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US nickels are not primarily made of nickel, but Canadian quarters were until 2001, so it's not hard to find little disks of nickel. Nickel is widely used as a plating metal, underneath chromium plating on car bumpers for example. It's a major component of stainless steel (which is an alloy of iron, nickel, and chromium). Solid nickel is used in various scientific and commercial processes that require a chemically inert, high-melting point material that isn't as expensive as platinum (the gold standard, ha ha, in this application).
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  Ingots.
These small ingots are dissolved and electroplated onto bumpers at the Flex-n-Gate manufacturing plant in Urbana, Illinois.
My van had broken down (bad battery) and I was waiting at Peter B's repair shop for them to put in a new one. I noticed I was sitting with nothing to do just across the street from what bills itself as the largest manufacturer of automotive bumpers in the country, Flex-n-Gate. I immediately thought CHROMIUM and took a walk over to their front office.
The receptionist seemed a bit confused about who she should direct me to, but finally went in back to find an engineer: Presumably she thought he would at least know what I was talking about.
The engineer, Douglas Suits, was very understanding, and I showed him some photographs of the Periodic Table on my PowerBook. He said he would check around for some samples, and later that day I went back to pick up an envelope containing this flake for chromium (see) and these two very nice chunks of nickel.
While they receive nickel in metallic form, chromium arrives in the form of chromic acid because that is more convenient for electroplating. So while they probably have more chromium in one place than almost any other place on earth, he was unable to give me any. They have so much nickel they actually have to keep a guard on it because of its value, but presumably no one wants to steal chromic acid!
He explained that bumpers are actually not primarily plated with chromium but rather with nickel. They electroplate 0.0010" of semi-bright nickel, 0.0003" of bright nickel, and only 0.000000066" of chromium onto the base of steel.
Source: Flex-n-Gate, Inc
Contributor: Flex-n-Gate, Inc
Acquired: 25 April, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 1"
Purity: >99%
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Plate.
Purchased from Neil Lipson (Lipson@postoffice.att.net) after contact through eBay. This 2.5" rectangle of 1/8" plate is stamped "Ni", indicating it was probably an element sample in a set sold by some educational supply company.
Source: Neil Lipson
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 29 May, 2002
Price: $10
Size: 2.5"
Purity: >99%
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Ball, 99.95%.
Kindly donated by David Franco, who sent many elements after seeing the slashdot discussion, and this one after I sent him some Mathematica t-shirts.
Source: David Franco
Contributor: David Franco
Acquired: 11 June, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 0.3"
Purity: 99.95%
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Canadian Quarters.
My Canadian colleague George Beck brought these back from Canada after I read that Canadian quarters before 2000 were made out of almost pure nickel. It's nice to know that the Canadians know how much their money is worth, eh? Rather than unleash this stack of funny money on the American vending machine market, I'm keeping it in the table as a nickel sample.
I also have Canadian one-dollar and 5-cent coins, also made of nickel.
Reader Anders Mikkelsen from Norway sent the following fascinating data from Canadian coins he has had analyzed for their nickel content (I guess Canadian money doesn't just contaminate the US coin supply, it works its way all the way to Norway):1978 Dime:
Ni: 90.6
Mo: 0.38
Nb: 3.34
Bi: 2.0
Fe:\:02b0.4
Ag: 0.03
1995 Dime:
Ni: 97.12
Bi: 0.9
Zr: 0.41
Nb: 1.05
Mo: 0.12
Fe: 0.13
Co: 0.12
1969 Nickel:
Ni: 94.57
Nb: 2.08
Fe: 0.24
Pb: 0.34
1973 Nickel:
Ni: 90.33
Mo: 0.5
Nb: 3.8
Zr: 0.87
Bi: 2.85
Fe: 0.33
1979 Nickel:
Ni: 95.27
Bi: 0.92
Zr: 0.45
Nb: 1.85
Pd: 0.16
Fe: 0.21
Mn: 0.19
1972 Quarter:
Ni: 99.66 (!)
