Mixing Metals

[misskim86]

You know when you have dough and a part gets ripped off, and you try to put it back on but it won't really stick to the big dough so it kinda sits there and you press it but it still won't really mix, that's probably how it would be. It would not at all be a solid trustworthy mix

 

[Ariadne]

John_Picard said:

Toresica said:

Jolly_St_Picard said:
It all depends on the valencies of the shells at the atomic level. You can't just "mix away" and expect it to work.

That's true for most elements, but if they're all metals, wouldn't it work?

Are you familiar with the periodic table or chemistry? All (unmixed) metals are elements.

Yes. Of course I'm familiar with the periodic table. Not all elements are metals. All metals undergo metallic bonding, and therefore most of them should bond with other metals.

 

[Deleted 2]

Fire said:
Ok my chemistry is very rusty, I havnt done chemistry since I was at school a VERY long time ago,

Two years, or three?

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Zero Hour said:

Fire said:
Ok my chemistry is very rusty, I havnt done chemistry since I was at school a VERY long time ago,

Two years, or three?

Very Funny.

 

[Deleted 2]

^ I was under the strong impression that you'd claimed to be 20 or 21.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Zero Hour said:
^ I was under the strong impression that you'd claimed to be 20 or 21.

I left school where I took chemistry at 16 and that was the last time I took any form of chemistry since ive never needed to use it, I am now 34, do the math.

 

[AlxxlA]

I think that the question is really a rhetorical one: IF it were possible to create an alloy with every [stable, non-radioactive] metal in equal parts, what would it be like?

Maybe you'd get X-Tempered Herculite. Actually, it would probably be very weak. Alloys are created with precise amounts of different materials. If you just dump anything in, you won't get anyting special out.

 

[IDIC]

Toresica said:

Not all elements are metals.

Unless, you are an astronomer in which case everything is considered a metal except hydrogen and helium.

 

[Ariadne]

IDIC said:

Toresica said:

Not all elements are metals.

Unless, you are an astronomer in which case everything is considered a metal except hydrogen and helium.

And hydrogen and helium aren't metals?

 

[AlxxlA]

IDIC said:

Toresica said:

Not all elements are metals.

Unless, you are an astronomer in which case everything is considered a metal except hydrogen and helium.

And hydrogen and helium aren't metals?

In astronomy, all elements heavier than helium are considered metals, because they were formed by stars of population III or later, and were not created in the big bang (except minute quantities of lithium).

 

[Chaos Descending]

He seems hell bent on arguing that mixing one or more elements will yield a usable product.

You mean like bronze, for example?

 

[Jadzia]

After watching Stargate where they say the Iris was made of a mixture of Titanium and the made up metal Trinium I wondered, what would you get if you took all Metals known to man (eg. Titanium, Copper, Gold, Silver, Zinc, Iron, Aluminium, Lead, Nickel, etc) and taking equal amounts of each metal melted them all down in a bowl, mixed it all up and poured it out into a half an inch thick sheet of metal? I've always wondered what the result would be.

Would the sheet be strong or weak?
What would this sheet of metal be called?
Would the sheet really be a mixture or would each type of metal have become layered before the metals cooled?
Would this sheet of metal have any benefits to the construction industry or space travel?
Has any scientist ever done this? and if not why not?

Sounds suspiciously like alchemy to me. It is heresy, and with a name like Fire, you're more or less asking to be burned at the stake for even thinking about this experiment.

Issac Newton did stuff like this, producing strange alloys that were nothing like their component metals. For example he made some bright purple metals.

Perhaps what you have in mind is to vapourise the mixture, then rapidly cool and condense it so the metals don't have time to separate out into layers? Or use of intense ultrasound to create an emulsion out of liquid metals as they are cooling?

In short, I don't know what you'd get. I doubt it's ever been done. Send your idea into Brainiac.

From such variety of atom sizes, and irregularities in the valencies, I'd imagine the resulting alloy would be brittle and chemically unstable, with various metal vapours evaporating from the alloy. Expose it to air and it would spontaneously ignite and burn, producing corrosive fumes. It'll be highly toxic too. Considering all the arsenic and plutonium you'd have in there.

As for a name.. "toxic waste" springs to mind. Or for something more scientific, it has to have a pan- in the name, so "panalloy"?

Some of the metals might even react and form compounds. I vaguely remember my chemistry teacher saying something about aluminum and mercury able to react to form a compound.

 

[backstept]

I would imagine you'd have a great deal of oxidation too
when it cooled of you'd probably have a lumpy/flaky mess on your hands, and like Jadzia says, toxic as hell

 

[Meredith]

Vapor deposition with many multiple jets in a vacuum chamber would solve the issue of different melting points.

 

[Jadzia]

In April, geologists in Serbia dug up a white, powdery mineral that they weren't sure what to make of. They turned it over to Chris Stanley, a mineralologist at London's Natural History Museum, who discovered that it contained a component of every known stable metallic element. It is a green glowing rock that, aside from Lois Lane, is Superman's only weakness.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Or use of intense ultrasound to create an emulsion out of liquid metals as they are cooling?

That's pretty much what I was suggesting and I mentioned vibration further up the thread. The idea was to pour numerous metals into a melting pot and uber vibrate it, then the idea was to pour the metals into several different plates. Then you would uber vibrate the plates so all the metals as they cooled don't solidify into layers and instead solidify into a mixture, that mixture (within the plate) would be solidified into the shape of a sheet of metal.
Also I wouldn't suggest the use of anything poisonous such as arsenic, I was thinking more along the lines of every metal known to man that is non hazardous.

 

[Jadzia]

Lots of metals are hazardous in their elemental state, Fire.

So your mixture would have no alkali metals. No alkali-earth metals. No heavy metals (excluding silver and gold). No semi-metals. No antimony or arsenic or mercury. No lanthanides or actinides. Basically your left with platinum, gold, silver, iron, zinc, nickel, copper, chromium, vanadium, cobalt, aluminium, zirconium, paladium, and a few others.

I have most of these in my purse, Fire. The alloy would be much like coinage metal.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Lots of metals are hazardous in their elemental state, Fire.

So your mixture would have no alkali metals. No alkali-earth metals. No heavy metals (excluding silver and gold). No semi-metals. No antimony or arsenic or mercury. No lanthanides or actinides. Basically your left with platinum, gold, silver, iron, zinc, nickel, copper, chromium, vanadium, cobalt, aluminium, zirconium, paladium, and a few others.

I have most of these in my purse, Fire. The alloy would be much like coinage metal.

You have platinum, iron, zinc, chromium, vanadium, cobalt, aluminium, zirconium and palladium in your purse?!!!
Do you collect nuts and crannies or something?

I think even with just platinum, gold, silver, iron, zinc, nickel, copper, chromium, vanadium, cobalt, aluminium, zirconium, paladium, and a few others, it would still be interesting to see what would come out of it.

 

[Jadzia]

the nazis used to make coins out of aluminium, you know. My grandad had a jar full of Reichpfennigs that escaped destruction. Now I have them

No I don't have all those metals in my purse.

 

[AlxxlA]

I vaguely remember my chemistry teacher saying something about aluminum and mercury able to react to form a compound.

Yep, aluminum and mercury will form an amalgam (Mercury alloy), however, the aluminum will oxidize and flake off when in contact with air, resulting in more elemental mercury, which can then amalgamate more aluminum and repeat the process. Given enough time, a few drops of mercury can "eat" through an entire piece of aluminum.