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Periodic

The chemical element beryllium is classed as an an alkali earth metal. Pure beryllium was discovered in 1828 by Friederich Wöhler and Antoine Bussy.

Classification: Beryllium is an alkali earth metal

Color: steel gray

Atomic weight: 9.01218

State: solid

Melting point: 1278 oC, 1551.2 K

Boiling point: 2469 oC, 2742 K

Electrons: 4

Protons: 4

Neutrons in most abundant isotope: 5

Electron shells: 2,2

Electron configuration: 1s2 2s2

Density @ 20oC: 1.848 g/cm3

Show more, including: Heats, Energies, Oxidation, Reactions,

Compounds, Radii, Conductivities

Beryllium

Beryllium Foils. Image: Deglr6328 (Ref. 6.)

Beryl and Emerald

Three varieties of beryl (left) and an emerald (right). Beryl and emerald’s formula is Be3Al2(SiO3)6. The different colors are caused by traces of different elements. For example, emeralds are colored by traces of chromium 3+ (blue-green) or vanadium 3+ (yellow-green) ions. (5) Images from Reno Chris and Jan ArkesteijBeryllium Oxide Crystal Structure

The hexagonal crystal structure of BeO (beryllium oxide). Study of crystals of beryl and emerald provided a clue to the existence of the new element beryllium. Image from Solid State

Discovery of Beryllium

Dr. Doug Stewart

In 1798, in France, René Haüy saw similarities in the crystal structures and properties of beryl and emerald. Beryl can appear in a number of different colors. Emerald is green. (See images on left.)

Haüy wondered if, despite their different colors, beryl and emerald could be made of the same elements. He approached Nicolas Louis Vauquelin, a French chemist who specialized in analysis, and asked him to have a look. (1)

Vauquelin discovered a new, sweet-tasting substance in both emerald and beryl. We now call this substance beryllia, BeO. Despite its sweet taste, we now know that beryllium and its compounds are highly toxic.

Although frowned upon today, old style chemists often tasted chemicals as part of their analyses.

For some, the taste test put their careers into terminal decline. One such chemist was Karl Scheele from Sweden, who discovered chlorine and oxygen. Scheele is believed to have died from poisoning caused by a variety of his experiments.

Vauquelin proposed that beryllia contained a previously undiscovered element, an earth metal. He initially called this new element ‘earth of beryl.’ (2)

The sweet taste of the salts then led to the new element being renamed ‘glyceynum,’ then ‘glucina’ or ‘glucine.’ The Greek ‘glykis’ means ‘sweet’ and is the source of our word ‘glucose.’ (1), (3)

Pure beryllium was first isolated from its salts in 1828 by Friederich Wöhler in Germany and, independently, Antoine Bussy in France.

Both chemists reacted potassium with beryllium chloride in a platinum crucible yielding potassium chloride and beryllium.

Wöhler was unhappy with the name the new element had been given, preferring beryllium from the Greek word ‘beryllos,’ meaning the mineral beryl.

Wöhler’s countryman, Martin Klaproth, had already pointed out in 1801 that yttria also forms sweet salts. A name derived from ‘beryllos’ would be less likely to cause confusion than one derived from ‘glykis.’ Klaproth also noted that a genus of plants was already called glucine. (4)

Bussy, however, preferred to call the new element ‘glucinium.’

Finally, in 1949, IUPAC chose beryllium as the element’s name and this decision became official in 1957. (2)

Beryllium played a large part in proving the existence of neutrons. In 1932, James Chadwick, an English physicist, bombarded a sample of beryllium with alpha-rays (helium nuclei). He observed that the bombarded sample emitted a subatomic particle, which had mass but no charge.

This neutral particle was the neutron.

Uses of Beryllium

Beryllium

A large beryllium crystal of 99%+ purity. (Photo: Alchemist-hp)

Appearance and Characteristics

Harmful effects:

Beryllium and its salts are both toxic and carcinogenic.

