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Modern bottle of sulfur. This sulfur was purchased at a Walgreens pharmacy in April 2002. They had only one partially used bottle left, which no one knew the use of! Many years ago I used to buy sulfur and saltpeter from pharmacies to grind up into gunpowder (the carbon came from readily available charcoal). I had to be sure not to buy both sulfur and saltpeter from the same pharmacist. Back then neither seemed to raise any eyebrows, and I don't think I ever had to use my planned excuse that "my mom asked me to buy this for her, I don't know what she's going to do with it". But in 2002, it seems people don't buy sulfur at the pharmacy anymore. I actually had half seriously planned to say "my wife asked me to buy this for her, I don't know what she's going to do with it", but when the stern-faced pharmacist asked me, staring over his glasses, what I planned to do with it, I broke down and told him the truth. It worked. This bottle is the source of the very first sulfur sample I listed on this site nearly six years ago, hence the identical descriptions. This time it's listed under the date I finally decided to photograph the bottle as well as the sulfur itself. Source: Walgreens Pharmacy Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 8 March, 2008 Price: $2 Size: 2.5" Purity: >95% Sample Group: Powders+Medical |
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Apothecary jar of sulfur. This is an antique Apothecary (pharmacy) jar filled with sulfur. It's obviously designed to sit with the opening facing down, since the label is right side up that way, and the other end is round. Not sure why you'd want a bottle of powder sitting that way. Source: eBay seller mimidog0 Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 2 February, 2008 Price: $10 Size: 6" Purity: >95% |
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Lovely large translucent crystal. This is a large crystal of sulfur from El Desierto Mine, Salar de Uyun, Bolivia. It's claimed to be quite unusually large, though I wouldn't know how big these things normally are: It's certainly much bigger than any sulfur crystal I've ever seen, and more transparent. I made two sets of photographs and rotations, one with light from the front and back so you can see both translucency, and this one with light only from the back (click the picture to go to a page where you can see the rotation):  Source: eBay seller belkisminerals Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 14 March, 2007 Price: $22 Size: 1.75" Purity: >95% |
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Sulfur inlaid wood tile. I created this sulfur inlaid copy of an element tile for a Popular Science column about sulfur inlaying. See that article (available online) for more pictures and a description of the method. Source: Theodore Gray Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 15 October, 2004 Price: Donated Size: 4" Purity: 98% |
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Assorted glow-in-the-dark paints. This lovely array of glow-in-the-dark (phosphorescent) powders illustrates the range of colors and the brightness of modern luminous paints. Green and aqua are europium doped strontium aluminate, the brightest of all the modern phosphorescent powders. Blue is a alkali earth silicate, while red and orange are older, noticeably less bright zinc sulfides. (The difference in brightness is so great it was difficult to get a photograph that showed the glowing of the zinc sulfide without overexposing the other colors!) The powder packets are meant to be mixed with paint, nail polish, or whatever, rendering them luminous. The bottle in the back is ready-made paint, while the small tub is a heat-and-dip powder. This set was kindly donated by Ready Set Glo: Visit their website at www.readysetglo.com or their eBay store. (The "purity" listed below doesn't mean a whole lot since this is a mixture of several different compounds: I'm just indicating that this sample is not a simple element but rather a mixed compound.) Source: Ready Set Glo Contributor: Ready Set Glo Acquired: 15 August, 2004 Price: Donated Size: 4" Purity: <50% |
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Coal scrubber residue. This sulfur is waste from the desulfurization of coal. From the eBay listing: Sulfur from a desulfurization unit at a southwestern Pennsylvania coke plant. Specimen is approximately 7.9 x 2.2 x 1.0 cm. Sulfur is recovered from coke oven gas by reacting hydrogen sulfide with sulfur dioxide. Nearly pure elemental sulfur results from this environmentally friendly process. Sulfur stalactites and stalagmites form around leaking valves.As industrial waste goes, this stuff is quite pretty. Source: eBay seller smektar Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 10 April, 2004 Price: $10 Size: 3" Purity: >90% |
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Beautiful granules. These are lovely little balls of sulfur, probably high purity, ampouled for safe keeping. Source: Frank Liebscher Contributor: Frank Liebscher Acquired: 28 January, 2004 Price: Donated Size: 3" Purity: 99.99% |
