The CRT types are the ones with the big conical thick glass vacuum tube for a screen, with the electron gun set in the back, surrounded by a coil of copper wire. If it has a flat screen then its not a CRT. I've never taken apart a plasma screen, never have one of them to take to bits.
I've often wondered about smashing the glass off one, or else melting a hole using concentrated hydrofluoric acid (NOT a way for someone who isn't a chemist and who knows the safety precautions to take with it. I've seen videos of what HF does to a chicken-leg piece of butcher-meat and compared to other acids it was hideous, looked all grey and diseased and necrotic even when the leg itself wasn't attached to a chicken, a dead piece of meat turned to greyish diseased looking slime, and it is AWFULLY toxic, since HF has several traits that are an ideal recipe put together to make for a damn nasty chemical, its a weak acid due to the incredinbly electronegative nature of fluorine, in fact it is THE most electronegative single element, and forms very strong bonds to other chemical elements, as a result there is a significant covalent element to the bonding in HF, and the hydrogen to fluorine bond's strength mean hydrofluoric acid doesn't dissociate into hydrogen ions and fluoride ions in solution to a great deal, meaning it isn't significantly dissociated in aqueous solution, and as such it can pass through intact skin and enter body tissues easily, and with conc. HF even a tiny amount of skin surface area coming into contact with it can be fatal, stuff penetrates skin, enters the body, burning from the inside as it goes, and also fluorine has a high affinity for calcium, forming insoluble calcium fluoride, CaF2, as it leaches the calcium from bones and precipitates the calcium from the blood, as insoluble solids, plus causing a massive drop in serum calcium levels aside from the acid-burns and deep-penetration abilities, the subsequent profound hypocalcaemia causes a fatal heart attack. Meant to cause absolutely excruciatingly painful burns too. Any exposure means hospital trip, and you need to keep both injectable solution of and topical gel-based calcium gluconate right there on hand, and ideally also a solution to douse yourself in in case of emergency.)
It does have its uses though, such as an ability to melt/burn through or etch glass. (and breaking CRTs, one needs to be careful and wear eye protection since the inside is under vacuum and they implode violently)
I've often wondered though about releasing the vacuum in a CRT display and salvaging the electron gun, winding some powerful sextupole electromagnets and quadrupole magnets for strong-focusing and guidance, and of course, getting a turbomolecular pump, building the appropriate cryogenic systems, building and preparing a thick, tough hollow tube for the LINAC vacuum chamber and cool down the superconducting magnets and a set of roughing pumps to start the turbopump, of course, adding cryo-traps to stop stuff getting into the pumps and using the electron gun to build a small (well obviously, compared to the big bastards like SLAC operating at super-high energy that would be required, along with trans-national tunneling systems, but it'd just be fun to build a working one, or build a cyclotron for higher energy efficiency, although truth told I'd sooner have myself a proton accelerator than one designed for firing electron/positron beams, so I could investigate certain aspects of deuteron bombardment with certain elements and isotopes (deuterons are similar to protons, hydrogen ions, only in the form of heavy hydrogen nuclei , essentially a proton-neutron pair, and with an odd property that deuteron bombardment can it seems induce radioadioactivity in these elements, although I'm not sure how, and I'd definitely rather do some experimental work and figure it out for myself than just be given the answer.
Also thinking 'mmmm these are some GOOD donuts. Bought two well-stuffed boxes of krispy kreme, all full of a big fat variety grab-bag selection of different kinds. 24 donuts, selected from the majority of the kinds of the donuts sold by the store, would have been more, but some people had cleaned out a few of the kinds, like the nutella stuffed ones. I did a fairly good job of cleaning out most of the rest and had somebody else not actually said 'hey leave some for me' I might have bought another box, if there were enough to fill a 12-count box of the buggers.
Raspberry cream, cookie-dough cream and sprinkles, raspberry and dark chocolate, dark chocolate cream filling and many many more different sorts.
Also, happened by chance to bump into the doctor who is my main assigned GP, said he plans to pay me a phonecall. I'm hoping its to give me the go-ahead finally on my memantine request, which he has agreed to support and has just basically been trying to cover his arse.
Hoping it means that nows the time, that I'll actually get to take a script over to a pharmacy and start picking some up, so I can start the work titrating it to get the maximum benefit vs minimum unwanted effects. (although I've a fair bit of experience starting and continuing memantine cycles so I more or less know both how it affects me with how much, how frequently and know what effects to expect from it with what dose and at what points in time when starting first after a while off it to expect what.
