Curated playlist
Transition metals
- 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.
- ZirconiumReactor makers must remove hafnium from zirconium because hafnium absorbs neutrons 600 times faster.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- ScandiumScandium is about as common in Earth's crust as cobalt. Yet only 15 to 20 tonnes of its oxide are traded a year.
- VanadiumA mineralogist found vanadium in 1801, then dropped his claim when a French chemist said he was wrong.
- YttriumA Swedish village called Ytterby lent its name to four chemical elements. It began with one heavy black rock.
- IronThe earliest iron tools were hammered from rocks that fell from the sky.
- SilverThe Phoenicians found so much silver in Spain that it would not fit on their ships.
- 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.
- HafniumHafnium hid inside zirconium ores for more than fifty years. The two metals act almost identically.
- IridiumA thin layer of iridium-rich clay helped explain the dinosaurs' death.
- TungstenTungsten melts at 3422 C and does not boil until 5930 C, and no other known element matches either figure. Tungsten is also called wolfram, which is why its chemical symbol is W, and it is element 74. Its weight is just as striking as its…
- GoldGold's famous Witwatersrand deposit was not seeded by an asteroid. The impact only tilted buried rocks.
- OsmiumOsmium, element 76 with the symbol Os, is the densest stable element known. A lump of it weighs about twice as much as a lump of lead the same size. Yet this hard, brittle, bluish-white metal is almost invisible in everyday life, and it…