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If you had to pick one element as the most versatile, carbon would be it. We are carbon-based life forms in just about every sense of the word. In fact, "organic molecules" are basically defined as those built out of carbon, so inseparable is carbon from the workings of life as we know it. The hydrogen-eating bacteria thought to live miles down in the earth's crust, the bacteria that may live under thousands of meters of ice in Lake Vostok, even the most exotic sulfur-eating bacteria that live in thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, all are built on a completely carbon-based foundation. Finding extraterrestrial life, say on Europa or maybe in a flying saucer on the White House lawn, would be no great surprise. Finding out it's not carbon-based would be a very big surprise indeed.
But life is just one of carbon's tricks. In pure form carbon can be anything from soft, slippery graphite to the hardest substance known, diamond. The difference between diamond and graphite is just in how the atoms of carbon are bonded to each other: In sheets that can slide around or in a locked three-dimensional matrix.
Carbon fiber (more specifically, graphite fiber) is used as a reinforcing material embedded in epoxy or other resins. Such composite materials are used in military airplanes, surf boards, and golf club shafts.
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  Anthracite coal.
I purchased about 1000 pounds in the early 1990s for blacksmithing use by Jim Zimmerman at our farm. We had to build a special box on the trailer to bring it home, and most of it is still sitting in large plastic containers in the shed. No problem finding a sample for the table!
The sound is steel plate being beaten with a blacksmith's hammer after heating in a coal fire.
Source: Coal Dealer
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $0.008/ounce ($250/ton)
Size: 2"
Purity: >85%
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 Graphite rod from lantern battery.
I took apart one of those big lantern batteries probably some time in the late 1970s because I needed a graphite rod for stirring molten metals. Graphite is good because metal doesn't stick to it, it doesn't contaminate the metal, and it retards oxidation to some extent.
In order to show you how it's done, I took apart another one in the summer of 2002 and photographed the process.
Click on the story book icon for this sample to see how to extract graphic from batteries.
Source: Hardware Store
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $5/battery with 4 of them
Size: 3"
Purity: >95%
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 Pyrolytic graphite.
Ed reports: The source (and inspiration) was this page about magnetism. The details for making pyrolytic graphite are on the site. The main point of these samples is that they have the highest diamagnetic effect of any material (the degree to which it will repel a magnet). The diamagnetic effect is strong enough that a piece of pyrolytic graphite will levitate over neodymium magnets, as you can see in the video.
Source: Science Toys
Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr
Acquired: 15 April, 2002
Price: $2
Size: 1"
Purity: >99%
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Gem cut cubic zirconium just to fool people.
So far, no one has been fooled, probably because it's too big to be believable (10mm round brilliant cut CZ from http://www.pehnec.com). But it is very beautiful!
Source: Pehnec Gems
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 17 April, 2002
Price: $60/50 stones
Size: 0.39"
Purity: 0%
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Titanic coal.
This is actual genuine totally certified in triplicate authentic coal recovered from the RMS Titanic on the bottom of the ocean. At least so says the certificate of authenticity:
Of course, if you read it more carefully, it doesn't actually say where the coal was recovered from, only that it was recovered during this expedition. It doesn't say whether the expedition took a detour to western Pennsylvania on their way to the bottom of the ocean.
But it's probably real: The company is real, and they really did salvage many objects from the Titanic. Here's an article about how tasteless the whole thing is. After reading that, if you still want to order some, you can: www.titanic-online.com.
The certificate says Jane Billman on it because this was a present for my wife, who is a Titanic fan. When I found it covered in dust at the back of a closet, I decided that the heavy responsibility of being a conservator of a genuine Titanic object should pass to the Periodic Table Table.
Source: RMS Titanic, Inc
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 21 January, 2003
Price: $30
Size: 1"
Purity: >85%
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Sample from the Everest Element 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 (excepted gasses) weight 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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Amber with bugs.
I picked this piece of amber out of literally thousands available at a big fossil show because it was really big, really cheap, and it had bugs in it. It's important to have bugs in your amber if you want to extract DNA and recreate dinosaurs, or impress the kids. I'm not sure what distinguishes this amber from other amber that costs a hundred times as much by weight, but I like it.
And it does have some really great bugs! Here's a close-up of one, which is about 1/4 inch in overall size:
I don't really know what the chemical composition of amber is, but it's an organic resin which means it must contain carbon and hydrogen, and I figure it probably contains at least some oxygen, so I've listed it as being composed of those three elements, with carbon being the dominant one. Feel free to correct me if you know better.
Source: Time Trips
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 29 March, 2003
Price: $45
Size: 5"
Composition: CHO
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