Fe: 0.03
Mn: 0.17 Notice the last one: Nearly pure nickel, exactly as expected! But even the others are very high in nickel, though not all as high as claimed by the Canadian mint on their website. Not sure which numbers are more reliable: XRF tests of the surface of a coin have many potential sources of error, but on the other hand pronouncements on the official website of a mint may not always correspond exactly to what raw materials their suppliers sold them in any given year.
Source: Canada
Contributor: George Beck
Acquired: 12 June, 2002
Text Updated: 16 March, 2009
Price: $10
Size: 2.5"
Purity: >90%
Sample Group: Coins
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Three pound bar.
Certain of my samples fall in the category of "potential murder weapon" and this is definitely one of them. It's also very silky smooth and a pleasure to hold. The source reports it was made for some kind of electroplating experiment, but it clearly hasn't been corroded in any way.
Here is a picture of quite possibly the only five-year-old in history who has ever jumped over a bar of solid nickel being supported by two magnesium rods:
Source: eBay seller kingendymion
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 22 November, 2002
Price: $30
Size: 18"
Purity: >90%
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Sample from the RGB Set.
The Red Green and Blue company in England sells a very nice element collection in several versions. Max Whitby, the director of the company, very kindly donated a complete set to the periodic table table.
To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description or the company's website which includes many photographs and pricing details. I have two photographs of each sample from the set: One taken by me and one from the company. You can see photographs of all the samples displayed in a periodic table format: my pictures or their pictures. Or you can see both side-by-side with bigger pictures in numerical order.
The picture on the left was taken by me. Here is the company's version (there is some variation between sets, so the pictures sometimes show different variations of the samples):
Source: Max Whitby of RGB
Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB
Acquired: 25 January, 2003
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 99.9%
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Sample from the Everest 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 (except gases) weigh 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
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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Electrochemically grown crystal.
This beautiful man-made crystal was grown by electro-deposition from a salt solution. Presumably some kind of electrode was dipped in the solution and nickel started growing on it under conditions that encouraged accretion at the ends rather than the sides of the dendrites. I believe these sorts of crystals are an unintended nuisance created during various electroplating operations, but they sure are pretty!
I have a very similar copper crystal from the same seller.
Source: eBay seller judys-1000s-treasures
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 22 February, 2003
Text Updated: 5 March, 2006
Price: $6
Size: 3"
Purity: >99%
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 Turbine blades.
A turbine engine works by forcing hot combustion gases from the burning of fuel to flow through a series of fans, causing them to spin like a windmill in the wind. Except in this case the wind is a supersonic blast of burning hot gas and the windmill is spinning at 20,000+ RPM. To operate efficiently (and they are very efficient) turbine engines must run at high speeds and high temperatures, which means the stresses on the turbine blades are incredible. They have to be very strong,and more importantly they have to be very strong at very high temperatures. Nickel-based superalloys make this possible.
These particular turbine blades are old ones taken out of service. They were used in the famous "Huey" helicopters you've seen countless times in the movies. Analysis by x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy at the Center for Microanalysis of Materials, University of Illinois (partially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under grant DEFG02-91-ER45439) indicates that they are mostly iron, 20% chromium, 4% nickel. I'm listing them under nickel because it's the nickel that gives them their special strength, though this analysis is at odds with their being nickel-based superalloy blades as represented by the source. However, XRF of metal surfaces can be misleading, and the measurement was not done very carefully, so I'm going to optimistically assume they are actually made of a superalloy.
Source: eBay seller getnick
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 27 February, 2003
Text Updated: 16 March, 2009
Price: $30/10
Size: 2.5"
Purity: >50%
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Industrial waste.
If they ever have a contest for most beautiful industrial waste, these nickel crystals will win hands down. Yes, that's right, they are industrial waste, packed up and shipped out to the landfill by the barrel full, or so I am told. These were given to me by a former employee of the Flex-n-Gate company, the largest maker of automobile bumpers in the US. (The company also donated my very first nickel sample.)
These crystals grow slowly on the racks used to hold bumpers in the electroplating solution: Where a flaw develops in the insulation one of these starts to grow, and it just keeps growing until someone notices it and whacks it off with a hammer or something. Must be a real nuisance.
I made several 3D rotatable images of individual crystals. Here are three more in addition to the one above:
 ,  ,  , 
I've listed the source as anonymous, because I'm not entirely sure how the company feels about employees taking these things home. They are normally collected and sold for their scrap value. They are, according to x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, about 96% nickel, the remainder mostly chromium with perhaps a small amount of iron and copper. But this figure is probably misleading: Calculations based on what I now know the process to be indicate that they should be at least 99.9% nickel: The XRF number is probably mislead by the surface being mostly chromium
Photographs do not do these things justice: You really have to see one to appreciate just how shiny it's possible for an object to be.
More recently (late 2005) I've acquired 200 pounds (!) of these sort of nodules above-board by purchasing them from the company at the same price they would have sold them to a recycler for. The batch is of course mixed, but the great bulk of it is crystals like this ranging in size from 1/2" to several inches across.
Source: Anonymous
Contributor: Anonymous
Acquired: 10 March, 2003
Text Updated: 9 April, 2009
Price: Donated
Size: 2"
Purity: 96%
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Mond balls.
These balls are produced by the Mond process. They look quite similar to my copper raspberry nodules, which took me a long time to figure out. For a while I thought the copper nodules were naturally occurring, but evidence has built up that they are artificial, and these nickel balls, which are known to be artificial, are another nail in the coffin of the natural origins theory for the similar copper ones.
Source: eBay seller akilawolf
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 5 June, 2003
Price: $12
Size: 0.75"
Purity: 99.9%
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Massive electrowinning plate.
This is a huge, heavy slab of electrolytically deposited nickel from a scrap yard in southern California. Lovely, lovely surface!
Source: John Wechselberger
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 21 August, 2003
Price: $20
Size: 4"
Purity: 99.9%
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Mond balls, lots of them.
This is a whole bunch more nickel balls just like the ones above, only smaller. They come from John Wechselberger who got them from a scrap yard in southern California. If you want some of your own, use the Source link of the balls two samples back, because that eBay seller is how John distributes his samples.
Source: John Wechselberger
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 21 August, 2003
Price: $6/pound
Size: 0.5"
Purity: 99.9%
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Arc melted button.
I've been experimenting very a very crude arc melting furnace made from a box of firebrick, an old 275A stick welder, two graphite electrodes, and a small graphite crucible. I melted this button of solid nickel down out of a small pile of the nickel balls described above. Not bad for a $15 furnace (not counting the welder).
Source: Theodore Gray
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 23 August, 2003
Price: $5/pound
Size: 3/4"
Purity: 99.9%
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Hollow cathode lamp.
Lamps like this are available for a very wide range of elements: Click the Sample Group link below to get a list of all the elements I have lamps like this for. They are used as light sources for atomic absorption spectrometers, which detect the presence of elements by seeing whether a sample absorbs the very specific wavelengths of light associated with the electronic transitions of the given element. The lamp uses an electric arc to stimulate the element it contains to emit its characteristic wavelengths of light: The same electronic transitions are responsible for emission and absorption, so the wavelengths are the same.
In theory, each different lamp should produce a different color of light characteristic of its element. Unfortunately, the lamps all use neon as a carrier gas: You generally have to have such a carrier gas present to maintain the electric arc. Neon emits a number of very strong orange-red lines that overwhelm the color of the specific element. In a spectrometer this is no problem because you just use a prism or diffraction grating to separate the light into a spectrum, then block out the neon lines. But it does mean that they all look pretty much the same color to the naked eye.
