Curated playlist
Pyrotechnic fuels
- ZincAncient brass makers had no idea they were using zinc. The zinc metal vaporized in copper furnaces before anyone saw it.
- ZirconiumReactor makers must remove hafnium from zirconium because hafnium absorbs neutrons 600 times faster.
- TitaniumTitanium was first spotted as black sand that stuck to a magnet. A Cornish clergyman noticed it in 1791.
- AluminiumAluminium is the most abundant metal in Earth's crust, yet for most of history no one had seen any.
- IronThe earliest iron tools were hammered from rocks that fell from the sky.
- MagnesiumWater makes burning magnesium burn worse. The metal rips water apart, releasing hydrogen gas that feeds the flame.
- PhosphorusPhosphorus, element number 15, first came to light in Hamburg in 1669, in the hands of an alchemist named Hennig Brand. Brand was chasing the fabled philosopher's stone. His chosen raw material was urine, which carries dissolved phosphates…
- BoronBoron, the element with the symbol B and atomic number 5, owes its existence to events far from any laboratory. Stars do not build it in their cores. Instead it arises when cosmic rays break apart larger atoms and when supernovas explode.…
- 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…
- SiliconSilicon clings to oxygen so tightly that chemists failed for decades to pull them apart.