Curated category
Transition metals
- 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…
- ZirconiumZirconium sits at atomic number 40 on the periodic table, carrying a symbol - Zr - that hints at the Persian word zargun, meaning "gold-like" or "as gold."…
- 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- ScandiumScandium sits at atomic number 21 on the periodic table, carrying the symbol Sc and a reputation that defies its abundance.
- 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…
- YttriumYttrium sits on the periodic table with symbol Y and atomic number 39, but its story begins not in a laboratory, but in a Swedish quarry.
- 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…
- SilverSilver carries the chemical symbol Ag and the atomic number 47. That symbol comes from argentum, the Latin word for the metal, and it hides a small mystery.
- 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…
- HafniumHafnium is so chemically alike its sister metal zirconium that for decades no one could prove it existed at all. Dmitri Mendeleev predicted a heavier cousin…
- 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…