> I used to perform Rb/Sr geochronology "wet bench" chemistry in > college. Rb-87 has a half-life on the order of ~48.8 billion years. > Several multiples of the estimated age of the universe. The > potassium-40 in your own body is a much greater threat, followed by > C-14, and various natural sources, smoke detectors, camping lantern > mantles, etc... I understand the average person has several thousand > K40 decay events in their body per second.
I don't know the number od K-40 decays per second, but it's certainly non-trivial. Asw a freshman science project, I went into a chamber made out of pre-atomic age battleship armor plate and had the K eminations counted with a scintillator and MCA. From that measurement, we were able to determine my "lean body mass". > Handling pure Rb is another thing entirely. It is quite moisture > sensitive / pyrophoric, and tends to form shock sensitive peroxides > even when submerged under oil. You really need to store the stuff in > a vacuum, or under an inert atmosphere. But since we're also > discussing Cesium, I should point out that it is actually far worse > in this regard. You could probably safely handle a small quantity of > Rb in a home lab environment for a short period of time. Pure Cesium > would be a significant risk. > > > Rob I think any pure alkali metal basically has to be handled in a good vacuum and moved around by distillation. It's easy enough as you are concerned with grams, at most, not pounds of the stuff. -John ============== _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.