Bits and pieces of interesting information: chemistry, physics, etc.

Here you will find some information about things which I found to be interesting. I hope it will be interesting to you too...

 

  1. Gold is yellow and mercury is liquid due to the relativistic effects which occur because electrons close to the nucleus are moving at speeds approaching the speed of light.
  2. One of the uses of the artificial element technetium Tc is that its salts slow corrosion of other metals, such as iron. This is interesting; however, technetium is pretty expensive.
  3. Some aqueous solutions of uranyl (UO22+) salts exhibit crazy ionic activities - more than 1000. This means that some physical properties of the solution are such as if the concentration of the solution is 1000 times larger than it is in reality.
  4. Our friends cockroaches, some say, are able to see invisible to human eye UV light and also polarized light.
  5. Human blood has a red color due to iron ions (in bound form in hemine) present in it. Caterpillars have green blood because iron in their blood is replaced by nickel. Squids and related mollusks have cobalt in their blood, hence the blue color. Bluish hue of the aristocratic blood is unexplainable;) Chlorophyll in plants, chemically related to hemine in animal blood, is green due to magnesium.
  6. I read a story how element antimony (Sb) was discovered by some Medieval alchemist, an abbott of a monastery. He accidentally discovered that pigs liked the taste of the compound on the new element very much. So he gave to eat it to the monks, who later died in terrible pains. Hence the name of the element, which can be rendered as anti-monk.
  7. Alchemy in the Middle ages meant not so much chemical making of gold out of less noble elements or search of the philosophical stone, but more perfection of the soul of the adept. There did exist an indirect relation with chemistry how we understand it today: by pursuing the chemical goal, the person learns a lot in the process, and gains much more than it was apparently sought. Presently the existence of this double meaning is obscured, but part of it still is there.
  8. The Euro banknotes contain fluorescent europium compounds.
  9. 1 gramm of radioactive element polonium emits 140 Watts of energy