Curated playlist
Chemical elements with body-centered cubic structure
- EuropiumEuropium is the element hiding in plain sight inside your television screen, your banknotes, and the glow of a fluorescent light bulb. It sits at atomic number 63 in the periodic table, a silvery-white metal so soft you can slice it with a…
- ChromiumChromium, element number 24 on the periodic table, carries a name borrowed from the ancient Greek word for color. That origin is no accident. The chemist who first isolated it in 1797, Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, had already watched it…
- MolybdenumMolybdenum carries a name that is, in a sense, a mistake. It comes from the Ancient Greek word molybdos, meaning lead, because for centuries its dark ores were confused with the ores of lead. The element hides behind the symbol Mo and the…
- PotassiumPotassium is a metal that can be sliced with a kitchen knife. Drop a piece into water and it bursts into a lilac-colored flame. Leave it in open air for a few seconds and it turns into a flaky white crust of potassium peroxide. This is…
- NiobiumNiobium sits quietly in the periodic table at atomic number 41, carrying two names, a century of mistaken identity, and a reach that extends from the steel in modern cars to the magnets inside MRI scanners. Its symbol, Nb, is a compromise.…
- ManganeseManganese, the chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25, sits quietly inside almost every can of soda and every batch of stainless steel, yet most people have never heard its name. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal that…
- BariumBarium is a chemical element carrying the symbol Ba and atomic number 56, and its story begins not in a laboratory but in a volcanic field near Bologna, Italy, sometime in the early Middle Ages. Alchemists stumbled across smooth,…
- VanadiumVanadium sits at atomic number 23 on the periodic table, carrying the symbol V and a history that spans two centuries of false starts, stolen credit, and quiet industrial dominance. In 1801, a Spanish-Mexican mineralogist named Andrés…
- IronIron sits in the periodic table as element 26, symbol Fe, a metal of the first transition series and group 8. By mass it is the most common element on the whole planet, forming much of Earth's outer and inner core. Yet on the surface it is…
- TantalumTantalum sits quietly inside almost every smartphone, laptop, and camera you have ever owned. Its atomic number is 73, its symbol Ta, and its name carries a curse from Greek mythology that turns out to be strangely fitting. What makes a…