Lucite Cube // Technetium

Without a doubt the crown jewel of Luciteria's collection is this unique bit of the synthetic element technetium.

Ever since the first versions of Mendeleev's table came out, 19th century chemists were mystified by a hole smack in the middle of the chart. The hunt for Element 43 dragged on for many years until it was finally confirmed in 1936—but only spectroscopically. The chemistry world would have to await several more years before the first macroscopic quantities of the pure metal became possible.

Every gram of coveted uranium-235 that is burned to make energy leaves nearly useless technetium in its wake; thus stuffing the back lots of nuclear power plants with so many unwanted drums of this and other radioactive waste. What little commercial demand for the element there is —as a diagnostic tracer in medicine—is fulfilled by a fast decaying isotope that comes as a byproduct of nuclear power generation.

But make no mistake. For all the literal tons of technetium sitting out there somewhere, nary a dust speck's worth of it is available to the public.

Produced by a German laboratory, each of these very limited samples comes as a thin deposition of pure technetium metal electroplated onto a gold strip measuring just 5mm or so. Even with an estimated mass of just around 0.07mg, this little bit of Tc-99 still manages to belt out an impressive ~20,000 beta particles each and every second. But if you’re worried that you need to hurry and buy this before the technetium’s all gone, don’t. Due to this isotope’s long half life it will not be until the year 23,000 that the sample has degraded to the halfway stage! This is a seriously once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the ultimate collector of scientific curios.