r/Wallstreetosmium

A few of you asked to see the bars in more detail after our last post, so here are the individual side-angle shots I took before the set was completed.

Every bar shown here weighs exactly one troy ounce.

Because the metals have very different densities, the amount of material needed to reach the same weight varies. That also affects the overall volume and thickness of the bars, which is visible to some extent in these photos.

The pictures were taken individually and not in one perfectly controlled side-by-side setup, so they are meant as a visual comparison rather than an exact scale reference.

Still, the differences in surface, shape and thickness are quite noticeable from metal to metal.

I also have close-up photos of the individual bars where the surface textures and colors are easier to compare. That might be the next post.

One of the loops eroded so much that it broke, and the other one is also quite thin. I'll have to arrange for it to be rewrapped before it becomes unwearable. This pendant is SO DAMN HEAVY, just the weight of it hanging from the chain erodes away the metal till it snaps.

Current goals are several osmiamate salts, bromoosmic acid and its potassium and silver salts

This osmium dioxide, THANKFULLY, was the result of a botched attempt to make potassium osmiamate. When ammonia was added to a hydroxide-deficient solution of potassium perosmate, instead of K[OsO₃N], reduction to potassium osmate occurred, followed by ammonolysis (with the help of a frantic addition of EtOH) and a brown insoluble compound was formed. Fortunately, upon evaporation this compound decomposes to osmium dioxide!!

The potassium perosmate was made by dissolving osmium metal in molten KOH/KNO₃ at around 1000°F for 4 minutes. The dissolution rate was magnitutes faster than anything else I've seen osmium react with.

I used a simple ball bearing and coated it with Volvo's "osmium gray metallic" paint option.

My curiosity here was appearances only.

The color is off, the reflectivity is fuzzy, it's ferromagnetic, the density is way off, the paint easily chips off and can be removed with solvents.