Curated category
Chemical elements with hexagonal close-packed structure
- DysprosiumIn 1886, French chemist Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran worked in Paris to separate dysprosium oxide from holmium oxide.
- ZincZinc carries the symbol Zn and holds atomic number 30 on the periodic table. It sits as the first element in group 12, also known as IIB.
- ZirconiumIn 1789, Martin Klaproth analyzed a jargoon stone from the island of Ceylon and identified a new element within it. He named this substance Zirkonerde…
- CadmiumFriedrich Stromeyer isolated a new element in 1817 while examining zinc carbonate samples sold to pharmacies in Germany.
- TerbiumSwedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander detected terbium as an impurity in yttrium oxide during 1843. He separated yttria into three fractions named yttria…
- TitaniumIn 1791, a clergyman named William Gregor examined black sand by a stream in Cornwall, Great Britain. He noticed the sand was attracted to a magnet and…
- BerylliumIn 1798, a paper read before the Institut de France announced that chemist Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin had found a new earth by dissolving aluminum hydroxide…
- CobaltIn 1735, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt stood before a furnace in Riddarhyttan and proved that a dark powder was not bismuth.
- ErbiumCarl Gustaf Mosander stood in a laboratory in 1843 holding a sample of gadolinite from Ytterby, Sweden. He believed the mineral contained only one metal…
- RutheniumIn 1844, Karl Ernst Claus worked inside a laboratory at Kazan State University to isolate six grams of a new metal from crude platinum residues.
- ScandiumIn 1879, Swedish chemist Lars Fredrik Nilson examined minerals from Scandinavia under a spectroscope. He saw faint lines of light that did not belong to any…
- YttriumIn 1787, a part-time chemist named Carl Axel Arrhenius found a heavy black rock in an old quarry near the Swedish village of Ytterby.
- GadoliniumIn 1880, Swiss chemist Jean Charles de Marignac observed distinct spectroscopic lines in samples of gadolinite. He detected the oxide of a new element using…
- MagnesiumAging stars forge magnesium by adding three helium nuclei to a carbon nucleus. When these massive stars explode as supernovas, they eject the element into…
- HafniumIn 1923, two Danish scientists named Dirk Coster and Georg von Hevesy stood in a laboratory in Copenhagen. They held samples of zircon ore from Norway that…