Some samples are collected by simply running a swab over the affected area. The sample may be sent to a laboratory for analysis although a few tests can provide in-office results in just a few minutes.
Throat, nasal, vaginal, and superficial wound cultures, for example, are obtained in this way. The procedures, while they may sometimes be uncomfortable, are generally quick, relatively painless, and have no after-effects. Samples of vaginal secretions are obtained by running a cotton swab over the walls of the vagina; cervical cells for a Pap test are obtained using a cotton swab and spatula or a tiny brush.
Endometrial tissue samples are obtained by inserting a thin, flexible, hollow tube into the uterus, during which you may feel a slight pinch or brief cramping. Patients may feel some emotional and physical discomfort during this procedure. If you are physically uncomfortable, discuss this with your healthcare provider.
The specimen is collected by running a swab over the area of interest and processed for testing, such as cultures. If the throat is sore, the sample collection, brief as it is, can be uncomfortable. Similarly, a nasal swab may be a bit uncomfortable as the swab is inserted and reaches areas inside the nose that are typically never touched.
Try to remember that the discomfort is temporary and ask your practitioner if there are ways to minimize any soreness that may result. If a wound or sore is located in the outer layer of skin, the specimen is typically collected on a swab by brushing the swab over the area and gathering a sample of fluid or pus.
Touching the open wound area may be temporarily painful since the wound is likely to be tender and sore. If a wound or infection is deep, however, a needle and syringe may be used to aspirate a sample of fluid or pus from the site.
Blood specimens are obtained in minimally invasive procedures conducted by specially trained physicians, nurses, or medical personnel.
Collection of tissue specimens is a more complex process and may require a local anesthetic in order to obtain a specimen. Because of the nature of these collections techniques, some pain or discomfort may be involved.
Knowing what the procedure involves may help alleviate some anxiety when having to undergo these types of sample collections. For more on this, see the article Coping with Test Pain, Discomfort, and Anxiety. Blood samples can be collected from blood vessels capillaries, veins, and sometimes arteries by trained phlebotomists or medical personnel.
The sample is obtained by needle puncture and withdrawn by suction through the needle into a special collection tube. Some specimens may be obtained by a finger puncture that produces a drop of blood, such as that used for glucose testing.
The procedure usually takes just a few minutes and hurts just a bit, typically when the needle is inserted or from the puncture of a lancet. See Tips on Blood Testing for more information.
Samples of tissue may be obtained from a number of different body sites, such as breast, lung, lymph node, or skin. Depending on the site and the degree of invasiveness, some pain or discomfort may occur.
The time required to perform the procedure and for recovery can also vary greatly. These procedures are conducted by healthcare providers who have had specialized training. Tissue biopsies can be collected using procedures, such as:.
A sample of cerebrospinal fluid is obtained by lumbar puncture, often called a spinal tap. It is a special but relatively routine procedure. It is performed while the person is lying on their side in a curled up, fetal position or sometimes in a sitting position.
The back is cleaned with an antiseptic and a local anesthetic is injected under the skin. A special needle is inserted through the skin, between two vertebrae, and into the spinal canal. The health practitioner collects a small amount of CSF in multiple sterile vials; the needle is withdrawn and a sterile dressing and pressure are applied to the puncture site.
The patient will then be asked to lie quietly in a flat position, without lifting their head, for one or more hours to avoid a potential post-test spinal headache. The lumbar puncture procedure usually takes less than half an hour. Discomfort levels can vary greatly. The most common sensation is a feeling of pressure when the needle is introduced.
Let your healthcare provider know if you experience a headache or any abnormal sensations, such as pain, numbness, or tingling in your legs, or pain at the puncture site.
Other body fluids such as synovial fluid, peritoneal fluid, pleural fluid, and pericardial fluid are collected using procedures similar to that used for CSF in that they require aspiration of a sample of the fluid through a needle into a collection vessel.
These are generally more complex type of collections and often require some patient preparation, use of a local anesthetic, and a resting period following sample collection. For details, see the descriptions for arthrocentesis , paracentesis , thoracentesis , and pericardiocentesis.
Both types of samples are most often collected from the hip bone iliac crest. In some instances, marrow collection may be collected from the breastbone sternum.
Almost all patients are given a mild sedative before the procedure, then asked to lie down on their stomach or side for the collection.
The site is cleaned with an antiseptic and injected with a local anesthetic, treating it as a typical surgical field. When the site has numbed, the health practitioner inserts a needle through the skin and into the bone.
For an aspiration, a syringe is attached to the needle and bone marrow fluid is aspirated. For a bone marrow biopsy, a special needle is used to collect a core a cylindrical sample of bone and marrow.
