The most interesting metals


    Who does not listen to metal - God has not given that mind!

    - Folk art

    Hello,% username%.

    gjf is back in touch. Today I will be very brief, because in six hours I get up and go.

    And today I want to talk about metal. But not about which music, we can talk about somehow over a glass of beer, and not on Habré. And not even about metal - but about metals! And I want to talk about those metals that have somehow impressed me in my life with their properties.

    Since all participants in the hit parade are distinguished by some of their superpowers, there will be no places and winners. Will be - a metal dozen! So the serial number does not mean anything.

    Go.

    1. Mercury


    Mercury is the most liquid metal: its melting point is -39 ° C. The fact that it is toxic - and even very - I already wrote , and therefore I will not repeat.

    Since ancient times, they haven’t prayed for mercury — liquid silver, anyway! Alchemists believed that it was somewhere in the mercury that the famous philosopher's stone was hidden somewhere, for example, Jabir ibn Hayyan believed that since mercury is a liquid metal, it is “absolute”: it is free from any impurities inherent in solid metals. Sulfur is another item of Hayan’s admiration - the element of fire, it is capable of producing pure “absolute” flames, and therefore all other metals (and since it was the 8th century - there were not many of them: seven) are formed from mercury and sulfur.

    What in the VIII century, what now - if you mix mercury and sulfur, you get black mercury sulfide (and this, by the way, is one way to decontaminate spilled mercury) - but certainly not metal. Haiyan explained this unfortunate failure by the fact that all the dumb ones lacked a certain “ripener,” which from black bullshit would lead to the production of metal. And of course, everyone rushed to look for a "ripener" to get gold. The history of the search for the philosopher's stone is officially declared open.

    % username%, now you are laughing at the alchemists - but they did get their way! In 1947, the only stable Au-197 gold isotope obtained by American physicists in beta decay of the Hg-197 isotope. As much as 35 micrograms of gold was mined from 100 mg of mercury - and they are now showing off at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. So the alchemists were right - you can! Only, damn it, expensive ...

    By the way, the only alchemist who did not believe in the possibility of obtaining gold from other metals was Abu Ali Hussein ibn Abdullah ibn al-Hassan ibn Ali ibn Sina - and for the dark infidels, just Avicenna.

    By the way, another metal, gallium, is very rivaling in appearance. Its melting point is 29 ° C, at school they showed me a spectacular focus: a piece of some metal is put on my hand ...

    .. and this is what happens


    By the way, gallium can now be bought on alik to show such a trick. I don’t know if he will go through customs.

    2. Titanium


    Severe titanium - it's not mercury snot for you! This is the hardest metal! Well, in my childhood and youth, they wrote titanium on all these glasses in public transport. Because he scratched - and painted with fine metal dust.

    Everyone knows that titanium due to its hardness and lightness is used in aviation. I’ll talk about some interesting applications.

    Being heated, titanium begins to absorb various gases - oxygen, chlorine and even nitrogen. This is used in inert gas purification plants (argon, for example) - it is blown through tubes filled with a titanium sponge and heated to 500-600 ° C. By the way, at this temperature, a titanium sponge interacts with water - oxygen is absorbed, hydrogen is given off, but usually inert gases do not bother anyone, unlike water.

    White titanium dioxide TiO 2used in paints (for example, titanium white), as well as in the manufacture of paper and plastic. Food supplement E171. By the way, in the production of titanium dioxide, its elemental composition must be controlled - but not at all in order to reduce impurities, but in order to add “whiteness”: it is necessary that the coloring elements — iron, chromium, copper, etc. - was smaller.

    Titanium carbide, titanium diboride, titanium carbonitride are competitors of tungsten carbide in hardness. The disadvantage is that they are lighter.

    Titanium nitride is used to cover tools, domes of churches and in the manufacture of jewelry, as it has a color similar to gold. All these “medical alloys” that look like gold are titanium nitride coated.

    By the way, stubborn scientists have recently made an alloy that is harder than titanium! Just to achieve this, I had to mix palladium, silicon, phosphorus, germanium and silver. The thing turned out to be not cheap, and therefore again the titan won.

    3. Tungsten


    Tungsten is also the opposite of mercury: the most refractory metal with a melting point of 3422 ° C. It has been known since the 16th century, however, it is not the metal itself that is known, but the mineral tungsten, which contains tungsten. By the way, the name Wolf Rahm in the language of harsh Germans means “wolf cream”: the Germans, who melted tin, did not like the admixture of wolframite, which interfered with melting, converting tin to foam of slags (“sheep devoured tin like a wolf”). The metal itself was already isolated later, after about 200 years.

