Day 98: Chlorine

Clockwise from left: a nice flask of chlorine (from Wikimedia Commons), chlorine’s disinfectant abilities creates a famous smell in swimming pools (from Wikimedia Commons), chlorine as it appears in the periodic table. Today we will cover the last of the “classical” halogens, chlorine. There is one more element that is technically a halogen, but that

Day 97: Rhodium

Clockwise from left: a rose, inspiration for the name rhodium (from Pixabay); rhodium as it appears on the periodic table; a round lump of rhodium (from Wikimedia Commons). We have a double-billing of platinum group elements: following on from yesterday’s ruthenium is today’s rhodium. So we have another inert, robust, shiny transition metal that can

Day 96: Ruthenium

Clockwise from left: a dark shiny lump of ruthenium (from Wikimedia Commons), ruthenium as it appears in the periodic table, ruthenium-platinum alloy ring with a topaz in it (from Qevon.com). Ruthenium is an element that is really up and coming in terms of applications, which comes as quite a respite after all this talk of

Day 95: Hafnium

Clockwise from left: a lumpy lump of hafnium (from Wikimedia Commons); the city of Copenhagen, or as it is in Latin, Hafnia (from Wikimedia Commons); hafnium as it appears in the periodic table. I’m going to tell you now that this is another element named after a Scandinavian location, but now Denmark gets a little

Day 94: Fermium

Clockwise from left: a very blurry photo of Enrico Fermi (from Wikimedia Commons), an alloy of fermium and ytterbium containing 0.00004% fermium used to determine some of the characteristics of fermium (from By Ben E. Lewis through Wikimedia Commons), fermium as it appears on the periodic table. We haven’t quite reached 100 posts, but we

Day 93: Carbon

Clockwise from left: a lump of graphite (from Wikimedia Commons), a fancier lump of diamond (from Wikimedia Commons), carbon as it appears in the periodic table. When I started this blog a few elements popped into my head as “potentially big posts if I didn’t control myself”. Carbon was the first to do so, as

Day 92: Curium

Clockwise from left: Marie Curie, namesake of curium (from Wikimedia Commons); curium as it appears on the periodic table; Sojourner, a Mars Rover that uses curium in specialised spectrometers to analyse samples (from Wikimedia Commons). I’m not going to lie to you all: this is another transuranic synthetic element named after a pioneering physicist. And

Day 91: Erbium

Clockwise from left: a shiny lump of erbium (from Wikimedia Commons), erbium can help with fibreoptic cables (from Wikimedia Commons), erbium as it appears in the periodic table. We have reached the 3rd in the quadrilogy of Ytterby: erbium. This element is actually helping you all read this, but more on that later. First we

Day 90: Livermorium

Clockwise from top-left: the city of Livermore and location of livermorium’s discovery (from Wikimedia Commons); Robert Livermore, rancher and landowner whose land became the city of Livermore (from the Livermore Heritage Guild through Wikimedia Commons); livermorium as it appears on the periodic table. Another element that was synthesised in my lifetime, livermorium was first created

Day 89: Lawrencium

Left: a photograph of name inspirer Ernest Lawrence (from the Nobel foundation through Wikimedia Commons). Right: lawrencium as it appears in the periodic table. Once again we return to the bottom of the periodic table. Synthetic radioactive heavy element? Check. Named after an eminent scientist? Check. Does not last long enough for there to be