After the needle has been withdrawn, a sterile bandage is placed over the site and pressure is applied. In some instances, the procedure may be repeated on the opposite hip bilateral bone marrow , most often done as part of the initial diagnostic workup. The patient is then instructed to lie quietly until their blood pressure, heart rate, and temperature are normal, and then to keep the collection site dry and covered for about 48 hours.
A sample of amniotic fluid is obtained using a procedure called amniocentesis to detect and diagnose certain birth defects, genetic diseases, and chromosomal abnormalities in a fetus. Amniotic fluid surrounds, protects, and nourishes a growing fetus during pregnancy.
A sample about 1 ounce of amniotic fluid is aspirated by inserting a thin needle through the belly and uterus into the amniotic sac, collecting both cellular and chemical constituents that are analyzed to detect certain genetic abnormalities that may be present. A Directory of Medical Tests.
Accessed December Pagana K, Pagana T. Louis: Mosby Elsevier; The sulfur in the yolk is supposed to make the silver blacken.
I tried this, and it worked, but it took a while and got kind of gross in the process. Platinum is expensive, even more so than gold. To look for platinum, we turn to automobiles.
Platinum is the least reactive metal. It has a remarkable resistance to corrosion, even at high temperatures. Because of this, it is used to make electrodes for some automobile spark plugs and oxygen sensors.
The spark plugs are now common, and can be bought in auto parts stores and often in superstores like Wal-Mart. They are expensive though, so a better option would be to get used ones the way I did. For most people this might mean talking to a mechanic and asking for old spark plugs that come out of vehicles, but I took mine out of junk cars destined for the salvage yard.
The plugs by themselves are cool samples, as they have the word platinum printed right on the side. I was unsatisfied with the visibility of the actual platinum, however, so I cut away part of the plug so I could see it better. To replicate what I did, you will need:. My samples are Bosch Platinum plugs, which boast on the package that the center electrode is comprised of a slender I first donned gloves and protective eyewear.
Then, using a bench vise to hold the plug horizontally, I used a hacksaw to cut around the outside of the plug and remove the outer electrode. Next, I cleaned up my rough hacksaw cut on a bench grinder. Afterwards, I rested the ceramic insulator against a hard surface and struck it with a hammer, fracturing it.
Finally, I was able to pick off the chunks of broken ceramic around the center electrode with a small screwdriver and reveal the platinum. Once again, you can clean up the possibly sharp edge of the ceramic on the bench grinder. However, there is still:. Catalytic converters are vehicle emissions control devices, found on the underside of cars.
They look a little like a small muffler, and are mounted just behind the engine with the exhaust manifold feeding directly into them. The platinum or other platinum group metal or metals helps complete the combustion of the residual unburned hydrocarbons in the engine exhaust.
More research is needed, as converters may not contain platinum in a form that is sample worthy. Oxygen sensors are mounted very close by the converter, also on the exhaust system.
Some of them have platinum electrodes. Want to record a message that will be readable an eon from now? Scratch it into a piece of platinum and bury it in the desert! Have an old tackle box in the garage?
Maybe some old fishing equipment that no one uses? This is a good place to look for lead. Sinkers are good samples; they often come in convenient plastic baggies. The small weights attached to the wheel rims of most cars, called tire balances, are lead, cast around a piece of steel that allows the weight to be clipped onto the rim.
Inside these batteries, which are big black plastic boxes, are plates of lead hardened with antimony. Also, the battery posts and clamps are often made of lead. The clamps can be purchased in retail stores that carry automotive parts, and make for sizable samples.
Lead bullets and shot, which are alloyed with antimony for hardness, are also a good source of lead. Since it is dangerous to remove the lead slug from a live round, or to remove lead shot from a shotgun shell, I recovered bullets for my collection by digging them out of a hillside.
The hillside had been used to back a target. As an extra bonus, I was taking lead out of the environment. Keep in mind that lead is a potent toxin, and can be absorbed through your skin.
To limit your exposure, here are a few guidelines to keep you safe:. Always wash your hands after handling anything lead, or anything that contains lead - this will keep it from being absorbed into your skin or finding its way onto things that you touch or worse, into your mouth.
Never sand or grind on a piece of lead — this is the worst thing you could do, because it puts small lead particles into the air that you could breathe. The element tantalum is indispensable for making electronic components called capacitors.
This is because capacitors made with tantalum can be made smaller than other kinds of capacitors, while still performing the same function. They are mostly found inside miniaturized electronic devices, including cell phones, computers, mp3 players, key fobs, and countless others.
