- Curium (Cm, #96) honors both Marie and Pierre Curie, who discovered several naturally occurring radioactive elements (Ra, Rn, and Po). They both won Nobel Prizes for physics in 1903, and Marie won the chemistry prize alone in 1911. Their daughter, Irene Joliot-Curie, also won for chemistry in 1935, making Marie and Irene the only mother-daughter pair to win Nobels!
- Fermium (Fm, #100) honors Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist who carried out the world's first nuclear chain reaction, in a room underneath the football stadium at the University of Chicago!
- Seaborgium (Sg, #106) honors Glenn Seaborg, an American chemist who discovered many new elements
- Meitnerium (Mt, #109) honors Lise Meitner, an Austrian physicist who discovered how radioactive nuclei fall apart. She never won the Nobel Prize, which many people believe was not fair.
- Roentgenium (Rg, #112) honors Wilhelm Roentgen, a German physicist who discovered X-rays.
Now back to our random collection of elemental trivia:
- When automobile airbags inflate, they fill with nitrogen (N, #7) gas created by a reaction that is triggered by shock. This takes up a lot less space than putting a container of gas under the hood of the car!
- Camera flashes are usually filled with krypton (Kr, #36) gas, which glows bright white when an electrical current is passed through it.
- Thulium (Tm, #69) has a reputation as one of the least interesting elements because it doesn't have any special properties. It is used to make lasers.
- Some rock formations give off radioactive radon (Rn, #86) gas. Buildings constructed on these formations may build up dangerous levels of radon in the air, and must be well-ventilated.
- Thallium (Tl, #81) compounds have been used to kill insects and other pests. But they are so poisonous that they're now illegal in many places.
- If a little germanium (Ge, #32) is added to sterling silver, the metal does not tarnish so fast.
No comments:
Post a Comment