Thanks to Derek Lowe’s recent post ‘Elements I Have Yet to Use’, we’ve all spent some time this morning looking at the periodic table, casting our minds back to our days in the lab and counting up the elements we HAVE used.
Laura’s in the lead with 31, and Stu is undecided “between 25 and 30” (bless his aged memory…), and I’m down around 20. Gav, as a physical chemist, is at the back of the queue with “between 5 and 10 — including the silicon in the computer!”
I decided to change the rules a little (in my favour, of course!), and asked “but how many elements featured in compounds you actually made?” (in other words, not just as reagents etc). As I hoped, that puts me in the lead thanks to solid-state syntheses rarely involving anything that doesn’t end up in the product! My count for this is about 18, Stu around 12 and Laura 16. Gav says he’s no longer playing the game…!
Between us we’ve used almost every group in the periodic table, apart from the noble gases and possibly group 5 (V, Nb, Ta) — although I did use vanadium cans in some neutron experiments, but apparently that doesn’t count! Lanthanides crop up more than you might expect (La, Ce, Eu, Sm, Gd, poss Yb).
We’re all behind Derek who has used 45 so far — as ever, we bow before his superior awesomeness.
Neil
Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)
I counted 22, using your revised rules. Making series of lanthanide compounds really boosts that number.
Lanthanides are definitely good for that – such a lot of them and with such similar sizes and 3+-ness.
Stuart has now suggested that we look for the commercially available compound that features the most elements. Anyone willing to take up the challenge??
Well, wouldn’t doing a reaction under Argon count as using a noble gas? And perhaps running an NMR could count for using helium. We could go further with mercury in thermometers, nickel cadmium batteries etc etc! How many different elements do we encounter in ‘every day normal’ life? Probably many many more than we’ve actually done experiments with.
Without Ar and He and the others above, I count 26 elements that I’ve used legitimately in the process of chemistry which is quite good going for a polymer chemist with inorganic leanings. The most varied compound I’ve made has 7 different elements in it, but I’m sure that will be an easy record for someone to beat!
I counted argon in just the way mentioned above, and helium for both the NMR and (a bit more directly) as a GC carrier gas. Now, if I count the elements only in compounds that I’ve made, well. . .that’ll knock the list down to about 28. Some of those were pretty transient, though, so if we’re talking things that were stored in a flask or bottle, I’d say that puts me down about 20.
Now as for my superior awesomeness, that’s another matter. My wife says that she agrees with you, most of the time. . .
Derek