    The fact that the photo is not tungsten in fact, but tungsten carbide, so if you have such a ring on your hand,% username%, then do not worry too much. Tungsten carbide is a heavy and extremely hard compound - and therefore it is used in all the details that they beat, by the way it will “win” - this is 90% of tungsten carbide. And good people add tungsten carbide as the tip of armor-piercing shells and bullets. But not only him, I'll tell you about another metal later.

    By the way, even though tungsten is heavy - but despite the higher density compared to traditional and cheaper lead, radiation protection from tungsten is less heavy with equal protective properties or more effective with equal weight. Due to the refractoriness and hardness of tungsten, which complicates its processing, in such cases, more ductile tungsten alloys with the addition of other metals or a suspension of powdered tungsten (or its compounds) in a polymer base are used. It turns out easier, more efficient - but only more expensive. So in case of folout,% username%, take yourself a tungsten armor!

    By the way, on my “eternal ring” I managed to stain with some kind of chemistry - and I don’t even know what. So that "eternal" it is only in ordinary people)))

    4. Uranus


    The only natural metal that is used as fuel, and is used without residue, literally at the atomic level.

    When I was still a schoolboy, but was entering a university (I won’t say why!), I was always amused by the reaction of foreign students when they showed crystals of sodium uranyl acetate in a microscope. Well, there is such a quality reaction. When the foreigners were told the word “Uranil”, they were blown off the floor. Everyone laughed.

    It is ridiculous and sad for me that now most of our people also believe that uranium is dangerous, dangerous and terrible. The fall of education is evident.

    In fact, even in ancient times, natural uranium oxide was used to make yellow dishes. So, near Naples, a fragment of yellow glass was found containing 1% uranium oxide and dating back to 79 AD. e. It does not glow in the dark and does not fonit. I was in Yellow Waters in Ukraine, where uranium concentrate is mined. Nobody shines and lights there. The answer is simple: natural uranium is weakly radioactive - no more than granites and basalts, as well as heaps and underground. The uranium that URAN is the isotope U-235, which in nature is only 0.7204%. It is so small that for nuclear scientists it is necessary to isolate and concentrate this isotope (“enrich”) - the reactor will not work so simply.

    By the way, there used to be more U-235 in nature - it just broke up over time. And since there were more of it, a nuclear reactor could be made right on your knee. Literally. This is what happened in Gabon at the Oklo deposit about 2 billion years ago: water ran through the ore, water - a natural moderator of neutrons that fly out during the decay of uranium-235 - as a result, the neutron energy was just as much as it takes to capture uranium-235 nucleus - and went and went a chain reaction. And the uranchik burned itself for several hundred years, until it burned out ...

    This was discovered much later, in 1972, when a deviation from the norm of the isotopic composition of uranium was found at a uranium enrichment plant in Pierrelat (France) during analysis of uranium from Oklo. The content of the isotope U-235 was 0.717% instead of the usual 0.720%. Uranium is not a sausage, here the underweight is strictly punished: all nuclear facilities are subject to tight control in order to prevent the illegal use of fissile materials for military purposes. Therefore, scientists began to investigate, found a couple more elements, such as neodymium and ruthenium, and realized that the U-235 was stolen before we just burned out, like in a reactor. That is, nature invented a nuclear reactor long before us. However, like all.

    Depleted uranium (this was when the 235th was taken and given to the atomic workers, and U-238 remained) - heavy and solid, reminds one of the properties of tungsten, and therefore it is used in the same way where it needs to be beaten. There is a story about this from the former Yugoslavia: they used armor-piercing shells with a striker containing uranium. The population had problems, but not at all due to radiation: fine uranium dust fell into the lungs, was absorbed, and bore fruit: uranium is toxic to the kidneys. That's it - and there is nothing to be afraid of uranyl acetate! True, this is not a decree to the laws of the Russian Federation - and therefore there are eternal problems with the arrival of chemicals containing uranium - because there is only one uranium for an official.

    There is also uranium glass: a small addition of uranium gives a beautiful yellow-green fluorescence.

    And this, damn it, is beautiful!



    By the way, it is very useful to offer guests apples or salad, and then turn on a little ultraviolet and show how beautiful. When everyone finishes the rapture, casually throw it like this: “Well, yes, it would be uranium glass ...” And bite off a piece of apple from a vase ...

