I found this hard to believe, so I asked one of my best friends and expert engineer Joshua Muonio if this was true. He is a bona fide 100% Laplander as well as an excellent engineer and is completely trustworthy, so I thought he would be a good person to ask.
His response is that Dr. Pauls is absolutely correct! While you have Norwegians, and then you have real Norwegians, Olaf Olafson was just a regular Norwegian, but not a tough and wizened Norsk Laplander. He should have left it to the Finns; they know how to handle reindeer stuff when the pressure is on without getting all crabby about it and kicking dumb animals. They have been keeping their cool since the beginning of the Ice Age.
Just like IPC Standards, processing reindeer poop is nothing to be messing around with or taken lightly. You have to be a dedicated lifetime professional just to achieve apprenticeship levels.
Incidentally, the Finnish Laplanders have refined the process to the point where they can produce 1000 pounds of Laplandium per day. It is a side business from their core caribou milking operations and the subsequent caribou cheese and chocolate products made for Tine Foods. http://www.tine.no/english
Leave it to the experts.
Odin
-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Douglas Pauls
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2016 1:22 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] Element Quiz Question
My esteemed colleague refers to another of the half-fractional elements, Laplandium-68.5. This is in the half-Lanthanide series between Thulium (the close but no cookie answer) and Erbium. This material was somewhat plentiful in the days of the ancient Greeks in northern climates, with the permafrost protecting it from oxidation. The material, in its +4 valence state, is somewhat sweet, making it attractive to the reindeer that inhabit Lapland, and as a malleable metal, it was often chewed by reindeer, which would only pass a small fraction of laplandium into reindeer poop. Over the years, the pure deposits have been depleted and the only way to get refined Laplandium is to process about 500 tons of reindeer poop. A task not for the faint of heart.
Lapladium was first isolated by the eminent Norwegian Chemistry scholar Olaf OlafOlafson, working at the University of Norway – Breivikeidet.
There was an incredibly dense population of reindeer in that area, and Laplandium tends to glow an odd purple color at night. By refining tons of reindeer poop, he was able to get enough of the pure metal to chemically characterize it and propose it as a new element to the international committee. Originally, Olaf wanted to call it poopium, but wiser heads prevailed. Sadly, less is known about this element as Olaf came to an untimely and tragic end. Laplandium, when kept at permafrost temperatures, is perfectly stable. When heated, it becomes unstable and unfortunately, highly explosive. The average body temperature of a reindeer is just under the tipping point. Reasoning that elevated temperatures could be used to improve the extraction methods, he brought over 500 reindeer into his lab area. The resulting temperature increase caused mass instability and when Olaf lost his temper and kicked a reindeer in the ass, well, let’s say it didn’t go well. It was one of the first mushroom clouds ever and leveled everything in a 5 km radius. Had his lab not been well outside town, many others would have perished.
Doug Pauls
Principal Materials and Process Engineer Rockwell Collins
On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 8:00 AM, David Hillman < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Here is the Element Quiz Question:
>
> The Question:
> The name for this element describes the Greek word for the most
> northerly habitable land in ancient Greek mythology. This element is a
> metal and can be cut easily with a knife. To produce 4 kilograms of
> this element, you have to process 500 tons of earth. Which element is being described?
>
>
> The winner of the quiz will get the services of Clumpy and Kloumpios
> for the week.
>
>
> So far Clumpy and Kloumpios have done the following:
>
> Past Quiz winners/tasks:
> Week 1 Ravinder Ajmani, Western Digital -assisted with ???
>
> Week 1 Ron Feyereisen, SigmaTron Intl.
> -The boys can set a course through the wormhole to Elk Grove Village,
> Illinois. (aptly named since elk live in a forest preserve grove near
> here). They can give us a hand with our continuous improvement
> projects and hourly coffee making/testing.
>
> Week 2 Louis Hart, Compunetics
> - I can get the boys on Compunetics' turkey distribution list for
> Thanksgiving
>
> Week 3 Mark Kostinovsky, Schlumberger Ltd.
> -I got tons of unread e-mails in my Inbox. Therefore, I am going to
> ask Clumpy and Kloumpios to read them all and just debrief me, so I
> can take a few days off and spend some time consuming turkey with my family.
>
> Week 3 John Burke
> -I will be checking out their failure analysis skill set - onward to
> the laboratory!
>
> Week 4 ????
> - assisted with ????
>
>
> Everyone have a great weekend!
>
> Dave Hillman
> Rockwell Collins
> [log in to unmask]
>
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