
Dissolve My Nobel Prize, Fast (2011) - anacleto
http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/10/03/140815154/dissolve-my-nobel-prize-fast-a-true-story
======
comrh
I'm pretty glad I read the comments on this one:

Pastafaarian • 4 years ago "So, it takes the possibility of death in order to
get a physicist to use applied chemistry." 58 •Share

~~~
vacri
Doing an undergraduate applied science degree, one of my lecturers taught me
the phrase "In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In
practice, there is."

~~~
evanb
He was quoting Yogi Berra.

~~~
juliangregorian
Maybe. Wikiquote says the attribution came later:
[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jan_L._A._van_de_Snepscheut](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jan_L._A._van_de_Snepscheut)

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ekianjo
All good, but why did they not use Mercury to dissolve Gold instead ? It's
almost instantaneous, and it used to be commonly used for Gold extraction by
the mining industry (until they replaced it for safety reasons by other
materials).

~~~
entee
Gold and mercury form an amalgam, so you would still have had something that
looks like a big hunk of metal. I suppose you wouldn't have known whose gold
that was, but the fact that you had a large chunk of gold-mercury amalgam in
the lab would have been not so good.

Edit: Looking at some videos, it appears you could get something that looks
like regular mercury. I'm wondering how much mercury you would have needed to
solubilize a medal. They may also not have had that much on hand, HCl and
nitric acid are way easier to find.

~~~
ekianjo
> Gold and mercury form an amalgam

Sure, but if you have a sufficient amount of mercury, that amalgam will remain
invisible to the eye as Mercury is not translucent - and you can just write
"mercury" on the flash and you can be sure no-one will dare to touch it.

~~~
Crito
> you can just write "mercury" on the flash and you can be sure no-one will
> dare to touch it.

Remember we're talking about 1940. Whoever discovered it might very well take
it off the shelf to play with it. ;)

~~~
ekianjo
Oh, Mercury poisoning has been known for a very, very long time, and certainly
well documented since the late 1800s.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning)

~~~
modoc
And yet my parents (both born in the 1960's) both played with beads of mercury
on their desks in school on numerous occasions... It was pretty common

~~~
ekianjo
Sure, I'm not saying the general knowledge of mercury poisoning was
commonplace back then, but in the scientific community it was, I believe, well
known already.

~~~
pilsetnieks
It was the Nazi soldier community they were worried about.

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joe5150
Knut Hamsun got rid of his Nobel Prize by giving it as a gift to Joseph
Goebbels. It takes all kinds.

~~~
acqq
For those who didn't know, also an interesting story:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Hamsun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_Hamsun)

"In 1943, he sent Germany’s minister of propaganda Joseph Goebbels his Nobel
Prize medal as a gift. His biographer Thorkild Hansen interpreted this as part
of the strategy to get an audience with Hitler.[24] Hamsun was eventually
invited to meet with Hitler; during the meeting, he complained about the
German civilian administrator in Norway, Josef Terboven, and asked that
imprisoned Norwegian citizens be released, enraging Hitler.[25] Otto Dietrich
describes the meeting in his memoirs as the only time that another person was
able to get a word in edgeways with Hitler. He attributes the cause to
Hamsun's deafness. Regardless, Dietrich notes that it took Hitler three days
to get over his anger.[26]"

"Nevertheless, a week after Hitler's death, Hamsun wrote a eulogy for him,
saying “He was a warrior, a warrior for mankind, and a prophet of the gospel
of justice for all nations.”[22] Following the end of the war, angry crowds
burned his books in public in major Norwegian cities and Hamsun was confined
for several months in a psychiatric hospital."

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noonespecial
Whoa. That's heavy.

The beaker, I mean. That must have been a very heavy beaker of solution!

~~~
raldi
"The average Nobel Prize medal is 175g"

[http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/books-
manuscripts/watson-...](http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/books-
manuscripts/watson-james-dewey-nobel-prize-medal-in-5857953-details.aspx)

(That's about $7000 worth.)

~~~
kijin
So, about the weight of a phablet like Galaxy Note 4.

That's heavy, but not too heavy to be noticeable in a large flask containing
an unknown liquid of unknown density. And since the flask survived, the Nazis
probably knew not to mess with flasks of unknown chemicals.

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jevinskie
I wonder what the yield was. How much mass was lost between the original
medals and the recreated medals?

