The 38th Element

Vanadium was first discovered by a Mexican chemist named Andres Manuel Del Rio. He sent a sample and a letter to The Institute of France in Paris, France. Unfortunately, the letter was lost in a ship wreck. So only the sample made it to the institute. Rio had first named this metal erythronium.

Fireworks have been a symbol of America’s freedom ever since that Fourth of July in 1777. Something about the luminous streaks of light radiating from the sky mesmerizes Americans when they see it. There is no greater joy than to watch the red, white and blue stripes proclaiming to all, “America is free, and proud to be that way!” Now, however, that blood-tingling, heart-thrashing scenario is gone, stamped with a big red “X” by some bureaucrat. The eye-popping pyrotechnics are no more, all one has left to do on the Fourth of July is hold a stick burning at 2000°F. Sounds delightful, does it not? Why not talk some sense to the people of Illinois, especially

Sir William Ramsay (left) and Morris Travers (right) discovered the element neon. It was discovered in Bloomsbury, London on the campus of University College London in 1898. While experimenting, they isolated krypton gas by evaporating liquid argon.  Due to the fact that Sir William Ramsay and Morris Travers expected to find a light gas that would place above argon, they retested the experiment. While repeating the experiment, they allowed argon to evaporate slowly under reduced pressure, and they collected the first gas which came off, which was neon. The sample of gas was put into their atomic spectrometer, and it gave off a vivid red glow. Ramsay named neon, basing it on neos, the Greek word for new.

After we created the firework masterpieces, I tried to explain to my son that we would see lots of fireworks over the weekend. I told him they would make loud “kaboom” sounds and have so many pretty colors, just like his paintings. He was so happy about the idea but still confused at the same time so I showed him a few videos on Youtube. His face lit up when he saw the fireworks bursting along to music in the videos. He would look wide-eyed at the video & then point to his paintings while shouting “Fah-wurk! Fah-wurk!”. Hopefully this will be a nice introduction to this holiday's loud spectacle. Last year he was too small to understand or even be afraid of the explosive sounds. This year I’m hoping he enjoys the beauty and excitement of the fireworks like I did as a young boy and still do to this

When we see fireworks explode, what we’re actually seeing is the explosion of components inside the aerial shell. The aerial shell is made up of gunpowder and stars, small lumps that are comprised of fuel, an oxidizing agent, a metal-containing colorant, and a binder. These stars are what give the fireworks their colors. (De Antonis, pg 8). The metal-containing colorant produces the color when it’s exposed to a flame (in this case, the ignition of the gunpowder) then the fuel and oxidizing agent combine to create a chemical reaction that yields powerful heat and gas (De Antonis, pg 8).The binder holds all these ingredients together when the firework explodes. When the fuse at the bottom of a firework is lit, the energy propels it upwards until

Growing up in America I get to experience fireworks every Fourth of July, which is always a highlight of summer vacation. There is no better way to celebrate freedom and our pride for our country than to display it with fireworks. So every Fourth of July almost every city in America participates in this ritual. My hometown is one of the many places that puts on our own fireworks display for the whole city to see. And my friend just so happens to live directly across from the area where the fireworks a shot of from. So we have the perfect place to see the show. Exactly at nine o'clock we gather in the front yard with blankets and chairs waiting with as much patience as we can. Everyone from the old to the young are excited to see the beautiful

Titanium was first discovered by a Reverend with the name of William Gregor in the United Kingdom (he was an English pastor at the time) in 1791. Except, it wasn't until 1910 when a man by the name of Matthew A. Hunter an American metallurgist was the first to have produced pure Titanium. A plaque was later made

Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev predicted the main properties of Gallium before its discovery and existence. Mendeleev named the element eka-aluminum because, as he predicted, the element would be placed right below aluminum on the periodic table. The discovery of Gallium was made spectroscopically in 1875 by French chemist Paul E. Lecoq de Boisbaudran through a spectroscope. Paul Lecoq de Boisbaudran found a new violet line in the atomic spectrum of zinc. He knew it meant that an unknown element was present. Boisbaudran had isolated and purified the new metal (through electrolysis of its hydroxide in a potassium hydroxide solution) by November in 1875. The origin of the name ‘Gallium’ comes from the Latin word ‘Gallia’, meaning

Compounds of sodium had been known off and used extensively throughout ancient times but sodium as its own element was not discovered until 1807. The man who discovered it was an English chemist named

