On Friday, November 16, 2001, at 09:08 PM, Steve Schear wrote: > At 11:20 PM 11/16/2001 -0500, you wrote: >> \Divide the U-235 into two five pound masses. Beat it evenly into the >> inside of one of your salad bowls. U-235 is malleable like gold so you >> should have no problem shaping it. Do the same with the other U-235 >> mass >> and shape it into the other salad bowl. > > My recollection is that all Uranium metal isotopes are much harder and > denser than steel. That's why depleted uranium > 238 its used for armor piercing ammunition.
IIRC it's heavier, not harder (more mass for the size). Lead and Gold (as the !Dr mentioned) are both (cm^3 for cm^3) heavier than steel, and both are "softer". Both also make (in the material sense) better bullets for certain types of targets, with the exception that gold is a lot more expensive than lead, and far more useful as bait for the things you want to shoot. -- For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)