Tantalum capacitors are also more rugged than other kinds of capacitors, making them reliable even in extreme environments like the one found inside the engine compartment of your car.
Less common are the epoxy-dipped radial-lead "pearls", followed by the very rare axial lead variety. Remember that capacitors always have two leads, or legs.
Again, see the picture. Placing a tantalum capacitor in your collection is a good representative of tantalum, because it is the prime commercial application of the metal.
They can be robbed from circuit boards or bought at electronics stores like Radio Shack. To see tantalum metal, however, you will have to burn off the epoxy or plastic case of one of these capacitors.
To do this, you will need:. First, clip or de-solder the tantalum capacitor from the circuit board if attached to one. Then, while holding it in the jaws of needle nose pliers, hold it in the flame of a candle. The goal is to burn off the insulation on the capacitor.
As the insulation burns and turns to ash, you can knock a layer of it off and continue burning. At some point the core of the capacitor will be only covered by a black powdery substance.
This is manganese dioxide. You should stop heating the capacitor core now, otherwise:. If you continue to heat the capacitor after most of the insulation has burned away, you can trigger a rapid exothermic reaction similar to the thermite reaction. The manganese oxide will give up its oxygen atoms, which form new bonds tantalum, burning it to create tantalum oxide.
The core of the capacitor will ignite, burning with a small flame of its own for a second or two until it glows white hot. The reaction only lasts for a few seconds, and it scared me the first time it happened.
If you can get all the insulation off without triggering the reaction and fusing your sample, you have a sample of tantalum. The core of the capacitor is made of tantalum powder that has been sintered into a nugget around a tantalum wire.
The tantalum nugget is then coated with manganese dioxide, a black powdery substance. The leads are then attached and the whole thing is coated in epoxy. Mostly they are used in industrial, military, or even aerospace applications. They have a wet electrolyte, but still contain a sintered tantalum pellet like the epoxy dipped kind, hence they are sometimes called wet slug tantalum capacitors.
Some have silver cases, while others have tantalum casings. The ones I found I robbed off of a circuit board, but I can't remember what the board came out of. I got all my information about them from a PDF put out by the Vishay Corporation. I haven't opened any of mine, but I have three so maybe I will sometime — I bet the tantalum nugget inside is much bigger than the ones I got from the epoxy dipped tantalum caps.
I assume other striking surfaces are of a similar composition. You could maybe try to scrape the phosphorous off and try to purify it, but for now I am happy with just putting a striking surface in my collection. See the woolly filament inside these flash bulbs? I believe this is zirconium.
When the bulb is connected to the current from a battery, the electricity flows through the filament just as it would in a regular light bulb. The difference here is that the filament is a flammable metal early flash bulb filaments were made of magnesium, later replaced by brighter zirconium and the bulb is filled with oxygen rather than an inert gas like regular light bulbs.
The filament ignites in a brilliant flash, burning to ash in an instant. The glass bulb contains this violent process, and is plastic coated to help keep the bulb from shattering.
The plastic coating on these bulbs is clear, whereas many you will see are tinted a blue color. I found these bulbs tucked away in an old box in my workshop; you might find them in antique stores. Zirconium is resistant to corrosion, but is reactive with oxygen at high temperatures. Rhodium is used as a plating on jewelry.
I found this little giraffe in my friend's jewelry collection. Very shiny. Ruthenium is used as a plating to give jewelry a dark shine.
Some have compared its appearance to pewter, but because I am unfamiliar with pewter, I think it resembles polished hematite. I found the tassel on the floor in Wal-Mart.
See the dark spot on the vacuum tube in the photograph? However, this is not the case. Barium metal has been evaporated onto the inside of the glass envelope, forming something called a getter spot. The getter helps to maintain a vacuum, because the highly reactive barium metal combines with or absorbs unwanted gases.
While the color of barium metal is silvery-white, this rapidly vanishes upon oxidation, giving way to a dark gray oxide layer, which I assume is most of what we are seeing here. Newer getter spots may appear more shiny and mirror like. If the getter is exposed to atmospheric air for example, if the tube breaks or develops a leak , it turns white and becomes useless.
After the air was pumped out and the tube sealed, the trough was heated with an induction heater which was held near the trough, outside of the tube. The trough got red hot and the barium became vaporized, instantly reacting with any residual gas, then condensing on the cool walls of the tube in a thin coating, the getter spot or getter mirror, which continues to absorb gas.
This is the most common type, used in low power vacuum tubes. Specialized tubes may use a more exotic getter material like zirconium.
I found vacuum fluorescent displays in old microwaves. Vacuum fluorescent displays have getter spots, though LED displays are more common nowadays. I found my vacuum tube inside an old TV, which was in an old dump.
