At 09:37 AM 9/26/01, Gautam wrote: > > From: John D. Giorgis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Come on now, Jeroen, are you really so easily fooled? > > > > I'm beginning to think that if someone started telling you that the US >puts > > Iraqi children in their soup, we'd be hearing about that criticism on >the > > Brin List in short order....... > > >The U.S. did in fact coat most of the munitions used in the Iraqi >conflict with depleted uranium. But that a different argument about >morality... > >Me: >Not coat, no. DU (Depleted Uranium) is an extraordinarily dense, tough >metal. It is, I believe (and I'm going on this from memory, so it might be >wrong) the third most dense metal, after osmium (which will actually melt >in your hand)
You may be thinking of _gallium_, which does melt at IIRC about 28�C, so a small piece will melt in your hand if the ambient temperature is not too low (i.e., probably not outdoors in mid-winter in most locations). From WebElements: Osmium metal is lustrous, bluish white, extremely hard, and brittle even at high temperatures. It has the highest melting point and lowest vapour pressure of the platinum group. The metal is very difficult to fabricate, but the powder can be sintered in a hydrogen atmosphere at a temperature of 2000�C. (I'd quote more, but I'm having ISP problems, and that was all I got before the connection went ca-ca.) > and iridium, which is just phenomenally rare and expensive, >although it would probably work even better. This makes it ideal for use >as both munition and armor, oddly enough. The A1, A1HC, and A2 variants of >the M-1 Abrams Tank are all swathed in DU as protective armor. Similarly, >the "long-rod penetrators" primarily used for anti-armor attacks are made >of DU, for pretty much the same reasons. The 30 mm rounds used by the >A-10, as well as a few other types of munitions, also use DU for its >penetrating effects. DU is depleted, however, precisely because it has >been processed to remove the U-235. The U-238 that remains is not, I >believe, a significant radiation source, although it does have some >toxicological effects. So the slugs themselves are actually _made_ of DU. Natural uranium is about 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% U-235. U-235 has (IIRC) a half-life of something like 230,000 years, making it much more radioactive than U-238, which has a half-life of 4.5 billion (10^9) years. U-235 is fissionable, if uranium containing a high-enough percentage of U-235 (more than that in naturally-occurring uranium, though not necessarily 100% U-235) is bombarded with slow neutrons. Using the fact that U-235 atoms are fractionally lighter than U-238 atoms, the U-235 is separated from natural uranium and used as reactor fuel, and the remaining U-238 is referred to as "depleted uranium." BTW, because of its density, it is also used to make counterweights for the linkages for the control surfaces in aircraft wings. -- Ronn! :) God bless America, Land that I love! Stand beside her, and guide her Thru the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, To the oceans, white with foam� God bless America! My home, sweet home. -- Irving Berlin (1888-1989)