    5. Osmium


    Well, since we’ve talked about heavy tungsten uranium, then it’s time to name the heaviest metal in general - this is osmium. Its density is 22.62 g / cm 3 !

    However, osmium, being the heaviest, does not prevent anything from being volatile: in air, it gradually oxidizes to OsO 4 , which is volatile - and by the way, very poisonous. Yes - this is an element of the platinum group, but it oxidizes itself. The name “osmium” comes from the ancient Greek ὀσμή - “smell” - precisely because of this: chemical reactions of the dissolution of the alkaline alloy of osmiridium (insoluble residue of platinum in aqua regia) in water or acid are accompanied by the release of an unpleasant, persistent odor OsO 4irritating throat, similar to the smell of chlorine or rotten radish. Smithson Tennant (about it later), who worked with osmiridium, smelled this smell - and so he called metal. And I know that osmium must be in powder and it must be warmed so that the process goes intensively - but in any case, I do not strive to stay close to this metal for a long time.

    By the way, there is still such an isotope Os-187. In nature, it is very small, and therefore it is isolated from osmium in centrifuges by mass separation - just like uranium. Separations are waiting for 9 months - yes, yes, it is already possible to give birth. Therefore, Os-187 is one of the most expensive metals; it is its content that determines the market price of natural osmium. But it is not the most expensive, I will tell about the most below.

    6. Iridium


    Since we are talking about the platinum group, it is still worth remembering about iridium. Osmium took away the title of the heaviest metal from iridium - but dispersed in kopecks: the density of iridium is 22.53 g / cm 3 . Osmium and iridium were even discovered together in 1803 by the English chemist S. Tennant - both were present as impurities in natural platinum delivered from South America. Tennant was the first among several scientists who managed to obtain a sufficient amount of insoluble residue after exposure to platinum of aqua regia and to identify previously unknown metals in it.

    But unlike osmium, iridium is the most damn resistant metal: in the form of an ingot it does not dissolve in any acids and their mixtures! At all! Even formidable fluorine takes it only at 400-450 ° C. To nevertheless dissolve iridium, it is necessary to fuse it with alkalis - and even preferably in a stream of oxygen.

    The mechanical and chemical strength of iridium is used in the Chamber of Weights and Measures - a kilogram standard is made of a platinum-iridium alloy.

    At the moment, iridium is not a banking metal, but there are already shifts in this: in 2013, iridium was used for the first time in the world in the manufacture of official coins by the National Bank of Rwanda, which issued a coin of 999th pure metal. The iridium coin was issued in denominations of 10 Rwandan francs. And hell - I would like such a coin!

    By the way, in my early youth in “Young Technique” I somehow read some fantastic story, when a guy was walking, he was able to exchange sand for iridium at the rate of 1: 1 with some aliens in the basement there. Well, you see, they needed silicon! I don’t even remember the name and author of the story. thanks Wesha - recalled: V. Shibaev. The cable is from there.

    7. Gold
    Oh well - everyone saw


    In life, it often happens that there is an actual and formal champion. If iridium is the actual champion in chemical resistance, then gold is formal: it is the most electronegative metal, 2.54 on the Pauling scale. But this does not prevent gold from dissolving in mixtures of acids, so as usual - laurels went to the richer one.

    Indeed, at the moment, due to the fact that China and the Russian Federation are moving away from the policy of accumulating gold and currency reserves in US dollars to the policy of accumulating gold itself, gold is the most expensive banking metal: it has long overtaken platinum - and indeed the entire platinum group. So keep the money in the savings bank gold,% username%!

    Since the alchemical method of gold mining has shown its high cost, this metal is obtained in refineries. And coins are already made in mints. So, as a person who has been there and there, I can say: employees of such enterprises, when visiting a zone where there is precious metal, either change clothes - and there is not a single pin or paper clip on work clothes - the frames at the entrance are completely different from those at airports everything is tougher there. Or the so-called “naked mode” is in effect - yes, you understood correctly: a checkpoint for boys and a checkpoint for girls - you’ll get dressed inside. If you have an implant made of metal - a bunch of references, a bunch of permissions, each time individually check that the implant is in the place where it should be.

    By the way, what do you think - how are checkpoints organized in the banknote yard? Papers do not ring on the frames!

    The answer is here, but think a little yourself
    After work, do not let anyone out, including the manual, until they count all the products. Yes - everything is strict. But no one is against it, when in difficult times wages were paid out by products.

