Curated category
Reducing agents
- EuropiumEuropium is the element hiding in plain sight inside your television screen, your banknotes, and the glow of a fluorescent light bulb.
- DysprosiumDysprosium carries a name that doubles as a confession. Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran needed more than thirty attempts to pull it free from holmium oxide…
- 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…
- CeriumCerium sits at atomic number 58 on the periodic table, a soft, silvery-white metal that most people have never heard of.
- PotassiumPotassium is a metal that can be sliced with a kitchen knife. Drop a piece into water and it bursts into a lilac-colored flame.
- TerbiumTerbium, element 65 on the periodic table, lights up your living room, guides submarines through the ocean, and was discovered by accident inside a batch of…
- 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.
- LanthanumLanthanum carries a name that is a confession. It comes from the ancient Greek lanthanein, meaning 'to lie hidden'. The Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander…
- PraseodymiumPraseodymium gets its name from two Ancient Greek words: prasinos, meaning 'leek-green', and didymos, meaning 'twin'. The leek-green half describes its salts.
- 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…
- HydrogenHydrogen carries the symbol H and the atomic number 1, the very first entry in the catalogue of the elements. It is the lightest of them all, and the most…
- BerylliumBeryllium carries atomic number 4, making it one of the lightest solid metals on the periodic table, yet it is strong enough to be used in the mirrors of the…
- BariumBarium is a chemical element carrying the symbol Ba and atomic number 56, and its story begins not in a laboratory but in a volcanic field near Bologna…
- ErbiumErbium sits at atomic number 68 on the periodic table, a silvery-white metal that almost nobody encounters in its pure form.
- NeodymiumNeodymium, element number 60 on the periodic table, sits quietly inside the headphones on your ears, the hard drive in your computer, and the electric motor…
- GadoliniumGadolinium hides a paradox inside a hospital scanner. At body temperature, this silvery-white metal exhibits the greatest paramagnetic effect of any element.
- CalciumCalcium surrounds us in ways most people never think about. Symbol Ca, atomic number 20, it makes up roughly 3% of the Earth's crust, making it the fifth…
- MagnesiumBurning magnesium reaches a temperature of roughly 3,100 degrees Celsius, and it throws off a brilliant white light rich in ultraviolet wavelengths.
- SamariumSamarium, element 62 on the periodic table, sits at the center of some of the most consequential technologies of the modern age.
- CarbonCarbon is the element with the symbol C and atomic number 6, and it hides in plain sight inside almost everything alive.