Characteristics:

Beryllium is light, silver-gray, relatively soft metal that is strong but brittle.

Beryllium has the highest melting point of the light metals, melting at 1278 oC – considerably higher than, for example, Lithium (180 oC) Sodium (98 oC) Magnesium (650 oC) Aluminum (660 oC) or Calcium (839 oC).

Under normal conditions, a thin layer of the hard oxide BeO forms on beryllium’s surface, protecting the metal from further attack by water or air.

As a result of this BeO layer, beryllium does not oxidize in air even at 600oC and it resists corrosion by concentrated nitric acid.

Beryllium also has high thermal conductivity and is nonmagnetic

Uses of Beryllium

Unlike most metals, beryllium is virtually transparent to x-rays and hence it is used in radiation windows for x-ray tubes.

Beryllium alloys are used in the aerospace industry as light-weight materials for high performance aircraft, satellites and spacecraft.

Beryllium is used as an alloy with copper to make spark-proof tools.

Beryllium is also used in nuclear reactors as a reflector and absorber of neutrons, a shield and a moderator.

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Periodic

Helium Element Facts

Data Zone | Discovery | Facts | Appearance & Characteristics | Uses | Abundance & Isotopes | References

2

He

4.003

The chemical element helium is classed as a noble gas and a nonmetal. It was discovered in 1895 by William Ramsay.

Data Zone

Classification: Helium is a noble gas and a nonmetal

Color: colorless

Atomic weight: 4.00260

State: gas

Melting point: -272.2 oC, 0.95 K

Note: At normal atmospheric pressure, helium does not solidify and so has no melting point. The melting point quoted above is under a pressure of 25 atmospheres.

Boiling point: -268.9 oC, 4.2 K

Electrons: 2

Protons: 2

Neutrons in most abundant isotope: 2

Electron shells: 2

Electron configuration: 1s2

Density @ 20oC: 0.0001787 g/cm3

Show more, including: Heats, Energies, Oxidation,

Reactions, Compounds, Radii, Conductivities

Ionized helium atoms

Nasa: Ionized helium atoms at about 60,000 °C in the Sun’s chromosphere emit the ultraviolet light seen in this image.

Helium made in the big bang

Helium was made in the first three minutes of the universe’s existence, when temperatures everywhere were high enough for nuclear fusion to occur. This short, high energy phase is represented at the very bottom of the diagram. Helium is also made by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars like our own. Image: Gnixon

Helium nucleus

Helium on earth comes from nuclear fission of radioactive elements such as uranium. Here a radioactive nucleus emits a helium nucleus (also known as an alpha particle). Image: Inductiveload

Helium's Spectrum

Helium’s spectrum with prominent yellow line. Image: Nasa

William Ramsay

William Ramsay pointing to the periodic table’s final column containing the noble (or inert) gases. Ramsay was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1904 for his work in the discovery of the inert gases. Image: Vanity Fair

Discovery of Helium

Dr. Doug Stewart

The story of helium’s discovery is interwoven with the discovery of the nature of stars.

At one time people believed we would never know what stars are made of. In 1835 French philosopher Auguste Comte declared, “we shall never be able by any means to study their chemical composition.” (1)

Comte thought we could only learn what star-stuff was if we could get it into the laboratory.

Despite Comte’s pessimism, the method for the discovery of helium and the compositions of the stars had already been found. In 1814 German physicist Joseph Fraunhofer had taken Isaac Newton’s method of splitting sunlight using a prism and had made a crucial advance. Fraunhofer had noticed dark lines in the rainbow of colors coming from sunlight split by a prism; the lines he saw were the first ever observation of a star’s spectrum. (2), (3)

In 1859/60 German scientists Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen made enormous leaps in the science of spectroscopy, including the discovery that the dark lines Fraunhofer had seen were like a substance’s fingerprint.

The scene was set for Kirchhoff and Bunsen to discover new elements by studying light from substances when they were burning.