While working on her dissertation she became fascinated by the work from Henri Becquerel. Becquerel’s discovery of uranium salts emitting rays inspired her to conduct further research. Within a couple months of beginning her research she made two important discoveries that “led her to formulate the theory that the rays were the result of something happening within the atom itself, a property she called radioactivity” (Goldsmith). She discovered that the rays were emitted from the anatomical structure of the atom and the outcome was not due to the interaction of molecules. Pierre Currie later abandoned his own research in crystals to help his wife in testing minerals that revealed high levels of radioactivity. From Marie Curie’s testing she concluded that a new more powerful element was responsible for the high levels of radioactivity. The Curies confined their research to the mineral pitchblende because it emitted the strongest rays. They then diligently and progressively separated pitchblende by chemical analysis. They measured the radioactivity of the separate components. “In July, 1898, she and Pierre successfully extracted an element from this ore that was even more radioactive than uranium; they called it polonium in honor of Marie’s homeland” (Goldsmith). Within that same years they identified a more radioactive element. This element which was embedded in the pitchblende was named radium. To prove their discovery they needed to isolate a pure form of this element. Which was no easy task, considering that these elements were extremely small and almost unnoticeable. In 1902 they were able to isolate enough radium to confirm its existence. Marie Curie then received a doctorate degree from the Sorbonne University, making it the first awarded to a women in Europe. In 1903 Pierre and Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel where jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for their

n the year of 1879,Swedish chemist Lars Fredrik Nilson discovered an element called Scandium.Scandium was found in Uppsala,Sweden.Nilson was studying the rare earth metals and tried to divide the element ytterbium with using euxenite and gadolinite.A part of his method needed the preparation materials which reacted to form erbium nitrate.Nilson added heat to the nitrate and found that his sample had small quantities of a element no one has ever heard of with a low atomic weight.That unknown element soon became Scandium!Soon after his discovery,Nilson started studying the element and determined that Scandium’s atomic weight is about 44.In the year of 1937,Metallic Scandium was first prepared by Fischer and his collegaues.They performed electrolysis

The banging in the sky,the shouts of thousands of people, and the bright, dazzling lights make everyone gaze at the sky. Fireworks and more specifically their components are present in the cosmos, have enabled evolution, and have fine tuned our cultures. Fireworks are very versatile for any culture no matter the uses. Also fireworks have made an enormous impact on our history, ever since they were created in China. Fireworks are extremely impressive and can be used in several ways.

Fourth of July is a big holiday for many Americans. We celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence from England in 1776. Most people celebrate by watching firework displays or setting of some themselves, if the weather and laws permit. America is a nation full of pyromaniacs. Who could blame us? Fire is fun. Fire is not the only fun thing about the Fourth though. Cookouts and parties are common, as is alcohol. Sometimes accidents happen when pyrotechnics and alcohol mix, such as: destroyed property, like a shirt catching an ember and having a hole burned through it, fires if the wind spends a spark dancing into a tree or some grass, missing fingers (do not hold firecrackers, I repeat do not hold firecrackers), and burns, sometimes, even if you do everything right, something could still go wrong. Some people find

Fireworks in shows such as 4th of July, are much more powerful than those offered to consumers.

Group 14 of the periodic table contains a mixture of non-metals (carbon and silicon), a metalloid (germanium), and two metals ( tin and lead). Tin is able to form dihalides and tetrahalides such as SnI2 and SnI4. However, lead will not form tetrahalides as readily as tin3. The tetrahalides of lead will decompose into dihalides due to their instability 3. The stability of the compounds is based on their respective oxidation states. Periodic trends suggest that group 14 oxidation states are normally - 4 as it is increasingly energetically favorable for them to accept electrons in order to complete their valence shells 3. However, due to the metallic properties of tin and lead, they generally lose electrons and therefore have a positive oxidation state. It is a characteristic trend to see heavier elements of the p block forming compounds in which their oxidation number is 2 (less than the group number 3 ). The heavier the atom, the more stable it is in the lower oxidation state. This is due to the inert pair effect 3. This can be correlated to the amount of energy needed to remove an electron (ionization energy), since in the higher oxidation state the p-block electrons and the s-block electrons are removed, while in the lower oxidation state, it is only the p-electrons that are removed and thus, the overall ionization energy is lower. The general periodic trend is that the ionization energy is generally lower for heavy metals, which results in the lower oxidation state being