Lutetium coins from Metallium - Gamma Spec

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Richard Hull
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Lutetium coins from Metallium - Gamma Spec

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For those with a limited gamma spec capability or for those with high end gear, there are many radioactive elements that are easily detected by GM or Gamma Spec. I recently obtained from Metallium, on line, two Coins of pure 99.9% lutetium. Not cheap, but Dave Hamric, the owner, has produced a collection of the elements for sale in collector coin form. I have collected the elements for many years. Metallium has also been around on the web for some time, offering elements in a number of different forms and still does. The coin idea was a bold stroke, albeit a tortured and difficult one for Dave. The beauty of an element collection far outstrips the concept of a coin, stamp, mineral or baseball card collection. With these you can never collect all of them! The elements are quite different. There are only 92 natural elements extant in the universe and especially on earth that are collectable. Such a complete collection is in, theory, "doable"

I have maintained an "element petting zoo" for some years now to allow folks, so interested, to touch and hold a chunk of Hafnium, a rod of pure Yttrium, a sheet of pure beryllium, a marble sized pellet of Rhenium, etc. Some few of you who asked, while attending HEAS yearly national gathering, have seen my petting zoo collection.

Lutetium has only two extant isotopes within the element here on earth. Both isotopes are radioactive. Thus, all elemental lutetium on earth is radioactive!

Lu175 represents about 97.4% of the mass and has a half-life in the quadrillion year range. (you will never detect its radiation) However, Lu176 is only 2.6% of the earthly lutetium. Its half-life is a mere 22 billion years. This tiny fractional amount of Lu176 has a half-life which is short enough to be rather easily detected by the assiduous "rad-freak" cum element collector.

Below, I show my recent gamma spec. effort in photographs of the two coins I just received. Do you have a complete, detailed book of table of the isotopes?? I leave, as an exercise for the student, the effort to sniff out other wonderment radioactive elements.
Note: The tiny bump, (photo peak), seen is at 512kev and is an annihilation peak due to pair production within the crystal or within the coin itself!
Note#2: The image of the overall bench setup is from a much older lutetium investigation in 2004 when I purchased a 53 gram sample of lutetium. The setup is unchanged to this day.

https://www.elementsales.com/ecoins.htm

https://www.elementsales.com/productlist.htm

Richard Hull
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Lutetium bench.jpg
Lutetium at Bicron.jpg
Lutetium Gamma spec.jpg
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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