I do things like play around with concentrated nitric acid in my kitchen late at night. This time, I was trying to put photographic emulsion (uranium-based) on a small sheet of beryllium copper (they make golf clubs out of this alloy) and it didn’t work so I decided to put a patina on the BeCu by just dumping several chemicals on it. I also used egg white and sesame oil when I was trying to paint the emulsion on it.

When you pour nitric acid on copper you get a fuming cloud of the brown gas nitrogen dioxide, which stinks and is toxic. Yes, this is how I often amuse myself. Samuel Johnson, the 18th century author of the first true English dictionary, has much to say (in The Rambler) about the psychological benefits of amateur chemistry.With some hypo (Sodium Thiosulphate), the egg white, the sesame oil, the uranium and the acid, you get some beautiful colors, sort of like what you might see flying over a Jupiterian moon.

Also interesting: the alpha particles radiating from the uranium are knocking neutrons off the beryllium atoms, making more neutrons. The ones that fly out back into the uranium mayby, occasionally, are captured by some uranium atoms, and transform them, very occasionally, into plutonium. So there is a lot of secret stuff going on here. But the point is they look cool. Less cool than the Thousand Year Patinas on Stephen Sack’s coins though.