    8. Lithium


    Unlike heavy iridium osmium, lithium is the lightest metal, its density is only 0.534 g / cm 3 . This is an alkaline metal, but the most inactive of the whole group: it does not explode in water, but interacts calmly, does not oxidize well in air, and it is not easy to set fire to it: it is so well coated with oxide after 100 ° C that it does not oxidize further. Therefore, lithium is the only alkali metal that is not stored in kerosene - why if it is sufficiently inert? And this is fortunately - due to its low density, lithium would float in kerosene.

    Natural lithium consists of two isotopes: Li-6 and Li-7. Since the atom itself is so small, the excess neutron significantly affects the radius of the orbital and the electron excitation energy, and therefore the usual atomic spectrum of these two isotopes is different - therefore, it is possible to determine them even without any mass spectrometers - and this is the only exception in nature! Both isotopes are very important in nuclear energy, by the way, Li-6 deuteride is used as thermonuclear powder in thermonuclear weapons - and I will not say a word more about this!

    Lithium is also used by psychiatrists as a normative for the treatment and prevention of mania. When I worked as a student at the department, an aunt with a blood plasma came to us, in which it was necessary to determine lithium. For some time I took it and climbed into the literature (there was no Internet yet) to understand why lithium should be detected there at all? And I found out ... From the next visit, I so casually asked my aunt, and whose blood was there at all? When she replied that she was, I tried not to meet her personally.

    Well, it’s like that - lithium and lithium, it is sometimes even determined in water. By the way, there are quite a lot of it in the water in Lviv.

    And by the way - with the growing popularity of electric vehicles, portable devices and everything that works on lithium-containing batteries, there is an opinion that the price of lithium will rise quite quickly. So maybe it is better to store money not in gold, but in lithium. But this is inaccurate, especially after Australia also entered the lithium market.

    9. France


    France has a whole range of titles. Well, firstly, France is the rarest metal. All its contents are completely radiogenic: it exists as an intermediate product of the decay of uranium-235 and thorium-232. The total content of France in the earth's crust is estimated at 340 grams. So the spot in the picture above is not a full-face black hole photo, but about 200,000 French atoms in a magneto-optical trap. All France isotopes are radioactive, the longest-lived of the isotopes - Fr-223 - has a half-life of 22.3 minutes. Because France is so small.

    However, France has the lowest electronegativity of all the currently known elements - 0.7 on the Pauling scale. Accordingly, France is also the most chemically active alkali metal and forms the strongest alkali - France hydroxide FrOH. And don’t ask,% username%, how it was all determined with an element that is zilch - but small, and which every 22.3 minutes becomes even half as much , and the researcher glows brighter himself . Therefore, all this is interesting and entertaining, but France is practically never used anywhere.

    10. California
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    California in this world does not exist at all, and they produce it in two places: Dimitrovgrad in the Russian Federation and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the USA. To produce one gram of California, plutonium or curium is subjected to prolonged neutron irradiation in a nuclear reactor - from 8 months to 1.5 years. The entire lineup of decays is as follows: Plutonium-Americium-Curium-Berkeley-California. California-252 is the end result of the chain - this element cannot be turned into a heavier isotope, since its core, as it were, says “thank you, has eaten up”, weakly responds to the effect of neutrons.

    On the way to converting plutonium into California, 99.7% decays from 100% of the nuclei. Only 0.3% of the nuclei is kept from decay and goes through the entire stage. And you need to highlight the product! Isotope extraction occurs by extraction, extraction chromatography, or due to ion exchange. To give it a metallic appearance, a reduction reaction is performed.

    It takes 10 kilograms of plutonium-239 to get one gram of California-252.

    The annual amount of California-252 mined is 40-80 micrograms, and according to experts, the global stock of California is not more than 8 grams. Therefore, California, or rather California-252, is the most expensive industrial metal in the world, the cost of one gram of it over the years varied from 6.5 to 27 million dollars.

    The logical question is: who needs it at all? You won’t make a chain out of it; you won’t give a lover in the form of a ring. The fact is that Cf-252 has a high neutron multiplication factor (above 3). A gram of Cf-252 emits about 3 × 10 12 neutrons per second. Yes, it’s possible to make an atomic bomb, but plutonium is cheaper from uranium and the same plutonium, so California itself is used as a neutron source in various studies, including industrial in-line neutron activation analyzers on a conveyor belt. By the way,% username%, I personally saw this California in the form of a small ampoule that was pulled out of a hefty barrel of radiation protection and quickly put into the right place on the analyzer.

