April 6, 2004

Emma's Research

From: Emma Byrne
Subject: You'll think me morbid but...

I've been doing some "real" research this afternoon.

Firstly - presumably you've heard about this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3603961.stm

Well, I thought OsO4 is probably nothing too nasty - so I turned up this:
http://www.proscitech.com/catalogue/msds/c010 .pdf

To decipher that I turned up this:
http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/tlv.html
and
http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/stel.html

so we're safe at 0.006mg/cu m.  So how many cu m in a tube carriage 4eg
http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/faq/ trains/rsb_20030516.pdf

By my reckoning 144 cu m in a victoria line carriage

So that means, to achieve a concentration of 0.012mg/cu m 1.728 mg 

Surely it must be hard to come by - being a member of the platinum type elements? (see how much I've learnt today). Apparently it's used in university albs as a fixative for samples for electron microscopy by aberdeen, bristol, oxford, glamorgan, the ich at ucl, imperial. It's also an industrial catlyst.

http://www.2spi.com/catalog/chem/osmium -tetroxide.shtml
ship to the uk - with preferential pricing for orders of 30 grammes and above. The cost is about $33 per gramme. $946.50 would buy you 30 g which, according to www.xe.com comes out at £515.27. Of course you probably need some kind of permit.....

So £515 would buy you 30000mg OsO4 which, iirc is 17,361(.111111) victoria line carriages worth.

I love the internet - it's so educational!! This is the first time I've enjoyed maths since primary school ("Osama is a despot with a grudge against the west. Osama has $20,00 dollars. OsO4 costs $33 per gramme, fertilizer costs $5 kilo...)

Yours, planning to walk home,

Emma :>
Posted by Martin Sewell at April 6, 2004 5:00 PM | TrackBack