Dr. Polemic wrote:
On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 10:11:03 -0800, (Floyd L. Davidson) wrote:

Note the relative
vapor pressure of cadmium compared to other metals. Then think
about "a nice little vacuum pump".


Think about why the graphs on that web page don't go below 10^-7 torr. Then think about
cadmium's (extrapolated) vapor pressure of 10^-12 torr at 30 degrees.


http://www.veeco.com/learning/learni...orelements.asp

This is quite OT, but might be of interest, since we're so far OT
anyway! Note the strange behavior of mercury. This makes it possible
to use mercury vapor to make "a nice little vacuum pump". When I first
started using vacuum pumps, mercury pumps were common. They were
displaced by oil diffusion pumps and more recently by ion pumps. I
don't know of any that would make cadmium "boil" at anywhere near "room
temperature".

--
Virg Wall