Curated playlist
Reactive nonmetals
- NitrogenNitrogen, the gas in most of every breath, killed two shuttle technicians in 1981. It fills about 78% of Earth's air.
- OxygenOxygen makes up almost half of the Earth's crust, yet for most of human history nobody knew it existed.
- HydrogenHydrogen makes up about 75% of normal matter, yet nobody recognized it until the 1760s.
- SeleniumA horseradish smell led chemist Berzelius to the element selenium in 1817. He named it after the Moon.
- 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…
- IodineIodine, the element with atomic number 53, first announced itself as a cloud of violet vapour. A French chemist named Bernard Courtois had poured an excess of sulfuric acid onto the waste left over from processing seaweed ash. The vapour…
- ChlorineChlorine is element number 17, a yellow-green gas with the chemical symbol Cl. In 2022 the world produced an estimated 97 million tonnes of it. Much of that gas never touches a swimming pool or a tap. It is turned into plastics and other…
- BromineBromine, element number 35, pours like water, yet it gives off a vapour with the same red-brown colour as the liquid itself. At room temperature only one other element, mercury, stays liquid. The vapour is penetrating and unpleasant to…
- 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.