In 1860 they discovered cesium by its blue spectral lines and in 1861 rubidium from two red spectral lines. Then William Crookes discovered thallium in 1861 after observing a bright green spectral line.

Kirchhoff and Bunsen looked at the sun’s spectrum and were able to conclude that iron was present in its glowing atmosphere. (4)

For helium’s discovery, a few more years were needed. In August 1868 the first total eclipse since Kirchhoff and Bunsen’s work had been published was due.

French astronomer Pierre Janssen was waiting for an eclipse in order to observe prominences in the sun’s corona using a spectroscope. In the two weeks following the eclipse Janssen developed a method of recording prominences’ spectra without the need for an eclipse. In these spectra, he observed a yellow line. (5)

The line was in a similar but not identical position to lines in sodium’s spectrum. These were called the D1 and D2 lines. English scientist Norman Lockyer studied the new yellow line; later it would be called the D3 line. He published his study of the line, aware it might be caused by a new element:

“…so then we knew that we were not dealing with hydrogen; hence we had to do with an element which we could not get in our laboratories, and therefore I took upon myself the responsibility of coining the word helium, in the first instance for laboratory use.” (6)

The name helium came from the Greek word for the sun, helios.

Lockyer and Edward Frankland, his coworker, had a number of other ideas about the possible causes of the yellow line and therefore did not announce a new element.

By 1871, other scientists were aware of the situation. Lord Kelvin discussed “reflection of the light of the glowing hydrogen and ‘helium’ round the sun.” The use of ‘helium’ is followed by a footnote to explain it:

“Frankland and Lockyer find the yellow prominences to give a very decided bright line not far from D, but hitherto not identified with any terrestrial flame. It seems to indicate a new substance, which they propose to call Helium.” (7)

Helium’s existence was not, however, accepted by everyone. (5)

All doubts were dispelled when Scottish chemist William Ramsay isolated helium in 1895 in London. Ramsay had codiscovered argon in 1894; argon was the first of the noble gases to be discovered. In 1895 he read a paper by William Hillebrand describing an unreactive gas that was released when acid was added to the uranium mineral, uranite. Hillebrand believed the gas was nitrogen. [We now know that uranium emits helium during radioactive decay. Radioactivity’s existence was not recognized until 1896 when Henri Becquerel’s work was published.]

Ramsay, who believed the gas might contain argon, repeated Hillebrand’s experiment using another uranium mineral, cleveite, and collected the gas.

His spectroscope indicated the presence of nitrogen, argon and one other gas. Ramsay suspected it could be helium, because there appeared to be a D3 line. (8) Aware that Lockyer and William Crookes had a better spectroscope than his, he sent them a sample of the gas. Unfortunately the sample was not suitable, so Lockyer obtained a sample of uranite, extracted the gas and studied it by spectroscope. He writes: (8)

“One by one the unknown lines I had observed in the sun in 1868 were found to belong to the gas.”

The gas’s spectrum was identical to the sun’s ‘helium.’ A new element won its place in the periodic table.

Visit Chemicool’s Cool Helium Facts Page.

Most people know what speaking after breathing helium sounds like. If you don’t, listen here. And what about sulfur hexafluoride?

At close to absolute zero, helium becomes a superfluid. How will it behave?

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The chemical element lithium is classed as an alkali metal. It was discovered in 1817 by Johan Arfvedson.

Classification Lithium is an alkali metal

Color silvery

Atomic weight 6.941

State solid

Melting point 180.54 oC, 453.69 K

Boiling point 1347 oC, 1615 K

Electrons: 3

Protons: 3

Neutrons in most abundant isotope: 4

Electron shells 2,1

Electron configuration 1s2 2s1

Density @ 20oC 0.53 g/cm3

Show more, including: Heats, Energies, Oxidation,

Reactions, Compounds, Radii, Conductivities

Lithium made in the Big Bang

Lithium was made in the first three minutes of the universe’s existence, when temperatures everywhere were high enough for nuclear fusion to occur. This short, high energy phase is represented at the very bottom of the diagram. Image: Gnixon

Discovery of Lithium

Dr. Doug Stewart

Lithium was discovered by Johan Arfvedson in 1817 in Stockholm, Sweden, during an analysis of petalite (LiAlSi4O10).

