----- Original Message ----- From: "P.J van Noorden" > It was very interesting to see that during evaporation a significant amount > (25%) of the radioactive Thallium could be found in the second vessel, > where you only would expect destillated water. So I suspect that during > violent boiling of the electrolyte a significant amount of small dropplets > liquid water ( with radioactive Tl ) was transported through the condensor > into the second vessel. This could lead to a significant overestimation of > the produced heat by about 25 %
Well, first a caveat - it should be mentioned for the benefit of any younger readers contemplating CF experiments, that it takes a knowledgeable researcher to experiment with thallium (a.k.a. rat poison), which some chemists believe to be among the most toxic in the periodic table... and that is the less-radioactive variety. Thallium does occurs in the environment naturally in trace amounts; and is responsible for many more deaths than is commonly known because the human body absorbs thallium very effectively, especially through the skin, lungs and the digestive tract. Just touching it can be dangerous. .... but as to the unusual "transport mechanism" (if it did indeed cross a metal boundary) this anomaly seems to be similar to what has been witnessed over the years with Bismuth, which is a similar heavy metal in many ways and which was the subject of messages last month (below)... it would be enlightening to understand the dynamics of this transport mechanism, and whether or not it is somehow related to gravity, but there appears to be little reliable information available. Nick Reiter wrote: > It [bismuth] also was or is one of > the most promising stars in the odd half integer spin > nucleon kinemassic gravity claims of Wallace, RC Macaulay wrote: > Once knew a man that spent his days during WW2 on > the Manhattan project that remained puzzled by bismuth. Such an > oddity that he considered the element unexplainable. (which may have been mentioned in the Rhodes book on the Manhattan project), I remember hearing about some definite "peculiarities" concerning bismuth during the LMBR and MSR (liquid metal and salt cooled reactors) days at Oak Ridge in the 60s... the problem was "containment" of the molten bismuth. It seem that you can have a bismuth alloy or eutectic in a *sealed* circuit - completely encased in SS tubing... but miraculously it will somehow "seep" through metal and appear in the adjoining circuit - Jones