A look around a flea market or antique shop may yield old electronics that contain vacuum tubes, or even just the tubes themselves I have seen both. Note: Keep in mind that not all getters use barium. A functioning phosphorus getter looks very much like an oxidized metal getter, although it has an iridescent pink or orange appearance which oxidized metal getters lack.
Tungsten is synonymous with light bulb filaments, and a filament makes a good sample. A big filament is best, and these come from high wattage light bulbs. Light bulbs used in automobiles can also have large diameter filaments, because they use the lower voltages provided by car batteries.
The drawbacks of filament samples are that they are small, and to remove one from a bulb you have to deal with the potential hazard of broken glass. When braking light bulbs, I recommend wrapping the bulb in a piece of cloth like material, then smashing it with a hammer.
If you do it right, the glass bits will be contained by the material. Then, you can separate the filament from the bulb. Alternatively, leave the filament in and use the base of the bulb as a holder of sorts. Tungsten is quite heavy, just slightly less dense than gold.
It would be cool to have a sample big enough that would allow you to feel this property. High-density alloys of tungsten with nickel, copper or iron are used in high-quality darts to allow for a smaller diameter and thus tighter groupings or for fishing lures tungsten beads allow the fly to sink rapidly.
Some types of strings for musical instruments are wound with tungsten wires. I have a golf club that advertises copper-tungsten weighting. My wal-mart sells tungsten fishing weights, though they cost around USD for four and are no doubt an alloy of some kind.
TIG tungsten inert gas welding utilizes tungsten electrodes. From what I understand, during welding electricity jumps an arc from the tip of the tungsten electrode to the metal to be welded. At the same time another rod, a filler rod, is placed in the heat of the arc, melting it to form the weld puddle.
Some TIG electrodes have other metals added, as indicated by colored paint on the end of the electrode:. I have yet to get to a welding shop to ask about TIG electrodes, but they are probably expensive and only sold in a full box of ten.
Inside every ionization type smoke detector is a small amount of the radioactive element americium. These smoke detectors are very common; you probably have a few in your home.
The americium, in the form of americium dioxide, is plated onto a small metal button inside, mounted in a small enclosure known as the ionization chamber.
What about the radiation, you ask? The radiation emitted is relatively benign, but to be safe I recommend the following:. Most ionization smoke detectors contain a maximum of one micro curie abbreviated 1. Every second, about 30, of the americium atoms decay. When they do this, a chunk of the atomic nucleus breaks off and goes flying through the air.
Primarily this is an alpha particle, which is two neutrons and two protons stuck together the equivalent of the nucleus of a helium atom.
This leaves behind a nucleus with two less protons, meaning the atomic number of the decaying atom drops by two: Americium, element 95, becomes Neptunium, element Alpha particles, because they are large and positively charged, only travel a few inches in air and are easily absorbed by a few sheets of writing paper.
The older a smoke detector is, the more Neptunium atoms it will contain. Neptunium has a half-life of 2. This means that you can use americium buttons to fill both the americium and neptunium places in an element display. Attached to one of them is the americium button, which is emitting a constant stream of alpha particles that cross a small air gap and are then absorbed by the other plate.
Because alpha particles each contain two protons, which are positively charged particles, a tiny potential difference and a tiny current flow is created between the two metal plates.
When smoke particles enter the chamber, they absorb the alpha particles and become ionized, breaking the circuit and triggering the alarm. I bought my smoke detectors in second hand shops, both for fifty cents. You can find them sometimes with the hardware. Just make sure it says it contains a radioactive element.
If you buy one this way, you will probably be keeping a radioactive substance out of a landfill. Unfortunately most things, including cast iron and wrought iron, are not iron but in fact steel, an alloy of iron and carbon.
As far as I know, you will not come across pure iron anywhere. It is too soft for any practical use. Crude iron metal is produced in blast furnaces, where ore is reduced by coke to pig iron, which contains 3.
Further refinement with oxygen reduces the carbon content to the correct proportion between 0. My advice is to not lose any sleep over the purity of your iron sample, but just place a piece of mild low-carbon steel in your collection and be done with it.
No one is going to look twice at your sample of iron anyway. As with any of the elements, you can always buy a purer sample online later. Although it would be cool to have a chunk of chromium metal, you will only find it as a thin plating on metal objects like:.
This is because even slight impurities in the copper can drastically lower its conductivity. Copper is an easy metal to find a good sample of, especially because its distinctive peachy color makes it easily identifiable.
The challenge, then, is to find a sample of copper that is interesting. It also had to be compact enough to fit into my collection, and be interesting to look at. A magnetron, the vacuum tube that produces the microwaves that heat food in a microwave oven, provided me with just the sample I needed.
