Boing Boing: Oliver Sacks and his iridium ingot

Monday, August 16, 2004

Oliver Sacks and his iridium ingot

George Lazenby wrote a must-read Live Journal entry about the famous neurologist/author Oliver Sacks and his iridium fetish. Sacks had several buttons of super-dense iridium that he wanted to melt into a single ingot. Iridium has a very high melting temperature (2,446 C), so Lazenby and Sacks went to a company that has an electron beam furnace. The "batsh*t insane Russsians" who worked there melted the iridium buttons while LazenbyTheodore Gray* shot video, which you can see at hisLazenby's site.

A few months ago, Oliver bought a kilo of these buttons, and kept them in, what was for a while, the heaviest 6 fl. oz. jar of current jam in the universe. While I was up there, he gave me one of these buttons, which I promptly nearly killed myself with. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So Oliver has these buttons in this current jam jar. The next logical step is to make the buttons one with each other, to get as close as possible to theoretical density. How to achieve this? Max's arc furnace can only fuse 5 gram buttons (poorly) into irregular buttons of about 50 grams. No, this project calls for industry, with its pumping pistons, its smoking smokestacks and desolated landscapes. Enter ********** [company name deleted]. Exeunt pumping pistons, smoking smokestacks and desolated landscapes. This, is in fact, the setting for the most advanced high purity metal processing plant in the United States.

UPDATE George sez: Thanks for posting the story to BB, there's just one thing, I didn't shoot video or take any pictures, that was all the work of Theodore Gray. Link

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:40:18 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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