Basically, all legal free speech is allowed. We will assist the authorities in dealing with illegal speech. You are each other’s moderators. Have fun. And don’t forget to MAGA at nuclear levels.
Citizen U
Day 69 – THULIUM.
OPEN THREAD 20200114
Published
The U Tree 
I got a musical interlude link while reading the Qtree Dear MAGA link, so you get the musical interlude first.
….and, here, I always thought it was the Kingston Trio….
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Incidentally, when I was growing up we used to visit Knott’s Berry Farm — an amusement park near Disneyland founded by Walter Knott. I remember walking by the local chapter of the John Birch Society that was headquartered at the park. Seemed like nice folks.
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Thulium is actually the second rarest rare earth, after radioactive promethium (which is still found in traces in the crust).
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Single-element thulium-doped YAG (Tm:YAG) lasers operate at 2010 nm, which happens to be a convenient wavelength for laser surgery. When you get the bill for your next laser operation, don’t complain about the price.
In 1996, thulium oxide cost US$20 per gram, and in 2005, 99%-pure thulium metal powder cost US$70 per gram.
Triple-doped Ho,Cr,Tm:YAG lases at 2080 nm, and is favored for military, medical, and meteorology applications…..but not, so far as I know, by 3M Corp.
Despite being much less common than other lanthanides, the same lanthanide stuff we’ve become very tired of applies — it’s found mixed with other lanthanides, it’s a trace in mischmetal, it was claimed to have been discovered by spectroscopic lines in the 1870’s or thereabouts and was actually isolated to a chunk of metal around 1920-something. People who wanted to name an element kept straining known ones out of a bunch of ore until they found something that was different.
Thulium has many colors depending on what its dissolved in. It is used to dope Euro notes so that they’ll have blue fluorescence under ultraviolet light, as an anti-counterfeiting measure. If there’s ever Weimar-level inflation on Euro notes, chemistry classes in the US can extract the thulium as a class project.
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Praise be to God, there are only two more lanthanides left. I’m starting to get the shakes about the actinides.
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Thule is named after the same semi-mythical “land beyond” as is Thule Air Base. It would be a hoot and a half if there were a rare earths deposit at the base.
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OK, some Silicon Valley humor……
A million guys walk into a Silicon Valley Bar.
No one buys anything.
Bar declares massive success.
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