Robbed from a dead microwave, I cut out the copper center portion with a hacksaw. The inside of the tube is evacuated, so the copper surfaces inside are untarnished by air and very peachy, at least for a while.
Warning: Some magnetrons have beryllium oxide ceramic insulators, which are dangerous if crushed and inhaled, or otherwise ingested. Whatever you do, never break the ceramic insulators of the magnetron.
Broken ceramic insulators or magnetrons should not be directly handled. Also, opening a microwave can be dangerous because they contain high voltage capacitors that can store a lethal charge for some time even after the microwave has been unplugged.
To be safe I usually let my microwaves sit around for several months. To be extra safe you can:. A really awesome sample would be a piece of native, or naturally occurring copper.
I saw some beautiful samples of native copper from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in a Flea Market, but they wanted USD for each of them. Pennies are easy to come by, but pre U. A friend gave me this sample. He was working in an old house and came upon a thermostat with a mercury switch.
Mercury like all metals conducts electricity, and will slide to one end or the other of the glass tube, connecting the electrical contacts to open or close different circuits.
The mercury slides around freely inside its sealed ampoule, and it is really fun to play with. By far one of my coolest samples.
Handle with care. The switch was part of a dial thermostat, and was fastened to the end of a coiled bimetallic strip. I had a picture of the inside of the thermostat, but the computer it was on died.
I imagine that thermostats like this may not be available to buy new, but you could check your local hardware or home improvement store. Mercury is known for being the only metal that is a liquid at room temperature.
It is also known for being toxic. Mercury is sometimes called quicksilver, from the fact that it can glide very quickly across a surface. On the inside of the negative half of the cell is a little bit of lithium metal.
I was able to open the cell with:. First I held the cell in one pliers, negative side up. Then using the other pliers I grabbed the edge of the positive side, pulling the edge of it down and away.
It was a bit difficult for the pliers to grab the edge, but I was able to wrench the coin cell open on one side this way. These batteries can be sealed pretty tight! Next, I was able to grab the edge of the positive half with one pliers and the edge of the negative half with the other, then wrench the two apart.
Now that you have the cell open, you will encounter four things:. All of these stayed with the negative half of the battery I took apart. I removed them, by picking at them with the screwdriver, in the order they are listed above.
When I peeled the cardboard layer off, some of the lithium, most of which had corroded into a white flaky substance, came off with it. I accidentally scarred some of the soft lithium metal that was still sticking to the inside of the metal cup with my screwdriver, exposing a fresh grey surface, and then watched in awe as the damaged area corroded before my eyes.
It immediately started to turn brown, and after about fifteen seconds it had turned a dull, very dark grey color. Later that afternoon it was a bluish grey, and by the next day it had turned white. You will almost certainly find one of these 3V lithium coin cells if you open a computer; they are a popular choice for providing power to the CMOS complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor , a battery-powered memory chip in your computer that stores startup information.
Lithium an alkali earth metal , is highly reactive and quickly corrode away if left out in the air for very long. With a density of only. My dad found a lithium AA battery in a parking lot. I could cut it open to obtain about a gram of thin lithium foil. It wont last long, however, unless you store it under oil.
You could use a hacksaw to open these batteries, but I think a small manual tubing cutter would be the best way. There are various how-tos on how to do it, search for them! They are not to be confused with the rechargeable types of lithium battery, like the lithium-ion or lithium-polymer.
Mineral oil is the best oil to store samples under because it is very clear and is non-flammable. You can buy it in stores, I think in the health and beauty department. In the early s, researchers began to evaluate bismuth as a nontoxic replacement for lead in various applications.
The density difference between lead density For example, it can replace lead as a dense material in fishing sinkers. The next time you are in Wal-Mart, wander over to the aisle where they sell fishing gear.
See if you can find bismuth fishing sinkers. Keep in mind that some are a bismuth-tin alloy. The pink product pepto bismol contains bismuth, in the form of bismuth subsalicylate.
Find a location near you. In-home sample collection. About In-Home Sample Collection. Why opt for in-home sample collection? Convenient : Avoid the driving across town or waiting in line to get lab work. Comfortable : Sample collections are performed in the setting that works best for you.
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Purchases not permitted in: AK, AZ, HI. Most lab tests purchased by patients are eligible for in-home sample collection.
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By sampling goals, screeners can be categorized as selection, which involves matching the sample with the targeted population; or as This 4-hour online course is a complete study of the rules and regulations for conducting urine collections in the Department of The balla.info is a web-tool designed for survey designers and samplers to perform several functions, such as sample calculation
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