I've listed the price of all the lamps as $20, but that's really just a rough average: I paid varying amounts at various eBay auctions for these lamps, which list for a lot more from an instrument supplier.
(Truth in photography: These lamps all look alike. I have just duplicated a photo of one of them to use for all of them, because they really do look exactly the same regardless of what element is inside. The ones listed are all ones I actually have in the collection.)
Source: eBay seller heruur
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 December, 2003
Price: $20
Size: 8"
Purity: 99.9%
Sample Group: Atomic Emission Lamps
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Another arc melted button.
This was a failed attempt to cast nickel: The stem out the top (which was the bottom) is where it was supposed to flow out into a mold below. I was not able to maintain the temperature high enough (using my primitive arc furnace mentioned above) and it solidified in the crucible.
Source: Theodore Gray
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 23 August, 2003
Price: $5/pound
Size: 3/4"
Purity: 99.9%
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Mini element collection.
This is a nice little set from the 1960's. The enclosed price list indicates it cost a few dollars, and the enclosed mercury sample indicates it predates current environmental concerns! Here's a picture of the whole 2-box set:
Source: Blake Ferris
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 15 July, 2004
Price: $61/set
Size: 1"
Purity: >98%
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XXXX Nickel Babbitt.
This was described as pure nickel by a seller who (a) had obviously never seen pure nickel and (b) didn't know that "Babbitt" refers to a bearing alloy consisting typically of tin, lead, antimony, and copper. "XXXX Nickel" is a trade name for such an alloy that also contains a small percentage of nickel. I have it listed here under nickel because while that isn't the most abundant element in the sample, it is the most interesting element, and it is after all stamped right there on the bar.
Source: eBay seller thunderbird1010
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 11 August, 2004
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: $10
Size: 8"
Purity: <5%
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Bumper plating T-nut.
This is one of the titanium T-nuts that holds bumpers to their racks while they are being electroplated in the factory that makes the beautiful nickel nodules listed several samples back. I got it from one of the plating engineers when I was researching a Popular Science column about the nodules (scheduled to be published in the April 2006 issue).
Source: Anonymous
Contributor: Anonymous
Acquired: 20 December, 2005
Text Updated: 31 January, 2006
Price: Donated
Size: 4"
Purity: 99.9%
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Element coin.
Dave Hamric sells element samples under the name Metallium. He's developed a line of coins struck out of various common and uncommon metals: They are quite lovely, and very reasonably priced, considering the difficulty of creating some of them.
Here is the back side of this coin (click either picture to see it larger):
Click the Sample Group link below to see many other coins made of various elements, or click the link to his website above if you want to buy one like this.
Source: Dave Hamric
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 1 December, 2006
Text Updated: 14 January, 2007
Price: $8
Size: 0.75"
Purity: >99%
Sample Group: Coins
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More Ingots.
See the very first sample listed for Nickel to read all about these. This sample represents a lot more of them which I recently purchased from the source, now that they know me and are willing to make exceptions. Normally they never sell these things, just buy them (from Finland) and dissolve them into their plating baths to make bumpers. But they agreed to sell me 50 pounds of them, so now I have enough for lots of projects.
Source: Flex-n-Gate, Inc
Contributor: Flex-n-Gate, Inc
Acquired: 30 September, 2007
Text Updated: 30 September, 2007
Price: $18/pound
Size: 1"
Purity: >99%
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Novamet Nickel Spheres.
This is a very fine powder of silver plated nickel.
Source: Ed Bertschy
Contributor: Ed Bertschy
Acquired: 19 February, 2008
Text Updated: 20 February, 2008
Price: Donated
Size: 1"
Purity: 85%
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Nickel flake conductive pigment.
This is a bit of Nickel Flake HCA-1 Conductive Pigment, otherwise known as a very fine nickel powder.
