What element do you want for Christmas? - December 15, 2008
Just three months after the stores put up their decorations, the Great Beyond’s first Christmas blog post has arrived. Brady Haran, the University of Nottingham’s film-maker in residence, has been asking people at the School of Chemistry what element they want for Christmas.
“I think the elements have a special mystique because they're nature's building blocks at the purest form,” he says. “But there are still 118 of them, and each is totally unique. So we thought it would be fun to ask ‘which one would you like under the Christmas tree?’”
Haran says, “I think I'd choose francium. It’s extremely rare, very dangerous and totally radioactive, which means we've not been able to film it for the Periodic Table of Videos. Being able to make that video would be my ideal Christmas present!”
Nature’s chemistry correspondent Katharine Sanderson wants molybdenum. “I like the name, you can abbreviate it to Molly,” she says
Personally, I’d go with something from group one that you could throw into a lake, but remember kids: an element is for life, not just for Christmas. Unless you’ve got something like Seaborgium of course...
Comments
Europium
Useful in astrophysics, astronomy, meteoritics and in tracing the evolution of the Moon and the continental crust of the Earth, and in TV sets
Posted by: Stuart Ross Taylor | December 16, 2008 10:49 PM
I think I'd like some Meitnerium - named after Lise Meitner, the first woman in all of Austria to earn a Ph.D. in physics.
(I proofread a project on the table of periodic elements last year, so I found out all sorts of interesting tidbits...)
Posted by: Ace Sigma | December 16, 2008 11:20 PM