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The next big scam

The next big scam will be lead cubes wrapped in a thin layer of tungsten and sold for thousands of dollars. They will come with certificates of authenticity from the International Society of Metallurgists and will be limited to five to a customer. You heard it here first.

14 thoughts on “The next big scam

  1. J. Frank Parnell

    These might be a hard sell, given lead is only 59% the density of tungsten. Also, they might be hard to make. Tungsten is typically brittle and hard to form at room temperature. The radical difference in melting points (600 deg C for PB vs 3422 deg C for W) would seem to rule out any welding, sintering or similar technology.

    1. Bobber

      Make the tungsten container at whatever temperature is necessary. Pour molten lead into it. Glue a little tungsten cap over the fill hole.

  2. cld

    You could sell lead cubes to wingnuts without the tungsten, just call them fuck the libs alt-crystals and you'll make a fortune.

  3. Steve_OH

    I have a tungsten cube that has a mass of 1 kg (as verified by my trusty kitchen scale). It's 1.5" on a side, which means that its specific gravity is 18.1, a little lower than the 19.3 of pure tungsten, but that's okay, because the certificate indicates that it contains a small amount of antimony for machinability. In any event, at 18.1 it's high enough that the only way to fake that high a density would be to use something that's more expensive than tungsten (e.g., gold, iridium, etc.).

    1. Ken Rhodes

      Depleted uranium has almost the exact same density as Gold.

      Is it expensive? It seems to me that it could have a negative cost, if the pay for scavenging it and protecting it is higher than the price you would pay to buy it.

      1. Steve_OH

        I couldn't find a good price, but it looks like it would be comparable to the price of tungsten at best. It has the downside of being just a little bit more toxic than tungsten, by at least a few orders of magnitude.

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