Source: Ed Bertschy
Contributor: Ed Bertschy
Acquired: 8 March, 2008
Text Updated: 8 March, 2008
Price: Donated
Size: 0.5"
Purity: >90%
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Nickel plating electrode.
This is an electrode meant to deliver current to an electroplating bath. Nickel is a fairly corrosion resistant metal, and much cheaper than some of the better alternatives (platinum for example). An electrode like this can also be used in a mode where it is intentionally dissolved away slowly, supplying nickel ions to be electroplated onto an object on the other side of the electroplating bath. When done on a large industrial scale baskets full of nickel blocks are used instead, but for small-scale table top plating an electrode like this can last a long time.
Source: FDJ On Time
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 14 June, 2008
Text Updated: 14 June, 2008
Price: $6
Size: 1"
Purity: >99%
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Beautiful nickel-plated miniature scale.
This is a really cute little toy scale, and a good example of nickel plating. You can actually move the sliding weight, and the extra weights appear to be lead just as they should be. The seller represented that it was probably late 1800's or early 1900's, I have no reason to doubt that, not that I know anything about antique toys.
Source: eBay seller rto37
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 February, 2009
Text Updated: 1 March, 2009
Price: $86
Size: 5"
Purity: 95%
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Nickel metal hydride battery.
Nickel metal hydride batteries are the generation between nickel-cadmium batteries and lithium ion. They are still made for some specialized purposes, and are cheaper than lithium, but not as good for most uses.
Source: Radio Shack
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 11 March, 2009
Text Updated: 12 March, 2009
Price: $5
Size: 2"
Purity: <20%
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Gorgeous handcuffs.
A very fine example of the art of nickel plating. These "Darby" style handcuffs are heavy, curvy, and show a beautiful nickel luster to their plating. Inside they are of course steel.
Source: eBay seller indianhead
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 April, 2009
Text Updated: 9 April, 2009
Price: $42
Size: 7"
Purity: <1%
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Concorde stage 5 turbine stator.
This blade is from the turbine (hot exhaust) side of an engine from the decommissioned Concorde supersonic passenger jet. Specifically it is the HPCST5 (fifth-stage stator) blade, meaning it is a blade that is fixed to the housing of the engine, not rotating with the core. It is made of Nimonic alloy, probably Nimonic-90, one of a family of nickel-chromium super-alloys with the composition:
Ni 54% min
Cr 18-21%
Co 15-21%
Ti 2-3%
Al 1-2%
Be sure to click the Source link below to see a whole series of lovely Concorde turbine and compressor blades in several different alloys.
Source: eBay seller afterburner713
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 April, 2009
Text Updated: 9 April, 2009
Price: $25
Size: 4"
Purity: 54%
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Concorde stage 6 turbine rotor.
This blade is from the turbine (hot exhaust) side of an engine from the decommissioned Concorde supersonic passenger jet. Specifically it is the HPCST6 (sixth-stage rotor) blade, meaning it is a blade that rotates with the core of the engine. It is made of Nimonic alloy, probably Nimonic-90, one of a family of nickel-chromium super-alloys with the composition:
Ni 54% min
Cr 18-21%
Co 15-21%
Ti 2-3%
Al 1-2%
Be sure to click the Source link below to see a whole series of lovely Concorde turbine and compressor blades in several different alloys.
Source: eBay seller afterburner713
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 April, 2009
Text Updated: 9 April, 2009
Price: $25
Size: 4"
Purity: 54%
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Concorde stage 6 turbine stator.
This blade is from the turbine (hot exhaust) side of an engine from the decommissioned Concorde supersonic passenger jet. Specifically it is the HPCST6 (sixth-stage stator) blade, meaning it is a blade that is fixed to the housing of the engine, not rotating with the core. It is made of Nimonic alloy, probably Nimonic-90, one of a family of nickel-chromium super-alloys with the composition:
Ni 54% min
Cr 18-21%
Co 15-21%
Ti 2-3%
Al 1-2%
Be sure to click the Source link below to see a whole series of lovely Concorde turbine and compressor blades in several different alloys.