He found the petalite contained “silica, alumina and an alkali.” (1)

The new alkali metal in the petalite had unique properties.

It required more acid to neutralize it than sodium and its carbonate was only sparingly soluble in water – unlike sodium carbonate.

The new alkali differed from potassium because it did not give a precipitate with tartaric acid.

Arfvedson tried to produce a pure sample of the new metal by electrolysis, but he was unsuccessful; the battery he used was not powerful enough. (2)

The pure metal was isolated the following year by both Swedish chemist William Brande and English chemist Humphry Davy working independently.

Davy obtained a small quantity of lithium metal by electrolysis of lithium carbonate. (3)

He noted the new element had a red flame color somewhat like strontium and produced an alkali solution when dissolved in water.

In days less safety-conscious than the present, Brande said of lithium, “its solution tastes acrid like the other fixed alkalies.” (4)

By 1855 Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen were independently producing the metal in large quantities by electrolysis of molten lithium chloride.

Lithium’s name is derived from the Greek word ‘lithos’ meaning, ‘stone.’

Interesting Facts about Lithium

Lithium is believed to be one of only three elements – the others are hydrogen and helium – produced in significant quantities by the Big Bang. Synthesis of these elements took place within the first three minutes of the universe’s existence.

Lithium is the only alkali metal that reacts with nitrogen.

Humphrey Davy produced some of the world’s first lithium metal from lithium carbonate. Today lithium carbonate – or more precisely the lithium ions in lithium carbonate – are used to inhibit the manic phase of bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder.

Lithium based batteries have revolutionized consumer devices such as computers and cell phones. For a given battery weight, lithium batteries deliver more energy than batteries based on other metals; in other words, lithium batteries have high energy density.

Appearance and Characteristics

Harmful effects:

Lithium is corrosive, causing skin burns as a result of the caustic hydroxide produced in contact with moisture. Women taking lithium carbonate for bi-polar disorder may be advised to vary their treatment during pregnancy as lithium may cause birth defects.

Characteristics:

Lithium is soft and silvery white and it is the least dense of the metals. It is highly reactive and does not occur freely in nature.

Freshly cut surfaces oxidize rapidly in air to form a black oxide coating. It is the only common metal (but see radium) that reacts with nitrogen at room temperature, forming lithium nitride.

Lithium burns with a crimson flame, but when the metal burns sufficiently well, the flame becomes a brilliant white.

Lithium has a high specific heat capacity and it exists as a liquid over a wide temperature range.

Uses of Lithium

Pure lithium metal is used in rechargeable lithium ion batteries and the metal is used as an alloy with aluminum, copper, manganese, and cadmium to make high performance aircraft parts.

Lithium also has various nuclear applications, for example as a coolant in nuclear breeder reactors and a source of tritium, which is formed by bombarding lithium with neutrons.

Lithium carbonate is used as a mood-stabilizing drug.

Lithium chloride and bromide are used as desiccants.

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The Big Bang

The Big Bang did not occur as an explosion in the usual way one think about such things, despite one might gather from its name. The universe did not expand into space, as space did not exist before the universe, according to NASA Instead, it is better to think of the Big Bang as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe. The universe has not expanded from any one spot since the Big Bang — rather, space itself has been stretching, and carrying matter with it.

Since the universe by its definition encompasses all of space and time as we know it, NASA says it is beyond the model of the Big Bang to say what the universe is expanding into or what gave rise to the Big Bang. Although there are models that speculate about these questions, none of them have made realistically testable predictions as of yet.

