Helium is an industrial commodity with many more important uses than party balloons and making your voice sound funny. Its use is essential in medicine, gas for aircraft, pressurizing rockets and other…
Field Notes
20 Interesting Facts About Arsenic
A crystalline metalloid found in minerals such as arsenopyrite, realgar and orpiment, the infamous arsenic has an amazing history – from the time of the Roman Empire to the Victorian era, arsenic…
20 Interesting Facts About Bismuth
Bismuth is a brittle, crystalline, post-transition metal with unusually low levels of electrical and thermal conductivity. Bismuth also has a particularly low melting point, which enables it to form alloys important for…
20 Interesting Facts About Tungsten
Tungsten is a very dense, corrosion-resistant metal that is almost impossible to melt. In fact, tungsten has the highest melting point of all metals. Tungsten exhibits other important physical properties as well,…
20 Interesting Facts About Magnesium
Named for the Greek city of Magnesia, magnesium is an silvery-white alkaline earth metal essential for animal and plant nutrition. Magnesium in plants is located in the enzymes, in the heart of…
20 Interesting Facts About Potash
The term “potash” denotes a variety of mined and manufactured salts, all of which contain the element potassium in water-soluble form. No substitutes exist for potassium as an essential plant nutrient. Further,…
20 Interesting Facts About Beryllium
Beryllium, the lightest of the alkaline earth elements, has an atomic number of 4. As a consequence of its small ionic radius (about 0.27 angstroms), beryllium atoms bond strongly to other atoms…
20 Interesting Facts About Germanium
Germanium, the first element in the periodic table named after a country, has the chemical symbol Ge, the atomic number 32, and is a lustrous metalloid in the carbon group. Germanium is…
20 Interesting Facts About Titanium
Titanium (Ti) is a strong, silver-gray metal that is highly resistant to corrosion and is chemically inert. Unlike most other metals, titanium is not a particularly good conductor of heat or electricity…
20 Interesting Facts About Tin
Tin metal is found in everyday life and is essential to an industrial society. In many applications, there is no completely satisfactory substitute for tin, making this metal an important strategic and…