It is NOT magnetic. I never knew that about the gunpowder. This white stuff doesn't rub or flake off like the slugs' do.
I just had a disturbing thought... Sodium has a white oxidation. But as I found this in the ground, I kind of think that sodium would have exploded from moisture contact a long time ago. Still, I want to see if the white stuff scrubs off, but not at the risk of myself (and half the apartment building)...
<later that night...>
Okay... according to
this article:
1. Sodium is soft enough to be cut with a coin. Check.
2. It's a silvery-white color. Check.
3. Sodium floats on water. Well, since it's so pliable, I think I'll work a tiny piece off and drop it in the sink... <short time later> Aha! It doesn't float, and it didn't react! A good sign, an omen that I may not die tonight (a sodium chunk this size reacting with water could destroy my apartment - I remember that much from my last chemistry class).
What other metal out there is very tensile, pliably soft, silvery in color, dense, and has a white oxidation? Answer: lead. I scrubbed it a little with a toothbrush on one side, and it also has another lead characteristic: a bluish-silver color. So it's lead.
BTW, when I said the weight was less than a pound, that's because when I stuck it on the bathroom scale (the only scale we own), it didn't read anything but 0.0 lbs. The surface area may not be enough to elicit a true weight out of a bathroom scale.
Okay, identity solved, I have a chunk of lead. Question #2: WHY did I dig up a chunk of lead?
My only guess is that back in the day hunters probably made their own shotgun slugs, so I could see some guy over a campfire boiling lead bits from this chunk in a mold to make his own buckshot and slugs. If the shells were largely wax paper back then, that would be easy, carry a tin of gunpowder and some waxed cardboard and a chunk of lead. Thoughts?
