquired: 17 March, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 1" Composition: KCa4Si8O20(F,OH).8H2O + KCa4Si8O20(OH,F).8H2O |
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Lepidolite from Jensan Set. This sample represents lithium in the "The Grand Tour of the Periodic Table" mineral collection from Jensan Scientifics. Visit my page about element collecting for a general description, or see photographs of all the samples from the set in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order. Source: Jensan Scientifics Contributor: Jensan Scientifics Acquired: 17 March, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 1" Composition: K(Li,Al)3(Si,Al)4O10(F,OH)2 |
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