Day 118: Samarium

Clockwise from left: samarskite, the mineral that gives its name to samarium (from Wikimedia Commons), a tube containing some samarium (from Wikimedia Commons), samarium as it appears in the periodic table. This is it, the last day of 2020, and therefore the final elemental blog post! And what an element to end on- the lanthanide

Day 117: Lead

Clockwise from left: some lumps of lead (from Wikimedia Commons), lead has historically been used in architecture such as roofing (from jtcroofing.co.uk), lead as it appears in the periodic table. A metal element, famous for its radiation blocking and toxicity, is our last of the elements with Latin letters in its symbol. Lead (or plumbum,

Day 116: Berkelium

Left: The Berkeley National Laboratory, home to many supervheavy elemental discoveries (from Wikimedia Commons). Right: berkelium as it appears on the periodic table. Today we come to the last of our transuranic synthetic elements- berkelium. The last element created by humans in the 20th century. The final element to be exclusively radioactive (with the most

Day 115: Neon

Clockwise from left: the classic neon sign (from PickPik), neon as it appears in the periodic table, vacuum tubes in old televisions use neon as an inert gas for easy projection of electrons (from Wikiwand). Today we round off the noble gases (the group of elements in column 18 of the periodic table that are

Day 114: Silver

Clockwise from top left: a fancy lump of silver (from Wikimedia Commons), silver is often used in mirrors for it is an excellent reflector (from Wikimedia Commons), silver as it appears in the periodic table. Today we move from yesterday’s “little silver” to actual silver. Another element that is both precious and has been known

Day 113: Platinum

Clockwise from top-left: a shiny replica lump of platinum (from Wikimedia Commons), platinum as it appears in the periodic table, platinum is used often in hard disk drives (from Pixabay). We’ve covered all the other members of the platinum group, a group of relatively inert metals found near each other in the periodic table, now

Day 112: Krypton

Clockwise from left: a gas discharge tube of krypton gas (from Wikimedia Commons), krypton often fills lamps like those used in flash photography (from Pixabay), krypton as it appears in the periodic table. Nope, you don’t need to readjust your sets, there genuinely is an element with the same name as Superman’s home planet. I

Day 111: Yttrium

Clockwise from left: a scaly lump of yttrium (from Wikimedia Commons), yttrium plays an important part in radar technology (from GetArchive), yttrium as it appears on the periodic table. Today we complete the Ytterby quadrology- the quartet of elements named after the Swedish village whose mine provided the minerals of their discovery. We’ve had ytterbium,

Day 110: Tantalum

Clockwise from left: Tantalus, a son of Zeus in Greek mythology damned to eternal hunger and thirst whilst surrounded by fruit and water (from greekmyths-greekmythology.com); a wavy lump of tantalum (from Wikimedia Commons); tantalum as it appears in the periodic table. We’re not quite done yet with elements named after Greek mythology, so here’s tantalum.

Day 109: Nobelium

Left: the Nobel Prize, depicting Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel (from Wikimedia Commons). Right: nobelium as it appears in the periodic table. When people think of famous chemists, there are certain names that come up (I think). We’ve already covered Marie Curie so we’ll go to the other big chemist- Alfred Nobel. Therefore when it comes