~~~
lvs
None. Both the oxidation and reduction are quantitative.

~~~
monochromatic
Nothing gives 100% yield.

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barsonme
Does anybody have an idea on how long dissolving a piece of gold that long
would take? The article says it's a very slow task, yet makes it seem as if
Niels Bohr was able to do it in minutes (or a little longer).

E.g., "...physicist Niels Bohr has just hours, maybe minutes, to make two
Nobel Prize medals disappear."

~~~
SteveGerencser
We did this when I was a jeweler years ago and the process happens very
quickly, it is literally minutes so I would assume that at worst they are
looking a a 5 to 10 minute window to dissolve one medal. The real issue is
that the gasses given off are lethal and if not done carefully in a very well
ventilated location you can do serious harm to yourself and anyone nearby.
They would have known this and been fine, but someone just reading the article
and thinking, hey, I have gold and some acid laying around let's see what
happens, could end up dead.

The gas given off is Nitric Oxide (which combines with Oxygen in the air to
create Nitrogen Dioxide) and Chlorine and even a small dose can cause serious
damage to your lungs if not be fatal.

~~~
barsonme
Very interesting, thank you for the answer.

I love how diverse HN can be. From Ph.Ds in computer science to former
jewelers, there seems to be a little bit of everything.

Follow up question: would the gas have stuck around until the Nazis arrived a
while (hours or less?) later? Or would their ventilation have dispersed it
enough?

I remember in the science classes I took in HS the ventilation hoods pretty
much removed most of the fumes, but we also never worked with anything that
was particularly... pungent? My last science class was probably 5 years ago,
so that's my level of understanding.

~~~
tim333
Fume cupboards work pretty well. If you leave the fan running I think all the
airflow is in and up the chimney. I presume Bohr would have used one.

(Just got side tracked reading about old style fume cupboards
[http://www.cf.ac.uk/estat/sustainability/initiatives/](http://www.cf.ac.uk/estat/sustainability/initiatives/)
)

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lxe
I love reading this kind of stuff on HN.

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galago
This is an example of actual events that are far more interesting than most
WWII movies. I fear that scientists today just aren't that _cool_. That said,
I'm not sure I would want to face similar calamity.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I prefer to think that we live in times that are less interesting (in the
Chinese proverb sense) and that demand less derring-do and intrigue of our
scientists.

I'm sure that if a portal opened up and parallel-universe-Nazis-lizards (or
whatever) began to invade, we'd see just as much heroism and inventiveness
from everyone.

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stretchwithme
Isn't gold supposed to be soft? Can't you pound it with a hammer? Maybe it
wasn't pure gold.

In the Italian Job, the thief of thieves fenced the gold bars, but was
discovered because of the image of the lady printed on each one. Bet that'd be
easy to pound out.

~~~
kijin
The medals were 23K, so about 95.8% gold.

But even if you could pound them into unidentifiable blobs, how would you keep
them safe? The Germans weren't looking for medals in particular, they would
have taken anything made of Au. "No gold shall leave Germany", etc. etc.

~~~
dghf
But without the identifying marks, how would they know where they had come
from or who had sent them? Wasn't the overriding concern the protection of the
two Laureates?

~~~
acqq
I also think hammering the medals would have been a good and fast first step
to take to make them unidentifiable. However the gold still looks like gold
and it would have been confiscated. Their goal was also to hide it in plain
sight. As mentioned in the article, they were sure that even burying gold
somewhere wouldn't help.

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trimble-alum
It is more apropos to use chemistry to hide Nobel medals than say hide them in
the walls.

Any mention as to how the lanyards were disposed (acid)?

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userbinator
The gold medals themselves were the problem, not their lanyards.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
But a sensible point - you don't want to go to all that trouble and then have
a Nazi Officer holding up a lanyard saying "Nobel Institue" that he found in
the bin at the back of the lab.

But I think a regular fire would do.

~~~
trimble-alum
Easy to debate unknown, but they already went to the trouble of dissolving
gold in acid instead of mercury. If it were me, I would place the the ribbon
and all in the solution.