Source: eBay seller afterburner713
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 April, 2009
Text Updated: 9 April, 2009
Price: $25
Size: 4"
Purity: 54%
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Concorde stage 7 turbine stator.
This blade is from the turbine (hot exhaust) side of an engine from the decommissioned Concorde supersonic passenger jet. Specifically it is the HPCST7 EGV (seventh-stage stator) blade, meaning it is a blade that is fixed to the housing of the engine, not rotating with the core. It is made of Nimonic alloy, probably Nimonic-90, one of a family of nickel-chromium super-alloys with the composition:
Ni 54% min
Cr 18-21%
Co 15-21%
Ti 2-3%
Al 1-2%
Be sure to click the Source link below to see a whole series of lovely Concorde turbine and compressor blades in several different alloys.
Source: eBay seller afterburner713
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 April, 2009
Text Updated: 9 April, 2009
Price: $25
Size: 4"
Purity: 54%
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Concorde Low Pressure Turbine Nozzle Guide Vane.
From the source: "Low Pressure Turbine Nozzle Guide Vane (NGV), seldom seen and much harder to find than rotor and stator blades from the compressor stages. This blade\[CloseCurlyQuote]s part number is B515719. The NGV blade sits behind the combustion chamber and high pressure turbine assemblies, between the high pressure turbine rotor and low pressure turbine rotor. It is for this rotor assembly the NGV smooths and slows the airflow for. There are 24 of these in the assembly within the engine."
This vane is made of waspaloy, a nickel-based superalloy with the following approximate composition:
Ni 60%
Cr 20%
Co 13%
Ti 3%
Mo 4%
Plus smaller amounts of C, B, Al, an Zr.
Be sure to click the Source link below to see a whole series of lovely Concorde turbine and compressor blades in several different alloys.
Source: eBay seller afterburner713
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 April, 2009
Text Updated: 25 April, 2009
Price: $75
Size: 12"
Purity: 60%
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Nichrome wire.
These coils are made of nichrome (nickel-chromium alloy) wire, and are meant as heating coils in a pottery kiln. I got them as a teenager for making a furnace, which I used mainly for melting metals, not firing pottery.
Source: Theodore Gray
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 31 October, 2009
Text Updated: 31 October, 2009
Price: Unknown
Size: 8"
Purity: >60%
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Manganese Nodule.
Do you remember when manganese nodules were going to be the next great gold rush? When a great new natural resource was going to be unleashed just as soon as someone figured out how to dredge them up from the incredibly deep ocean? Did you ever wonder if there might not be some in shallower water?
Well, guess what: The whole thing was a complete fabrication. The CIA wanted to recover a Soviet submarine that had gone down in very, very deep water in the Pacific, and they needed a cover story because they knew that there was no way they could build and deploy the highly specialized kind of ship required to recover something from such great depth without the Russians (who knew exactly where their submarine had gone down) figuring out that something was up.
So they enlisted Howard Hughes, the richest man in the world at the time and a notable nutcase, to pretend that he thought these manganese nodules, which just happened to exist only at great depths, were the next big thing. He built a large, specialized deep sea recovery ship, the Glomar Explorer, and sent it to find, um, um, manganese nodules, that's right, we're looking for manganese nodules.
They actually did find the Soviet submarine and were able to recover parts of it. Eventually people forgot about the manganese nodules.
If you don't believe me, read this report on the subject:
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/jennifer.htm
This particular nodule was recovered from 5100m of water in the central pacific by the MS Valdiva working for the Metallgesellschaft AG, Frankfurt am Main. I wonder if they thought they were going to get rich.
Source: eBay seller mitryrock
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 3 June, 2003
Price: $20.50
Size: 1"
Composition: MnNiCuCo
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Nickel Chloride, 99.999%.
