Tungsten

WE DID IT!! The 1st Tungsten Hammer Impact Wrench!
Torque Test Channel

I like the way the little tungsten weights pop when he pulls them out of their holes when they are test fitting them (9:30). They are using Green Loctite, which I am not sure I have heard of before.

30,000 watt light bulb experiments
styropyro

This video is two or three times longer than it needs to be. The first few minutes he's talking about this king size light bulb, after that he's just using it to set things on fire.

Wikipedia. Tungsten melts at just over 6,000 degrees. It is roughly the same density as Uranium or Gold.

One Pound Tungsten Bar
2.75 x 1.34 x 0.39 inches $185

P. S. The One Pound Tungsten Bar might look big on the screen, but it is smaller than a credit card. A bar of tungsten the size of a deck of cards would weight almost five pounds. Definitely chunky.

X-ray Flourescence

It's a rock, man
Anique_Jewerly01

So the stuff the guy brings in is junk, but what is that gun-like thing the shopkeeper is using? Whatever it is, he seems confident in the readings he is getting.

Nito XL2 XRF Handheld Precious Metal Analyzer

It's not a Tricorder, but we're getting there. There are several companies making these things, and they've been doing it for a while. New ones cost between $20K and $40K. Used ones can be picked up for a tenth of that.

Functional schematic of a portable XRF instrument

The X-Ray Source is a vacuum tube. ThermoFisher Scientific explains:

Going to the Source: X-ray Tubes by Esa Nummi

 The major X-ray tube components are the cathode, anode, the tube envelope, the tube housing, and the window.

Cathode

The cathode serves to expel the electrons from the circuit and focus them in a beam on the focal spot of the anode. It is a controlled source of electrons for the generation of X-ray beams. The electrons are produced by heating the filament, i.e., a coil of wire made from tungsten, placed within a highly polished nickel focusing cup providing electrostatic focusing of the beam on the anode. Heat is used to expel the electrons from the cathode.

Anode

The anode represents the component in which the x-rays are produced. It is a piece of metal, shaped in the form of a beveled disk, connected to the positive side of electrical circuit. The anode converts the energy of the electrons into X-rays and dissipates the heat, considered the byproduct.

Envelope

An airtight enclosure that houses the cathode and anode. It is often made from metal and ceramic because these materials are able to withstand the tremendous amount of heat generated during X-ray production, but they can also be made of glass.

Housing

Provides protection and absorbs excess radiation.

Window

The X-ray tube window typically is made from beryllium because it allows X-rays to pass through but has sufficient strength to hold the vacuum required for the X-ray tube to operate. When an electrical current is passed through the cathode, the electrons generated by the cathode are accelerated by high voltage towards a metal target, or anode. X-rays known as Bremsstrahlung (“braking radiation”) are produced when the electrons are suddenly decelerated upon collision with the anode. When an atom in the sample is struck with an X-ray of sufficient energy (greater than the atom’s K or L shell binding energy), an electron from one of the atom’s inner orbital shells is dislodged. The atom regains stability, filling the vacancy left in the inner orbital shell with an electron from one of the atom’s higher energy orbital shells. The electron drops to the lower energy state by releasing a fluorescent X-ray. The energy of this X-ray is equal to the specific difference in energy between two quantum states of the electron. These X-rays all have sufficient energy to pass through the X-ray tube window and reach the sample. The measurement of this energy is the basis of XRF analysis.

Process of X-ray fluorescence generation

AZO Mining gives a brief history:

The United Nuclear XRF Probe

The earliest handheld energy-dispersive XRF probe was built by United Nuclear in the early 1980s, which was originally used to investigate highly radioactive holding takes, as well as the presence of uranium in the soil. Weighing over 70 pounds, this tool comprised of a measurement head connected to a cart, where the electronics displayed the received data.

Modified between 1982-1983, United Nuclear commercialized the MAP-1 device, which had the capability to detect uranium, as well as other elements in the soil through the creation of a “front pack,” while also reducing the weight of the instrument to 50 pounds. The evolution of these instruments continued through the 1980s as United Nuclear developed MAP-2 and MAP-3 analyzers for enhanced lead detection purposes.

XRF For Commercial Use

In 1994 electric contracting company Amptek developed the XR-100 X-ray detector for commercial use. This thermoelectrically cooled and simple to use detector replaced the need for liquid nitrogen to cool detectors in many applications. The XR-100 device was selected for the Pathfinder Mission to Mars, where it successfully analyzed rocks and soil in a cost-effective and precise manner.

The first fully-handheld XRF detector was created in 1994 by Niton Inc., a Massachusetts-based company, in which this Niton XL-309 instrument offered intensified analytical performance at a lower price than the previous instruments on the market.

