Who measures uranium in pounds? I feel like if you're not using metric you probably shouldn't be handling uranium.
this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2025
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Put that chunk of uranium on a scale and you have a 700 milion year calendar
Thanks but i find an annual calendar already pretty overwhelming
GOD DAMNIT! Who touched my Uranium-235?? I left it RIGHT HERE where this lead is.
Somebody touch-a my U235
Hey where did my thorium 231 go?
hey where did my francium go
burps
Just eat the lead to make all the worries disappear
Whose responsible this?!?!
So I ran the numbers. U-235 decays into Pb-207, which means about 12% of its mass is radiated away in alpha decay. Which sounds like a fuckton.
Also, it'll mean that that chunk of lead will be a touch heavier, at 13.2 lbs
The Maths:
U-235 decays into Pb-207. To three significant digits, 207/235 = 0.881, equivalent to 88.1%, meaning 11.9% is radiated away.
88.1% of 15 lbs = 13.2 lbs.
also, uranium's half life is 700 million years, so we expect (207/235)*7.5 (of lead) + 7.5 (uranium) ~ 14.106382978723405 lump.
also, a lot of the helium produced will remain trapped inside (most heavy metal lumps act as sponges for little gasses). but 700 mil years is also a large amount of time, so much of it would diffuse out. I could checkup diffusion statistics for he d pb-u but i would have to probably do a double integral (as pb-u combination is not fixed, and we can not simply do the error function calculation), so skipping that. but it is safe to say that we will have a lump of ~50% U, 44% pb, and 6% He (by mass), and a significant amount of he will remain in
So it would be more accurate to say that 13.2 lbs would be a minimum for the lump's mass.
And that's ignoring spontaneous fission which is probably happening to some extent to some of the isotopes
Woahhh. That's heavy maaannn.
u-235 has a half life of 704 million years. only half of it would have decayed.
1 hour here is 7 years on earth .jpg
No snoot, there'd be crabs!!
This meme is false.
Awww greyhound snoot 😍
Reminds me of my ingot of invar. Every few years I try to think of something to do with it, but still haven't come up with anything.
What's invar?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invar
In short, it is an alloy that experiences almost zero thermal expansion or contraction.
And I thought it was some deez nuts joke that I wasn't aware of
So a chunk of lead today could have been pre-cambrian uranium?
A little older, with a ~700 million year half life and about ten half lives to be practically completely converted you're looking for 7 billion years ago