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Cast fish. This is a fish cast out of sulfur in a cornbread mold. Cast sulfur? If you divide the periodic table up into broad groups, the first thing you notice is that almost everything is a metal. The transition metals alone are the largest group, but alkali metals, alkali earth metals and rare earth metals are all metals too. And then of course there are the normal metals to the right of the transition metals. The metalloids (silicon, germanium, arsenic, antimony, tellurium, polonium) are a lot like metals, and almost everything that's left are gases. In fact, the only elements that are not gasses, and not metals or metalloids, are carbon, phosphorus, sulfur, selenium, bromine, and iodine. (And bromine and iodine are just barely not gases.) But despite not being a metal, and despite the fact that you almost always see it in the form of a powder, sulfur can easily be melted and cast on an electric stove. I wouldn't do it on a gas stove because of the danger of it catching fire, and even on an electric stove melting sulfur is a nasty proposition. Sulfur is rather smelly stuff, and it forms choking sulfur dioxide fumes: If you have any sort of breathing difficulty (and even if you don't) a whiff of the fumes from molten sulfur can choke you up pretty bad. One neat thing about molten sulfur is that it looks much hotter than it really is. A just-cast ingot of sulfur, which is only at a couple hundred degrees Fahrenheit (nowhere nears glowing temperature) looks exactly like red-hot cast iron, because the natural color of molten sulfur is a dull glowing-red. As it cools, it looks hotter and hotter as the sulfur turns from red to orange to yellow. A surprising thing happens to cast sulfur after it's finished cooling: Up to an hour later it changes crystal structure from deep yellow, sharply-defined dendritic crystals to the more familiar pale yellow powdery, flaky crystals. I don't know what exactly is happening, but in the case of this fish, it happened one scale at a time over the course of about an hour, until finally the whole fish had turned pale. I made this fish from cheap 90% pure soil sulfur from a garden shop. Source: Hardware Store Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 16 March, 2003 Price: $0.05 Size: 4" Purity: >90% |
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Powder. This is a good technical grade of sulfur powder, sold for making fireworks. Source: United Nuclear Contributor: United Nuclear Acquired: 11 April, 2003 Price: $4/8 ounces Size: 2" Purity: >99% Sample Group: Powders |
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Dusting Sulfur. This sulfur is similar to the one above, but is a fine powder instead of granular crystals. It's also about 90% pure. Source: Hardware Store Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 16 March, 2003 Price: $3.20 Size: 9" Purity: >90% Sample Group: Powders |
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Soil Sulfur. It turns out all my adventures in buying sulfur at pharmacies were quite unnecessary: You can buy it by the pound with no questions or funny looks at any garden supply store. It's used as a soil acidifier and pesticide, and can be had as crystals or powder (see next sample for powder form). Of course the purity is not nearly as high as pharmacy sulfur (my bag came with a "guaranteed analysis" of >90% sulfur). But that's good enough for me. Source: Hardware Store Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 16 March, 2003 Price: $2.50 Size: 9" Purity: >90% |
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Old can of flowers of sulfur. This can was sold for medicinal purposes probably 40-50 years ago from the look of it. The seller described it as an eight-pound can with about two pounds used, leaving six pounds in it. It definitely smells of sulfur! Unlike modern pharmacists, eBay doesn't ask any questions if you want to buy six pounds of antique sulfur. Source: eBay seller wz2j Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 14 February, 2003 Price: $20 Size: 12" Purity: >99% Sample Group: Powders+Medical |
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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. 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: >99% |
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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. 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: 99.9% |
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Powdered sulfur from old chemistry set. This bottle is from a 1950's chemistry set I got on eBay after consulting this trusty reference book about radioactive collectables. It's an "ATOMIC ENERGY" set (that kind of thing was big in the '50s), but it also includes an assortment of standard-issue chemistry set chemicals. According to the book's table of going rates for these things, I got a good deal on the chemistry set, though it is not in perfect condition and is missing some components. Modern chemistry sets are pretty wimpy, but I have to say that, aside from the uranium ore and the radium, this set is pretty tame as well. It even proudly claims to contain "no dangerous or explosive chemicals". I mean really, where's the fun in that? Here's a picture of the set:  Source: eBay seller 6tomcat Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 10 January, 2003 Price: $58/chemistry set Size: 1" Purity: >95% Sample Group: Powders |
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Crystals. These are nice lumpy crystals of sulfur. Ah, the memories that smell brings back! Source: Mark Rollog Contributor: Mark Rollog Acquired: 20 July, 2002 Price: Donated Size: 0.3" Purity: >95% |
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Flowers of sulfur. This sulfur was purchased at a Walgreens pharmacy in April 2002. They had only one partially used bottle left, which no one knew the use of! Many years ago I used to buy sulfur and saltpeter from pharmacies to grind up into gunpowder (the carbon came from readily available charcoal). I had to be sure not to buy both sulfur and saltpeter from the same pharmacist. Back then neither seemed to raise any eyebrows, and I don't think I ever had to use my planned excuse that "my mom asked me to buy this for her, I don't know what she's going to do with it". But in 2002, it seems people don't buy sulfur at the pharmacy anymore. I actually had half seriously planned to say "my wife asked me to buy this for her, I don't know what she's going to do with it", but when the stern-faced pharmacist asked me, staring over his glasses, what I planned to do with it, I broke down and told him the truth. It worked. Click the story book icon to read about making gunpowder. Source: Walgreens Pharmacy Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 18 April, 2002 Price: $2 Size: 2.5" Purity: >95% Sample Group: Powders+Medical |
