Here’s the background. I build and fly a lot of model airplanes and we often balance them with a piece of lead in the nose. Lead is used, I think, because it’s heavy and can be melted down easily and shaped.
Out of curiosity, what is the heaviest metal out there (by size) that can be purchased normally (no plutonium, sorry). I’m envisioning a little BB of some metal that weighs almost as much as a cubic inch of lead.
I remember some thread about office toys and whatnot, and some posters mentioned various, exotic metal hunks that can be purchased on ebay that are curiously heavy for their size.
Any suggestions? Doesn’t have to be meltable, but non-dangerous metals would be a plus!
The metal they use for non-DU KEP munitions is called Tungsten . It is not radioactive and is pretty heavy as far as metals go, but might cause leukemia. I figure that is probably your best bet since they like to use the densest materials possible when making tank shells - hence the switchover to depleted uranium.
Bismuth is one heavier in the periodic table than lead, and the heaviest element that has a stable isotope. Anything element on the table higher than bismuth is radioactive.
Please. Pantera barely qualifies. If you want the heaviest metal out there, go with Electric Wizard or Crowpath. Although I’m confused about the “available to consumers” qualifier–I’m pretty sure everyone wants to sell as many copies of their album as possible.
Seriously, the property you’re looking for is density. Otherwise, you could just use a lot of aluminum to get the weight you need. As far as I know, lead is the densest commonly occurring metal.
Probably correct, depending on what you mean by “commonly occurring”. The densest metallic element is osmium or iridium depending on which source you read (they are very close at any rate). They are about twice the density of lead, and you could probably obtain some if you wanted to. The problem is that osmium and iridium are precious metals, and a quick check shows that iridium is cheaper currently, only about $200 per troy ounce. Tungsten is very nearly as dense (about the same density as gold), and probably cheaper, since it’s an industrial, not precious, metal. Some densities:
The trouble with tungsten from your point of view is that it’s going to be very difficult to work with. It’s noted for it’s extremely high melting point (3422 °C, 6192 °F), it’s incredibly difficult to machine, and very hard.
I don’t know how easy it is to get your hands on Iridium or Osmium but Platinum is commonly used in jewelry-making and it’s got an extremely high density (specific gravity of 21.4, higher than gold and tungsten at 19.3, uranium at 19.0 and lead at 11.3).
Gold is quite a bit denser then lead (19.3 grams/cm^3 vs 11.4 for lead) , and while expensive, it is something that a person can obtain by a quick trip to most malls.
Gold is also fairly soft, making it easier to work with then many of the other dense metals like osmium, iridium, tungsten, or platinum.
Yes. Bismuth is generally believed to be comparitively non-toxic. It’s pretty dense, which makes it desireable as a substitute for lead shot, but not as dense as lead - 9.78 g/cm³. Some studies question the non-toxocity of bismuth:
