How about some things to smile about this week? I’ll leave it to you to decide what the real message is behind any of these. First up, Gallium! We ain’t runnin’ out of it anytime soon. According to this report from the US Minerals Management Service (by the way, since reconstituted – extra credit if you can figure out why), world crude gallium production (in 2006) amounted to 72 tons, with an additional 105 tons of refined gallium production, some of which is recycled materials. Let’s assume this is 100 tons per year produced and consumed around the world.
How much gallium (assuming a ridiculously conservative estimation technique that is akin to estimating global reserves of chef-boy-r-dee based on how much is in your cabinet at today’s prices) exists in the world in reserve?
About 1 million tons.
“If present trends continue …” that will last us 10,000 years.
I had gallium with pesto just last night. Probably have some with radishes and cauliflower on Thursday or Friday. There’s a lot of it around this spring.
The Minerals Management Agency is responding to the recent Executive Order that grants the executive branch power to invoke emergency powers to control everything.
Good thing we have enough gallium for the salad dressing.
I just learned that gallium arsenide is used as the blue component in LED’s. Also, gallium is liquid at near room temperature, making it useful in high-temperature thermometers, which will be useful as the planet heats up because of carbon dioxide from American cars. Sounds like it would be fun to play with in chemistry class, like phosphorous.
Tomorrow is the first day of May, one of my favorite months. Wintercow asks that mysanthropes, many of his readers, but not I, cheer up, and not be cynics. We live in the freest country in the world, and things are getting better. Every day we get more sunlight, and the soil is getting warmer, soon warm enough to plant tomatoes.
In Argentina the days are getting shorter. Screw those mysanthropes.
Here I thought Gallium was an Italian after-dinner drink — the one preferred by The Most Interesting Man In The World, that non-attorney spokesperson who says, unshaven, that he seldom drinks beer, but when he does, he drinks Dos Equiis (pronounced ‘doesexis’). He drinks beer in rutting season, when the does are interested.
The Communist Chinese want to corner the gallium market. They already have cornered the long-term Treasury market.