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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Who found the elements?

Who found all of these elements? Many, like gold, silver, and copper, have been known since ancient times, and no one knows who actually discovered them. Except for technetium (Tc, #43), all of the elements from hydrogen (H, #1) through neptunium (Np, #93) are found on earth. However, many of them weren't actually discovered until the 1800's and even into the 1900's. This was usually because they were rare, or were mixed in with other elements. Sometimes, it's even hard to tell who actually first identified an element because different people found it at around the same time. Also, who gets the credit - the person who realizes that there's a new element in a piece of rock, or the person who first makes the element in pure form? The elements from plutonium (Pu, #94) on up were all created artifically by smashing together smaller atoms, and all of that work was done in the mid- to late 1900's or later - and there were still some arguments about who made which element first!

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