In 2014, scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that they had found a faint signal in the cosmic microwave background that could be the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, themselves considered a "smoking gun" for the Big Bang. The findings were hotly debated, and astronomers soon retracted their results when they realized dust in the Milky Way could explain their findings. mysterious ripples

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Universal thoughts

During the first three minutes of the universe, the light elements were born during a process known as Big Bang nucleosynthesis. Temperatures cooled from 100 nonillion (1032) Kelvin to 1 billion (109) Kelvin, and protons and neutrons collided to make deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Most of the deuterium combined to make helium, and trace amounts of lithium were also generated.

For the first 380,000 years or so, the universe was essentially too hot for light to shine, according to France's National Center of Space Research (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES). The heat of creation smashed atoms together with enough force to break them up into a dense plasma, an opaque soup of protons, neutrons and electrons that scattered light like fog.

Roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter cooled enough for atoms to form during the era of recombination, resulting in a transparent, electrically neutral gas, according to NASA. This set loose the initial flash of light created during the Big Bang, which is detectable today as cosmic microwave background radiation. However, after this point, the universe was plunged into darkness, since no stars or any other bright objects had formed yet.

About 400 million years after the Big Bang, the universe began to emerge from the cosmic dark ages during the epoch of reionization. During this time, which lasted more than a half-billion years, clumps of gas collapsed enough to form the first stars and galaxies, whose energetic ultraviolet light ionized and destroyed most of the neutral hydrogen.

Although the expansion of the universe gradually slowed down as the matter in the universe pulled on itself via gravity, about 5 or 6 billion years after the Big Bang, according to NASA, a mysterious force now called dark energy began speeding up the expansion of the universe again, a phenomenon that continues today.

A little after 9 billion years after the Big Bang, our solar system is born.

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1

H

1.008

The chemical element hydrogen is classed as a nonmetal. It can become metallic at very high pressures. It was discovered in 1766 by Henry Cavendish.

Data Zone

Classification Hydrogen is a nonmetal. It can become metallic at very high pressures.

Color: colorless

Atomic weight :1.0079

State :gas

Melting point: -259.14 oC, 14.01 K

Boiling point :-252.87 oC, 20.28 K

Electrons: 1

Protons: 1

Neutrons in most abundant isotope: 0

Reactions, Compounds, Radii, Conductivities

Electron shells 1

Electron configuration 1s1

Density @ 20oC 0.0000899 g/cm3

Hydrogen - Theophrastus Paracelsus

Discovery of Hydrogen

Dr. Doug Stewart

A favorite school chemistry experiment is to add a metal such as magnesium to an acid. The metal reacts with the acid, forming a salt and releases hydrogen from the acid. The hydrogen gas bubbles up from the liquid and students collect it in small quantities for further experiments, such as the ‘pop-test.’

The first recorded instance of hydrogen made by human action was in the first half of the 1500s, by a similar method to that used in schools now. Theophrastus Paracelsus, a physician, dissolved iron in sulfuric acid and observed the release of a gas. He is reported to have said of the experiment, “Air arises and breaks forth like a wind.” He did not, however, discover any of hydrogen’s properties.(1)

Turquet De Mayerne repeated Paracelsus’s experiment in 1650 and found that the gas was flammable.(2) Neither Paracelsus nor De Mayerne proposed that hydrogen could be a new element. Indeed, Paracelsus believed there were only three elements – the tria prima – salt, sulfur, and mercury – and that all other substances were made of different combinations of these three. (3) (Chemistry still had a long way to go!)

In 1670, English scientist Robert Boyle added iron to sulfuric acid. He showed the resulting (hydrogen) gas only burned if air was present and that a fraction of the air (we would now call it oxygen) was consumed by the burning.(4)

Hydrogen was first recognized as a distinct element in 1766 by English scientist Henry Cavendish, when he prepared it by reacting hydrochloric acid with zinc. He described hydrogen as “inflammable air from metals” and established that it was the same material (by its reactions and its density) regardless of which metal and which acid he used to produce it.(1) Cavendish also observed that when the substance was burned, it produced water.