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Cinnabar. Nathan is a student who's going to visit my table this spring, and in advance of the visit he sent this lovely cinnabar sample. Cinnabar is the main ore of mercury: Simply heating it will drive off elemental mercury, which can then be condensed on a cold plate and collected. Mercury mines in Spain are famous for being so rich that liquid mercury can be seen literally dripping from the walls, but the bulk of it is bound up in cinnabar like this and must be roasted out. (The cinnabar is the dark crystals, the rest is probably quartz or calcite.) Source: Nathan Giguere Contributor: Nathan Giguere Acquired: 16 March, 2007 Price: Donated Size: 0.75" Composition: HgS |
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Botryoidal pyrite. Botryoidal means shaped like a bunch of grapes, which is an unusual shape for pyrite. Source: Ethan Currens Contributor: Ethan Currens Acquired: 28 November, 2005 Price: Donated Size: 1.25" Composition: FeS2 Sample Group: Ethan Currens Group |
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Orpiment. This is a beautiful, lovely crystal cluster of orpiment (arsenic sulfide) from Elbrusskiy Mine, Northern Caucusus, Russia. Source: eBay seller delraygoddess Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 15 October, 2005 Price: $10 Size: 0.7" Composition: As2S3 |
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Zippeite. I think most of this rock is actual zippeite, but I don't know for sure. Source: eBay seller dr**zarkoff Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 3 June, 2005 Price: $20 Size: 1.5" Composition: K4(UO2)6(SO4)3(OH)10.4H2O |
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Marcasite. The tag that came with sample reads as follows: MarcasiteI 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: FeS2 |
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Barite. The tag that came with sample reads as follows: Barite - BaSO4, from Sandoval Co., NM.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: BaSO4 |
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Native Sulfur, El Desierto Mine. This is a lovely encrustation of naturally occurring sulfur from the El Desierto mine in Bolivia. The picture does not do it justice. Source: Larry Curtis Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 10 June, 2003 Price: $2.50 Size: 2" Composition: S |
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Pyritized Ammonite. See the previous two samples for more information about this type of fossil. This is not, I repeat not, an artificially enhanced sample! It's not plated or painted or metalized, just cut and polished to bring out the natural shine of the pyrite crystal. Source: Exclusive Fossils/Nord Fossil Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 29 March, 2003 Price: $25 Size: 1.5" Composition: FeS2 |
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Pyritized Ammonite. This ammonite was tagged as a Quenstediceras sp. from the Jurassic age (161 million years old), Callovain Stage, Ulyanovsk, Russia. The matrix of rock it's attached to shows very nice pyrite crystals. See the sample information above for more about this type of fossil. Source: Time Trips Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 29 March, 2003 Price: $12.95 Size: 1.5" Composition: FeS2 |
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Pyritized Ammonite. A fossil is the impression left when the body of an ancient animal or plant is encased in some kind of mud or sand, which turns into rock over great expanses of time. After the matrix around the object has become firm enough to hold its shape, the object itself is slowly replaced by some other mineral that works its way in from the surrounding matrix. If all goes well, the rock or mineral formed where the body used to be is different enough from the surrounding rock or mineral that it's possible to separate them and rediscover the original shape of the object. (If it doesn't go well, either there's no fossil formed, or it's one that is so subtle you just don't notice it.) A fossil can be formed out of all kinds of different minerals, so there are really two entirely separate ways to describe one: What it's a remnant of, and what it's made out of. This sample is a fossil of a type of animal called an Ammonite, but even more interestingly, it happens to be made of pyrite (iron sulfide), also known as "fool's gold" because it looks a lot like gold. Imagine that: An animal shape recreated in shiny gold crystals, and it's an entirely natural process. Amazing. Technical details: This is a Pleurocerus Ammonite from the Jurassic age, found in Nuremburg, Germany. Source: indiana9 Fossils Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 29 March, 2003 Price: $15 Size: 1.5" Composition: FeS2 |
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Sphalerite from Jensan Set. This sample represents germanium 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: (Zn,Fe)(S,Ge) |
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Native Sulfur from Jensan Set. This sample represents sulfur 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. I chose this sample to represent its element 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: Jensan Scientifics Contributor: Jensan Scientifics Acquired: 17 March, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 1" Composition: S |
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Smaller natural crystal. (External Sample) This is also a beautiful yellow encrustation of natural sulfur crystals, found in Agrigento, Sicily, Italy. Location: The Harvard Museum of Natural History Photographed: 2 October, 2002 Size: 4 Purity: >90% |
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Large natural crystal. (External Sample) This is a beautiful yellow encrustation of natural sulfur crystals, found in Agrigento, Sicily, Italy. Location: The Harvard Museum of Natural History Photographed: 2 October, 2002 Size: 16 Purity: >90% |
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