Curated playlist
Native element minerals
- ChromiumThe same element that makes rubies red also makes emeralds green. That element is chromium, first isolated in 1797.
- NickelNickel the metal is named after a mischievous sprite from German miner folklore.
- MolybdenumMolybdenum got its name from the Greek word for lead by mistake. For centuries its ores were confused with lead ores.
- ZincAncient brass makers had no idea they were using zinc. The zinc metal vaporized in copper furnaces before anyone saw it.
- CadmiumCadmium was found in all 28 dark chocolate brands Consumer Reports tested in 2022.
- TitaniumTitanium was first spotted as black sand that stuck to a magnet. A Cornish clergyman noticed it in 1791.
- LeadPencil leads have never contained lead. The graphite inside was simply named plumbago.
- AluminiumAluminium is the most abundant metal in Earth's crust, yet for most of history no one had seen any.
- DiamondIn 1772, Antoine Lavoisier burned a diamond with focused sunlight. It vanished into carbon dioxide.
- IndiumIn 1863, a bright blue line led two German chemists to find indium. One of them was color-blind.
- NiobiumNiobium was so much like tantalum that top chemists could not tell them apart.
- PlatinumSpanish colonizers once dismissed platinum as an impurity in gold. An official decree even banned mixing it into gold.
- ManganeseIn 1972 the CIA used manganese mining as cover for a secret ship mission.
- Mercury (element)Over 3,000 people suffered deformities, severe poisoning or death from mercury dumped in Minamata Bay.
- ArsenicArsenic was called the inheritance powder because it was used to kill relatives for a fortune.
- CobaltCobalt got its name from German miners who blamed a goblin. The blue ore gave them no silver.
- RutheniumIn 1844, Karl Ernst Claus isolated ruthenium from platinum left over from minting ruble coins.
- SeleniumA horseradish smell led chemist Berzelius to the element selenium in 1817. He named it after the Moon.
- VanadiumA mineralogist found vanadium in 1801, then dropped his claim when a French chemist said he was wrong.
- IronThe earliest iron tools were hammered from rocks that fell from the sky.
- PalladiumFord lost nearly one billion US dollars after stockpiling palladium during a Russian supply panic.
- RhodiumRhodium, a metal, rose from under US$700 an ounce in 2016 to nearly US$30,000 in 2021.
- TantalumTantalum, a metal in almost every phone, was named for a myth about never reaching water.
- TinTin holds a record no other element has: ten stable isotopes. Its 50 protons are a magic number in nuclear physics.
- IridiumA thin layer of iridium-rich clay helped explain the dinosaurs' death.
- GoldGold's famous Witwatersrand deposit was not seeded by an asteroid. The impact only tilted buried rocks.
- AntimonyAntimony, element number 51 with the chemical symbol Sb, has been rubbed around human eyes for thousands of years. The powder came from crushed antimony sulfide, known as kohl. People applied it with a metal rod moistened with spittle, and…
- SulfurSulfur, the chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16, turned up on Mars in July 2024, and nobody was looking for it. The Curiosity rover drove over a rock and crushed it. Inside the broken stone sat crystals of elemental…
- CarbonDiamond, despite the slogan, should slowly turn into graphite. Only a high energy barrier holds the change back.
- SiliconSilicon clings to oxygen so tightly that chemists failed for decades to pull them apart.