Curated category
Native element minerals
- ChromiumChromium, element number 24 on the periodic table, carries a name borrowed from the ancient Greek word for color. That origin is no accident.
- NickelNickel, element 28 on the periodic table, takes its name from a mischievous sprite of German miner mythology. In the ore mountains of medieval Germany…
- 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…
- ZincZinc is the only metal that appears in every single enzyme class in the human body. That one fact hints at how deeply this element is woven into the fabric…
- CadmiumCadmium hides in plain sight. Atomic number 48 on the periodic table, it sits quietly alongside zinc and mercury in group 12, a soft silvery-white metal that…
- TitaniumTitanium is a metal that quietly surrounds us everywhere, yet most people have no idea they are touching it dozens of times a day.
- LeadLead carries the chemical symbol Pb, drawn from the Latin word plumbum, and it sits at atomic number 82 on the periodic table.
- AluminiumAluminium is the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust, making up 8.23% of it by mass, yet for most of human history no one had ever seen a piece of it.
- DiamondDiamond is a mineral form of carbon whose atoms lock together in a structure so rigid that it outranks every other natural material in hardness and thermal…
- IndiumIndium is so soft that you can bite into it with your teeth. Rub it on paper and it leaves a line, just like a pencil. Bend a piece and it cries out, a…
- 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…
- PlatinumPlatinum sits at atomic number 78 on the periodic table, but its story stretches back to pre-Columbian South America, where native peoples worked it into…
- 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…
- Mercury (element)Mercury is the only metallic element known to be liquid at standard temperature and pressure. Cool it below 4 K and it became the first known superconductor…
- ArsenicArsenic carries the atomic number 33 and the chemical symbol As, but those tidy facts barely hint at the element's long, strange relationship with humanity.
- CobaltCobalt sits at atomic number 27 on the periodic table, but its story begins not in a laboratory, but in a German silver mine where frustrated miners blamed a…
- RutheniumRuthenium sits at atomic number 44 on the periodic table, carrying the symbol Ru. In 1844, Karl Ernst Claus, a Russian scientist of Baltic-German ancestry…
- SeleniumSelenium sits at atomic number 34 on the periodic table, but it refuses to behave like a single, predictable substance. Depending on how it cools, it can…
- 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…
- 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…
- PalladiumPalladium, the silvery-white metal with atomic number 46, carries a name born from astronomical discovery. When the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston…
- RhodiumRhodium carries the symbol Rh and the atomic number 45, and it holds the distinction of being among the rarest and most valuable metals on Earth.
- 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…
- TinTin has atomic number 50, and that single fact explains more about its unusual properties than almost anything else. In nuclear physics, 50 is a "magic…
- IridiumIridium carries the symbol Ir and the atomic number 77, and it answers to a name borrowed from a goddess of the rainbow.
- GoldGold carries the chemical symbol Au, from the Latin aurum, and the atomic number 79. It is one of the least reactive elements known, sitting second from the…
- CarbonCarbon is the element with the symbol C and atomic number 6, and it hides in plain sight inside almost everything alive.