I’m not claiming he will use all those instruments; I’m not familiar with the technology, so I can’t say which ones he would use. All I know is that he has a lab full of nifty equipment. He has X-ray machines, and a cool instrument that will quickly tell you the elemental composition of anything. (I think the latter is either the XRD or the spectroscopy instrument. I’m not sure…)
Quoth KP:
Care to give us a few antecedants for those pronouns? I, for one, have no idea who won’t or shouldn’t, what he meant, or what secret he would be spoiling.
As for acids,
DO NOT PUT COPPER IN NITRIC ACID. Copper will not only react very vehemently with nitric acid, it will produce a great quantity of poisonous gasses. Furthermore, nitric acid will quickly damage human flesh if you spill it on yourself, and the energetic reaction between the copper and the nitric acid may likely cause some to splash out of your container.
Diceman, are you sure that your acid scar was from hydrochloric? I’ve also spilled concentrated hydrochloric acid on myself (in high school chemistry lab), and I was able to walk (not run) over to the sink and rinse it off, with apparently no harm done at all. Not even any reddening of the skin; certainly nothing which would leave a scar. I presume that if you left it on long enough, it could cause some damage, but I can’t imagine why a person would leave it on that long. But yes, as with almost anything, getting it in your eyes would be bad.
I think he’s responding to my post, where I hinted to the OP what it might be, and the later poster who suggested that I might share the secret with the rest of you.
Nope, I’m not telling.
Yeah I know what he means too, but I’m sure not going to spoil the secret!
A ha! thanks.
That’s okay… Mr. Moto answered my question. If only I had bothered to RTFCite. :smack:
That would be spectroscopy. X-ray diffraction is for figuring out crystal structures. 
This is The Straight Dope. Specifically GQ, and not MPSIMS. Why are you keeping ‘secrets’?
Are we playing a guessing game? And Peter Morris is the leader?
Oooh! Oooh! I know:
42!
Oh, wait.
May 33rd?
Like I said, it’s for a “magic trick” and he’s doing that thing where stage magicians think they need to keep the trick secret. Of course, the fact that anyone with $10 can walk into any freaken magic shop in the country and buy one does kinda let the cat out of the bag, doesn’t it? :rolleyes:
Surely it’s not any great secret? You can buy hollow nickels ($3.50) that you can fit a penny inside. Then - as if by magic you can release the coin inside and hey presto, you’ve turned a nickel into a cent.
Wow, colour me impressed - I now have 80% less money :rolleyes:
Oops, actually that link is for a similar trick but turning a penny into a dime. I guess that makes more sense from a financial point of view, but it’s the same deal.
Actually, no. It might have been from sulfuric acid or some other type. Still, I don’t think that we should be encouraging Dopers to play around with strong acids.
And to actually add something to the OP, I agree that it sounds like it’s some kind of trick coin from a magic shop.
IANAM[agician] but my guess is that the coin is modified so that it’s magnetic, but not hollow. The trick may be to get another magnetic coin to repel it or get two magnetic coins to stick together.
I have a magic trick at home which uses a hollow coin to do the magic. You can get it here:
http://www.finalstop.com/magicwholesale/wholesale/
Nickle To Penny To Dime-Adams $3.43
Hydrochloric acid is not especially scary. But maybe it’s only because I’ve been working with it for four years.
Anyway, it is definitely working. Pretty neat. I can’t tell how deep the pit is right now, but the bubbles have to creep out at this point.
I’m going to hazard a guess that it is not a magic trick coin, since even though I’ve never seen any in person, I don’t think that they’d be very hard to crack open. Most are 1) cheap and B) probably not meant to stand up to handling and close inspection by a non-magician. So if that’s what it was, it’d be pretty obvious, IMO.
Which leaves espionage device. (Spooky music.)
Well, I opened it! It seems to be some magic trick coin (nickel to penny to dime, listed above). Inside was a half a penny, and a half of a dime. When I say half, I mean that these coins were cut in half laterallly; as in -they are half as thick as the originals. I used some pliers to open it- the whole thing was not damaged at all. I guess I can’t bring down some gangster with that 
Oh sure. A magic nickel.
How much are the Russians paying you to say that? HOW MUCH!??!?!?