Thursday, February 15, 2007

As befits the name

I feel a little bad for people who stumble on this blog searching for things like sf fashion heavy water and heavy water clothing only to find a almost complete lack of deuterium or tritium oxide content. No doubt they leave in disgust, never to return again. So I have decided to put up one modest heavy water posting by way of appeasement.

You can buy jewelry that contains ordinary water (broken link) or holy water. From the right sources, it is possible to buy D2O, at least in bulk, so by adapting the instructions on how to make a DNA necklace of your own, it should be possible to make a isotopically correct heavy water jewelry, the perfect gift for your own physics geek. Caution, deuterium oxide is reported to be poisonous in large quantities, so don't be swilling the stuff in mixed drinks, despite anything I may have written in the past. As for tritiated water, you will have to work a little harder because the world demand, the radioactivity, and the proliferation aspects limit worldwide shipments to only about 100 grams annually, so one would be hard-pressed to obtain enough T2O to supply a good-sized jewelry operation. I am not sure it would be a good idea to encapsulate the stuff in a thin layer of glass, because it is something you probably do not want to ingest, any more than one would go around wearing mercury-filled jewelry
This may be the second scifaiku I ever wrote, back in 1998: 
to impress
they spike cocktails with
heavy water
And so the circle is completed.
at

4 comments:

  1. Kelley2/15/2007 12:52 PM

    I can't believe the mercury-filled jewelry thing is for real.

    I remember, as a child, breaking a thermometer and using a piece of paper to push the fun silver liquid across the hardwood floor. Darwin almost won that time.

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  2. RichM2/15/2007 7:10 PM

    You and my cousin both. I told her she really ought not to be playing with the stuff. About eight years ago, I happened to have a trace element analysis done by my doctor, came up clean when it came to lead (which was actually a little surprising to me), but elevated in mercury, so I had a course of chelation medication for that.

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  3. Kelley2/16/2007 11:11 AM

    I once heard a story about an overweight scientist losing weight and dying of mercury poisoning as a result (after she became smaller, the mercury was more concentrated in her body, I guess). Is such a thing possible? I better keep eating those hashbrowns...

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  4. RichM2/16/2007 1:15 PM

    I would assume that the metal was doing its damage in the liver and the bones and that kind of thing, and it's not as if dieting was making those organs any smaller. Maybe it was just the stress of the diet that taxed the already frail systems however. They do tell people on those crash diets that they're supposed to see a physician first.

    I wonder whether one could make money selling de-deuterated Lite Water to people wanting to avoid that toxic heavy water, and maybe to even lose a bit of weight.

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