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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GOD DAMNIT! Who touched my Uranium-235?? I left it RIGHT HERE where this lead is.
Somebody touch-a my U235
Whose responsible this?!?!
Hey where did my thorium 231 go?
hey where did my francium go
burps
Just eat the lead to make all the worries disappear
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
No snoot, there'd be crabs!!
This meme is false.
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.
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.
So a chunk of lead today could have been pre-cambrian uranium?