As interest in these analytical systems began to grow, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in conjunction with KeyMaster Technologies designed the first TRACER II unit, which included an argon transmission target. This aspect of the instrument allowed NASA and KeyMaster to create a portable vacuum XRF analyzer that had the ability to perform on-the-spot chemical analysis, which was a task previously only possible in a chemical laboratory.

The first applications of the TRACER II unit allowed NASA to quickly and accurately determine elemental composition on large objects, such as a rocket motor, which was a major breakthrough for this organization. Modifications to the TRACER II unit allowed increased sensitivity to specific metals, including a new ability to measure magnesium and aluminum content in aluminum alloys.

As demands for increased accurate and efficacious handheld XRF tools began to rise, competition between industries to produce grew as well. In 2008, Brucker Elemental produced Bruker XFLASHTM silicon drift detector (SDD) technology that was integrated into the first-ever SDD-based handheld XRF unit, also known as the S1 TRACER. Still a unit with one of the best resolutions, Bruker’s S1 TRACER allows the analysis of light elements, including magnesium, aluminum, and silicon in air, while also providing an increased concentration range for these elements of interest.

This summer plumbers came to the house to install a new water line. They also had some very sophisticated detectors.

Flying Crowbars

We tested the US Military’s secret space weapon
Veritasium
I first came across the idea of using heavy metal rods dropped from space as a weapon in Footfall, a science fiction novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It sounded like a great idea, simple, inexpensive and devastatingly effective. Derek tries to demonstrate it but fails. He might have done better with some kind of guidance system and some steerable fins. However, while there might be cases where it could be useful, he goes on to explain that for any of the proposed uses, it's not going to be all that effective. I think the biggest objection is that pound for pound, nuclear weapons are much more devastating. An ICBM might carry a ten ton payload. That would be enough to launch one big tungsten rod or half a dozen nuclear weapons. And while you aren't going to get any radioactive fallout from a ten ton kinetic weapon, I'm not sure that argument will carry any weight when you are bent on destroying your enemy.

Shooting in Nederland, Colorado

There was a shooting at a ski resort in Colorado today. An employee shot the manager at an early morning meeting. A Sheriff's Deputy tracked the shooter down and killed him. The Denver Post has the story. 

    So another nut-case goes off the deep end and people end up dead. Why am I writing about it? Because a friend of mine in Ohio has friends that live in Nederland. There were a bunch of people at that early morning meeting. It is only by the grace of god (or pure dumb luck, your choice) that more of them didn't end up dead. 

    I really wish there was a way to identify people who are ready to go over the edge. I suspect the problem might be that the people we should worry about are the ones who are on the fringe of society. Maybe they've been pushed there because of their poor social skills, or maybe they've gone there for their own reasons. People who are on the fringe don't talk to a lot of people, so there aren't going to be a lot chances for someone to notice that they might be getting a little close to the edge.

    Anyway, I had never heard of Nederland before, so I looked it up. It's just west of Boulder, got it's start in mining and now it has a ski resort. I've excerpted a bit from Wikipedia below.

Nederland, Colorado
with Tungsten (lower right), Caribou (upper left) and Eldora ski resort (lower left).

Nederland was established in 1874. The town started as a trading post between Ute Indians and European settlers during the 1850s. The town's first economic boom came when minerals such as tungsten, silver, and gold were discovered near Tungsten (east of Nederland), Caribou (northwest of Nederland, 1859), and Eldora (west of Nederland, 1875). . . .
In 1873 the Caribou Mine, at an elevation of roughly 10,000 feet and 6 miles northwest of the town, was sold to the Mining Company Nederland from the Netherlands. The high elevation meant fierce winds and deep winter snow, so the new owners of the mine decided that it was beneficial to bring ore from Caribou down to Middle Boulder for milling. In the Dutch language, Nederland ("Netherlands" in English) means low land, and based on casual usage by the Dutch miners, Middle Boulder came to be known as Nederland. (This is ironic, considering that the town's elevation is higher than 8,000 feet and most locations in the Netherlands are near or even below sea level.) In 1874 the town was incorporated and adopted Nederland as the official name. - Wikipedia

Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope

You know, back when I was a boy, they weren't puttin' up a new satellite every 15 minutes. We put up one at a time and waited until it died before we put even thought about puttin' up another one. Now they are putting up so many you can't keep track of them.     Last April I stole a post from E.B. Misfit about dark lightning. This satellite is how we found out about it.      So this is all very cool, but how are they detecting these gamma rays? I mean gamma rays are pretty much undetectable, that's what makes them so dangerous. You don't know you've been exposed until you're dead. Basically what they do is put up some radiation shielding and wait for a gamma ray to impact an atom in the shield. Any such impact will cause a certain amount of excitement, like generating a positron and an electron which are detectable by ordinary stuff. Problem is you need a lot of shield material to be sure of stopping/detecting the gamma ray. Wikipedia puts it succinctly: Space-based pair-conversion detectors tend to make for rather expensive missions, since they unavoidably contain several hundred kilograms of lead or tungsten.