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InclinedPlane
Here's what dissolving a gold coin in aqua regia looks like, this is about
1/200th of the weight of the 2 Nobel prize medallions:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqU1GfIOkI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoqU1GfIOkI)

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monochromatic
I remember hearing this story from my high school chemistry teacher. I've
always liked it.

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yyhhsj0521
Why not simply melt it?

~~~
scott_karana
Because a lump of gold would still be confiscated...

Still, they wouldn't be implicated for the Nobels at least.

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blakecaldwell
"This was not an obvious _solution_ "

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comrade1
Puts our current comfortable lives in perspective, the chemist and others
destroying a Nobel medal to keep people alive.

I guess the equivalent of risk these days is leaking information on illegal
activities by your government.

I suspect many HN readers would have turned them in.

~~~
zxexz
I suspect you're getting downvoted for the last third of your comment. The
first two thirds alone might have had the opposite effect.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Yeah, the "if you're reading this, you probably would have collaborated with
the Nazis" bit was a little jarring.

~~~
vidarh
Given the proportion of the populations of the occupied countries that ended
up collaborating, I'd say that while it was an unnecessary statement, it's
probably correct in a "given a sufficiently large set of people...." sense.

~~~
madez
I also think it was correct. People don't like when you say them that they
probably would have been a Nazi, too, if they had lived as a german in Germany
at that time. Nevertheless, I think it's true and makes one thinking.

It was a worthy comment because it was correct and controversial. Those are
often the best.

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neurocis
Spiderman would be envious.

~~~
madvoid
Is this the thread you were looking for?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9501780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9501780)

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WaxProlix
> The Nazis have declared no gold shall leave Germany, but two Nobel
> laureates, one of Jewish descent, the other an opponent of the National
> Socialists, have quietly sent their medals to Bohr's Institute of
> Theoretical Physics, for protection.

Does it bother anyone else when despotic regimes get called by their chosen
monikers (unironically)? Why do we pay this homage to the National Socialists
with tongues firmly out of cheek when our distaste for the Democratic Peoples'
Republic of Korea (for instance) is unilaterally considered standard?
Unapologetic neoliberalism, I guess, but some slightly less biased verbiage in
NPR would be nice to see.

~~~
madez
Don't worry about the down-votes.

Some misuse the possibility to down-vote to express disagreement with your
opinion or when they feel insulted. They didn't internalize freedom of speech
or use HN like reddit.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I do try to explain downvotes when requested, so here we go: I'm downvoting
you for trotting out the tired old "anyone who disagrees with me is an enemy
of free speech" silliness.

I'm curious what you think downvotes should legitimately be used for, if not
to criticize patently ridiculous statements (like "calling things by their
names is a gesture of respect, if you disagree you must be some sort of
LIBERAL").

As a side note, are you implying that Redditors _don 't_ downvote when they
disagree or feel insulted? Because _wow._ Have you been to Reddit?

~~~
madez

        I do try to explain downvotes when requested, so here we go:
        I'm downvoting you for trotting out the tired old "anyone
        who disagrees with me is an enemy of free speech" silliness.
    

I think you misread me.

I never said, nor implicated nor thought that disagreeing is incompatible with
free speech; quite the opposite.

I was talking about people abusing downvoting to express disagreement or
feeling insulted.

Maybe you should read more carefully before presuming others wrote something
silly.

    
    
        I'm curious what you think downvotes should legitimately
        be used for, if not to criticize patently ridiculous statements
        (like "calling things by their names is a gesture of respect,
        if you disagree you must be some sort of LIBERAL").
    

I have no finished list of things which downvotes should be used for.

However, trolling and trying to derail a serious discussion are part of that
list.

Patently ridiculous statements can be downvoted, but I suggest to error on the
side of doubt when judging whether it's patently or not. Also, if the
statement in question was serious, a comment why it's ridiculous is
appropriate.

Disagreement is definitely not part of that list. Because it blocks
controversial discussion even when they are serious and rational.

    
    
        As a side note, are you implying that Redditors don't downvote
        when they disagree or feel insulted? Because wow. Have you been to Reddit?
    

I think you misunderstood again.

On reddit exactly what you described happens all the time, and HN should be
different in this point.

