Speaking of Tungsten anomalies....
Back in '22... ah yes, I remember it well... a few years before
Irving Langmuir and his infamous torch ....
Gerald Wendt and Clarence Irion of the University of Chicago, then
an institution ranking with Harvard and Berkeley in prestige,
reported their "Experimental Attempts to Decompose Tungsten at
High Temperatures" to a meeting of the American Chemical Society
in Illinois in April 1922.
Wendt and Irion claimed to have completely disintegrated tungsten
wire into helium by means of a high-voltage discharge in glass
bulbs.
Did you latch onto the "completely" part?
In the mean of 21 experiments, 1.01 cc of helium was obtained from
a wire length of 39.62 mm with a weight of 0.713 mg, exploded with
29.6 kilovolts. The procedure consisted of charging a condensor to
100 Kv and discharging it at high speed through an extremely fine
wire. No smoke or other residue was ever found after the
explosions.
Hmmm.... I don't buy it (this was 1922).... BUT... is there a
"kernel of truth" in there somewhere regarding the stability of W
under electrical discharge?
Wendt, Gerald & Irion, Clarence: "J. Amer. Chem. Soc." 44 (9):
1887-1894 (September 1922); "Experimental Attempts to Decompose
Tungsten at High Temperatures"
Wendt, Gerald: "Science" 55 (1430): 567-568 (21 April 1922); "The
Decomposition of Tungsten"