    It’s clear that for such money, California is simply obliged to be poison, albeit not so cool,like polonium, which pounds with alpha particles , but neutrons are also nothing. But it turns out a little expensive, of course.

    Well, everything seems to be - it remains to sleep about four hours before the road. I hope that it turned out interesting, and I sniffed all this for good reason.

    I wish you,% username%, to be as solid as titanium, as light as lithium, as adamant as iridium and as valuable as California! Well, more gold in your pocket, of course.
    (you can shine with this toast at the next holiday - don’t thank)

    PS Since they taunted hardness with titanium (for some reason they didn’t find fault anymore ???) - I will get an ace out of my sleeve.

    11. Radium


    Radium is a metal of deception and disappointment. And I will explain. The metal itself is quite rare and completely radiogenic - occurs during the decay of uranium-238, uranium-235 or thorium-232; of the four found in nature, the most common and long-lived isotope (half-life of 1602) is radium-226, which is part of the radioactive series of uranium-238. During the time that has passed since its discovery by the Curie spouses - more than a century - all over the world they managed to get only 1.5 kg of pure radium. One ton of uranium tar, from which the Curie couple received radium, contained only about 0.1 g of radium-226.

    Radium literally evaporates: all isotopes of radium (with the exception of radium-228) decay to radon gas - incidentally, also radioactive. The decay type is α, but gamma rays are also distinguished.

    Marie Curie worked 12 years to get a grain of pure radium. To get only 1 g of pure radium, several wagons of uranium ore, 100 wagons of coal, 100 water tanks and 5 wagons of different chemicals were needed. Therefore, at the beginning of the 20th century there was no more expensive metal in the world. For 1 g of radium, it was necessary to pay more than 200 kg of gold.

    And this metal also glows beautifully in the dark.


    It is clear that with this set of properties and price, only the lazy did not add radium to their products and tell how miraculous it was. There was a mass of “doctors” who are not doctors (and what this reminds me of) - the same William J. A. Bailey. In France in the 1930s, manufacturers of the most popular face creams, ThoRadia, boasted enriching their ointments with thorium and radium. Toothpaste with radium was produced in Germany. Apparently from there the expression "Your face shines" and "Your teeth are dazzling." Well I do not know.

    There were crackers containing radium, and the addition of radium bromide to chocolate was patented in Germany in 1936. Chocolates and crackers could be washed down with radioactive mineral water. This water was sold at high prices, and in advertisements it was proudly referred to as "having a high content of radioactive elements." The most famous brand of such a mineral water was Radithor in 60 ml bottles containing 2 micro curies of radium (it was it that the already mentioned “doctor” Bailey offered to everyone, supposedly as a stimulator of the endocrine system).

    Superfood Examples



    Radium is an alkaline earth metal, which means it is very similar in chemistry to calcium and magnesium. And it replaces them very well in the bones - and from there it starts direct bombardment of the bone marrow, lungs and other delicate organs. A little consolation is that radium products were available only to really rich people ...

    On April 11, 1932, Time magazine reported that the famous rich man, sportsman and socialite, a lover of golf and water Radithor (after injuring his arm in 1927), Eben Bayer died of radiation poisoning.
    Time article


    In 1965 his body was exhumed. It was found that Bayer received a total of about 500 microcuries of radium. It is not surprising that the cause of death - multiple neoplasms, abscesses in the brain and in the literal sense of the word holes in the skull - in other words, cancer.

    If you think,% username%, that it taught someone something - you are mistaken: until the 1970s, radium together with a phosphor - usually zinc sulfide - was applied to the hands of various devices, including watches. This was called the “continuous light” —or SPD. In the USSR, SPD was usually mustard yellow, and in America it was greenish-white or bluish.
    Some examples


    So, SPD eventually begins to dry out and turn into dust, you inhale this dust - and where does the radium get into? Right! Five! I mean - you have five years of life left. Probably. Well, in any case - a little.

    By the way, there is even a group in VK where they post photos from SPD.

    By the way, other isotopes that have no relation to radiation have historically been associated with the name radium. Namely: In fact, these isotopes were discovered as products in the chain of further decay of radium, but until they were identified as elements, they were called radium A, B, and so on. Well, then the names took root. And so it happens when you are to the element with all your soul - and he is to you ... Life is pain. I made excuses for titanium? ;)
    Радий A 218Po
    Радий B 214Pb
    Радий C 214Bi
    Радий C1214Po
    Радий C2210Tl
    Радий D 210Pb
    Радий E 210Bi
    Радий F 210Po






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