Category Elements

               Thomas Alva Edison is probably a familiar name to everyone. He was an inventor who is credited with the invention of light bulb.

               After so many trial and error experiments with metal for the filaments, he came across a metal which was suitable for the bulbs. It was none other than tungsten.

               Tungsten is most used for the filaments of light bulbs and other types of lighting, because it has the highest melting point of all the metals. It ranges in colour from a steely grey, to almost white.

               Carl Wilhelm Scheele, a German-Swedish chemist, hypothesized the existence of tungsten in 1781. Two years later, Spanish chemists, Jose and Fausto Elhuyar isolated tungsten.

               The name tungsten comes from the Swedish words ‘tung sten’, meaning heavy stone. Tungsten is the heaviest of all elements known to play a biological role. Tungsten is resistant to attack by alkali, oxygen, and acids. Production of tungsten is difficult, due to its high melting point.

               It has the atomic number 74, and its atomic symbol is W.

               The symbol comes from its alternative name wolfram used by German tin miners.

Picture credit: google

               Do you know how the element tantalum gets its name? There is a Greek mythological figure called Tantalus who was sentenced for his heinous crimes. He was punished to eternally stand in a stream, beneath a tree with fruit-laden branches, never being able to satiate his hunger or quench his thirst. The element tantalum is named after this villainous character.

               Tantalum was discovered by Anders Ekeberg, a Swiss chemist, in 1802. Ekeberg was an expert in Greek literature, and he was deaf!

               The element is blue-grey in colour, and is a very hard metal with the fourth highest melting point of any metallic element. It is well known for its ability to resist corrosion by acids, even aqua regia, a strong acidic mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid.

               There is a wide variety of minerals that contain tantalum, but only five are viable for commercial uses at present. They are euxenite, microlite, polycrase, tantalite, and wodginite. Of these minerals, tantalite is the most important for tantalum mining.

               Tantalum is mainly found in Australia, Brazil, Mozambique, Thailand, Portugal, Nigeria, Zaire and Canada. It is used in a variety of alloys to add high strength, ductility and a high melting point.

               The atomic number of tantalum is 73, and its atomic symbol is Ta.

Picture credit: google

 

Hafnium is a silvery grey shiny metal. The element is named after Hafnia, the Latin name for Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark. It is there that the element was discovered.

               Hafnium nuclei has the ability to absorb multiple neutrons; and therefore, it is used in nuclear reactors, especially nuclear powered submarines.

               Dmitri Mendeleev had predicted the possible existence of hafnium. He predicted an element with similar features in his report in 1869. However, it had not been discovered until 1923 by Dirk Coster, a Dutch physicist, and Georg von Hevesy, a Hungarian radio-chemist.

               Hafnium has many interesting features. It reacts with air and forms a film to protect itself. Due to this tendency of the metal, hafnium is very resistant to corrosion. A single fine particle of hafnium can spontaneously combust when it comes in contact with air.

               Hafnium does not exist in nature on its own. It is usually found combined with zirconium to form minerals. Hafnium is used in the manufacture of alloys with several metals, including iron, niobium, titanium, and tantalum.

               Hafnium has the atomic number 72, and it is represented as Hf.

               There is an interesting story behind the naming of the element now known as lutetium. Lutetium was discovered in 1907 independently by three scientists. They were Charles James, an American scientist, Georges Urbain, a French chemist, and Carl Auer von Welsbach, an Austrian mineralogist. When it came to naming the element, there was a dispute among them. Urbain, French by birth, proposed two names, one of which was ‘lutecium’, conceived from Lutetia, the Roman name for Paris. Welsbach had some other ideas. Both of them accused each other of using each other’s research details as well. Anyhow, Urbain’s name was accepted, and it gained popularity with a small change in spelling —from lutecium to lutetium.

               The element has not been isolated until recent years, and it is one of the most difficult ones to prepare. There are very few commercial uses for lutetium because it is too expensive, and too difficult to extract.

               The atomic number of lutetium is 71, and its symbol is Lu.

               Ytterbium is a bright metal with silvery white colour. It is a soft metal, and is both ductile and malleable. The metal tarnishes quickly in air, and reacts slowly with water. Ytterbium is considered to be moderately toxic. Closeness to the  compounds  of ytterbium can cause irritation to skin and eyes.

               Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac, a Swiss chemist, is reputed to have discovered ytterbium in 1878. However, ytterbium as a pure metal was produced only in 1953, at the Ames Laboratory, Iowa, by A. Daane, David Dennison and Frank Spedding. The element is named after Ytterby, a village in Sweden.

               Very rarely is ytterbium found free in nature. However, the element is abundantly available in a number of minerals such as monazite, gadolinite euxenite and xenotime.

               There are many isotopes of ytterbium. Isotope 160Yb is radioactive, and is used in portable x-ray machines that need no electricity. It is used in stress gauges to monitor ground deformations caused by earthquakes or underground explosions. Atomic clocks also use ytterbium for accuracy of time.

               The atomic number of ytterbium is 70, and its atomic symbol is Yb.

Picture credit: google

 

               Yes, thulium is used in Euro banknotes to prevent counterfeiting. The element  in the note displays blue fluorescence under ultraviolet light thus aiding in distinguishing between the real and the fake currency note.

               Thulium gets its name from the name of an ancient place called Thule which is associated with Scandinavia. Per Teodor Cleve, the Swedish chemist discovered two new materials, one green and one brown, while working with erbia (erbium oxide) in 1879, in Uppsala, Sweden. These turned out to be oxides of two new elements: thulium and holmium. The green substance he named thulia, which he later found to be thulium oxide, and the brown substance he named holmia, which he later found to be holmium oxide. Charles James in New Hampshire prepared the first pure thulium in 1911.

               This element does not have many uses as it is rare, and therefore, costly. There are many cheaper elements that can substitute thulium. It is used in laser equipment and X-ray devices. The atomic number of thulium is 69, and its atomic symbol is Tm.

Picture credit: google