|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nickels are not 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 in this application).
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
  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%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Canadian Quarters.
My Canadian colleague George Beck brought these back from Canada after I read that Canadian quarters before 2001 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 a Canadian one-dollar coin, also made of nickel.
Source: Canada
Contributor: George Beck
Acquired: 12 June, 2002
Price: $10
Size: 2.5"
Purity: >90%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 conradboty@aol.com
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 22 February, 2003
Price: $6
Size: 3"
Purity: >99%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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.
Source: eBay seller getnick
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 27 February, 2003
Price: $30/10
Size: 2.5"
Purity: >50%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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: sample 1, sample 2, sample 3,
I've listed the source as anonymous for the time being, because I'm not entirely sure how the company feels about employees taking these things home. My understanding is that they cannot be recycled back into the electroplating bath, and hence are waste, but I'm not entirely sure they don't sell them to a refiner for their nickel content. They are, according to x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, about 96% nickel, the remainder mostly chromium with perhaps a small amount of iron and copper.
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.
Source: Anonymous
Contributor: Anonymous
Acquired: 10 March, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 2"
Purity: 96%
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
