At 05:02 PM 12/6/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Yes, a more powerful reaction would be nice, but we must work with
what we have, as Abd stresses. We will die of old age if we sit
around waiting UPS to deliver a $1.5 million package of unobtainium.
It's coming? And the reward of patience is ... patience.
Actually, I asked for $1.5 million so I could *attempt to obtain*
this crucial material. That would include my overhead, travel
expenses, etc. You don't think it's easy to buy unobtainium, do you?
If we actually find some, we might need to go back for more funding
to actually purchase it.
However, the bright side: unobtainium is expected to be simply a
catalyst. So it will not be destroyed in the experiments, and we
could resell it. Given how much work it will have taken to find the
material, we could probably break it down into smaller pieces and
resell them to recover the funding, with the profit from resale
covering the initial outlay.
Actually, seriously, I just bought a bit over 5 grams of beryllium
metal, 99.9% pure,on eBay for $37. What I really wanted was a very
small piece of beryllium foil, but was I patient? No....
Did I ask if someone had a small piece they could spare? No....
I found how insanely expensive beryllium foil was and assumed that
beryllium itself must be so as well. No, I paid a reasonable price,
it turns out, for 5 grams. However, what I really want is a tiny
piece that I can fit in the well of an Am-241 ionization source from
a smoke detector, because the conversion rate for alphas to neutrons
by Be-9 is very low, and so getting the beryllium as close as
possible to the alpha source is desirable. In commercial Am-Be
neutron sources, they actually blend the Be and Am oxide. And they
use a thousand times as much Am-241, i.e., one mCurie, instead of the
0.9 uCurie in a smoke detector source.
(My goal is to test LR-115 SSNTD material for neutron detection. I
had the naive idea that I might be able to bash the Beryllium metal
with a hammer to make a thin foil, then cut a piece. Maybe. Probably
not a great idea. Beryllium is very hard, it might shatter. I don't
want to use machining or cutting techniques that would create small
fragments, turning my apartment or basement into a hazardous waste
area. I may try using this little ingot directly, and maybe the Be
itself will multiply the neutrons a bit. But any ideas?)