Where does Tungsten come from, Daddy?

Mining Tungsten Technical 3D Animation
IR PR Presentation Castilla y Leon Spain Ormonde Mining Plc
This video is a little long (almost ten minutes) and, if you aren't in the tungsten business, rather boring, until you find out that the people who made this video just sold this mine for thirty times what they paid for it three years ago. That's kind of impressive. Of course, there are plenty of old, tapped out mines that aren't worth a plug nickel, and if you paid $1 for it and then sold it for $30, well, $30 is thirty times what you paid for it. Somehow I don't think that is the case here.

Salamanca Tungsten Mine

     Could it be that they were able to model the ore deposits in this mine, and then use their computer models to convince someone of it's worth? Could be that no one knew until they came in and performed a careful, analytical assessment.

Update November 2015. Replaced missing video with different one. Similar subject matter, may even be the same mine. Added picture.
Old YouTube video ID: gKxij8y5A4o, if you want to dig for clues. From Almonty: The Tungsten Outsiders Are Back, a story on the Metal-Pages blog, which has vanished.

Tungsten

We were talking at lunch today about the morality of walking away from a home loan when you are underwater, financially speaking. I'm of the opinion that morality doesn't play into it. It's like in the gangster movies where the one mob guy tells the other mob guy just before he plugs him: it's nothing personal, it's just business. Banks are amoral as they come. It's always just business with them, or at least you hope so. So if it's just business for them, it shouldn't be any more than that for you.

Which got us started talking about trust and how so many things that we take for granted operate on trust. Like grocery stores. Don mentions that three or four hundred years ago things weren't like this. Marc points out that they are not like that right now down in the Caribbean. If you found a store like an American grocery store, someone from the store would follow you around as you made your way down the aisles. People were only admitted on a limited basis. The hoi polloi were kept out by an iron curtain.

Shoot, you don't have to go to the Caribbean, you can find this kind of thing in downtown Chicago: 7-11's where everything is locked up. You want something, you ask for it.

I remember a lesson in grade school about the advent of self serve stores and how it was a great boon. Used to be everything was behind the counter and you asked the clerk for what you wanted. At the time, it was presented (or I understood it as) a better, more modern idea had supplanted an old, out dated one. Now I think it was our society had reached a level of trust were a self serve store was a viable idea. Evidently there are some places in our country where the level of trust has not reached this level. Or perhaps it is falling.

Now while we are talking about trust and money, Don trots out a new one: the gold in Fort Knox is fake! All those bars of gold are actually bars of tungsten covered with a thin veneer of gold. This was discovered when the US had to make a payment to China and China insisted that the gold be tested. This sounded both plausible and outlandish, so I did a little checking. I found the same story repeated, almost verbatim on several web sites. This one seems to be the original. No reports about it from any recognized news organization, but then if this were a real conspiracy, there wouldn't be, would there?

You know, if you think about it, it does make a lot of sense. I mean what's the point of keeping all that gold locked up in a vault? Any material is only really valuable if you can use it for something, and using it to keep the floor of a vault flat does not really sound very valuable. I mean I could say I have a ton of gold in my basement, and who's to say I don't? Because I wouldn't do that, I would sell it off and invest the proceeds in something useful, like building a factory, or buying a Ferrari or something. There is just something wrong about keeping gold locked up.

Anyway, while I was poking around looking for info on this story I stumbled across these photos on a Chinese Tungsten site (where they are extolling the virtues of fluorescent and LED lights. Huh? You are panning your own product? Do I smell big brother?) I believe these are tungsten elements going rapidly up in smoke. Kind of cool I thought.

Oh yes, the tungsten for gold substitution? It might actually work. Tungsten & Gold have very similar densities. A bar of gold weighs about 33 pounds. A similar sized bar of Tungsten would be about one ounce lighter. As I suspect each bar is weighed individually, this would not matter so much. Only if you actually did an accurate measurement of the volume and calculated the density, or actually drilled a hole in it, would the deception be discovered. And why should anyone suspect anything? I mean the bars have all the authentic marks on them, and they're locked in US Government vault. The Government wouldn't lie, would they?

Update January 2017 replaced missing pictures.