American Elements is a chemical supplier with a wonderfully refreshing attitude towards element collectors: They actually like small orders from people looking for exotic elements (within reason). They also sell quite a variety of compounds, particularly rare earth salts, many of which are highly colored.
This ball of nickel chloride (hexa-amine) has a bright, vivid purple color. I originally listed this sample as the hexahydrate, and amazingly within just a few days not one but two people wrote in to say there must be something wrong, because nickel chloride hexahydrate is not purple. I have the most informed readers!
Not sure why it's clumped into a round ball, but it sure makes photography easier. (Photographing powders is generally unrewarding, so it's nice to see one that has formed itself into a more interesting shape.)
Source: American Elements
Contributor: American Elements
Acquired: 2 June, 2006
Text Updated: 28 June, 2006
Price: donated
Size: 0.5"
Composition: Ni[(NH3)6]Cl2
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Invar block.
Invar is an alloy of primarily iron (64%) and nickel (36%), known for is unusually low coefficient of thermal expansion. This makes it useful for precision instruments and measuring devices that should as much as possible remain the same size and shape at all times. This block would be excellent for smashing such a precision instrument into a tangle mess of broken gears and dials. It weighs about 13 pounds and appears to have been roughly cut with a large band saw.
Source: eBay seller boss1
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 19 June, 2007
Text Updated: 20 June, 2007
Price: $60
Size: 10"
Composition: FeNiCCr
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Carrollite.
Description from the source:
Carrollite (Cu (Co Ni)2 S4 cub.), Kamoya II Mine, Shaba, Rep. Dem. of Congo. Perfect crystal on matrix. 5x4x3,2 cm; 87 g.
Source: Simone Citon
Contributor: John Gray
Acquired: 30 September, 2008
Text Updated: 1 October, 2008
Price: Trade
Size: 2"
Composition: Cu(CoNi)2S4
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Niccolite.
Description from the source:
Niccolite, Arsen (Ni As hex.), Yachymov (ex Joachimstal), Boemia, Czech Republic. Very nice crystal sections, gray yellowish with a bit of pinkish, on massive Arsen. Present a light green patina of the rare Bismite. 3,2x2x1 cm; 10 g.
Source: Simone Citon
Contributor: John Gray
Acquired: 30 September, 2008
Text Updated: 1 October, 2008
Price: Trade
Size: 1.25"
Composition: NiAs
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Niccolite.
Description from the source:
Niccolite, Arsen (Ni As hex.), Yachymov (ex Joachimstal), Boemia, Czech Republic. Very nice crystal sections, gray yellowish with a bit of pinkish, on massive Arsen. Present a light green patina of the rare Bismite. 3,2x2x1 cm; 10 g.
Source: Simone Citon
Contributor: John Gray
Acquired: 14 October, 2008
Text Updated: 14 October, 2008
Price: Trade
Size: 1.25"
Composition: NiAs
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Ni-Cad battery.
A common nickel-cadmium battery. These have fallen out of favor due to the toxied nature of cadmium. Nickel metal hydride and lithium ion batteries are pretty much better in all ways..
Source: eBay
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 11 March, 2009
Text Updated: 12 March, 2009
Price: $5
Size: 2"
Composition: NiCdMn
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Birthday present for Oliver Sacks. (External Sample)
I went to New York with my six-year-old daughter Addie on somewhat of a whim, to attend Oliver Sacks' 70th birthday party. We had a great time: You can read all about it.
Of course I had to bring an element present, since Sacks is an element collector like myself (he came to visit my table about a year earlier). 70 (ytterbium) is kind of a boring element, so I decided to bring him some elements that add up to 70, aluminum (13), copper (29) and nickel (28), in the form of this little candy dish.
Location: Oliver Sacks' Office
Photographed: 9 July, 2003
Size: 8"
Purity: 33%
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