French scientist Antoine Lavoisier later named the element hydrogen (1783). The name comes from the Greek ‘hydro’ meaning water and ‘genes’ meaning forming – hydrogen is one of the two water forming elements.

In 1806, with hydrogen well-established as an element, English chemist Humphry Davy pushed a strong electric current through purified water.

He found hydrogen and oxygen were formed. The experiment demonstrated that electricity could pull substances apart into their constituent elements. Davy realized that substances were bound together by an electrical phenomenon; he had discovered the true nature of chemical bonding.(5)

Visit Chemicool’s Cool Hydrogen Facts Page.

Metallic Hydrogen Interiors of Jupiter and Saturn

Interiors of Jupiter and Saturn, with liquid metallic hydrogen. Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Large scale chemical reaction of hydrogen with oxygen. (Why blimps are now filled with helium instead of hydrogen.)

Hydrogen Fuel Tank

Nasa: The Space Shuttle’s external fuel tank (orange) filled with liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

Hydrogen Car

Hydrogen cars emit water rather than pollutants.

Electrolyis of water

Laboratory electrolysis of water. Electrical energy is used to split water. Hydrogen gathers in one test-tube, oxygen in the other.

Appearance and Characteristics

Harmful effects:

Hydrogen is highly flammable and has an almost invisible flame, which can lead to accidental burns.

Characteristics:

Hydrogen is the simplest element of all, and the lightest. It is also by far the most common element in the Universe. Over 90 percent of the atoms in the Universe are hydrogen.

In its commonest form, the hydrogen atom is made of one proton, one electron, and no neutrons. Hydrogen is the only element that can exist without neutrons.

Hydrogen is a colorless, odorless gas which exists, at standard temperature and pressure, as diatomic molecules, H2.

It burns and forms explosive mixtures in air and it reacts violently with oxidants.

On Earth, the major location of hydrogen is in water, H2O. There is little free hydrogen on Earth because hydrogen is so light that it is not held by the planet’s gravity. Any hydrogen that forms eventually escapes from the atmosphere into space.

Although hydrogen is usually a nonmetal, it becomes a liquid metal when enormous pressures are applied to it.

Such pressures are found within gas giant planets such as Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter’s high magnetic field (14 times Earth’s) is believed to be caused by a dynamo effect resulting from electrically conducting metallic hydrogen circulating as the planet rotates.

Uses of Hydrogen

Large quantities of hydrogen are used in the Haber process (production of ammonia), hydrogenation of fats and oils, methanol production, hydrocracking, and hydrodesulfurization. Hydrogen is also used in metal refining.

Liquid hydrogen is used as a rocket fuel, for example powering the Space Shuttle’s lift-off and ascent into orbit. Liquid hydrogen and oxygen are held in the Shuttle’s large, external fuel tank. (See image left.)

Hydrogen’s two heavier isotopes (deuterium and tritium) are used in nuclear fusion.

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The universe was born with the Big Bang as an unimaginably hot, dense point. When the universe was just 10-34 of a second or so old — that is, a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second in age — it experienced an incredible burst of expansion known as inflation, in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. During this period, the universe doubled in size at least 90 times, going from subatomic-sized to golf-ball-sized almost instantaneously.

The work that goes into understanding the expanding universe comes from a combination of theoretical physics and direct observations by astronomers. However, in some cases astronomers have not been able to see direct evidence — such as the case of gravitational waves associated with the cosmic microwave background, the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. A preliminary announcement about finding these waves in 2014 was quickly retracted, after astronomers found the signal detected could be explained by dust in the Milky Way.

According to NASA, after inflation the growth of the universe continued, but at a slower rate. As space expanded, the universe cooled and matter formed. One second after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons, photons and neutrinos.

https://www.space.com/52-the-expanding-universe-from-the-big-bang-to-today.html

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Learning the periodic table of elements

Going to post my findings here , so stay tuned lol

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That's great

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She needs a dress

Source: @ashbutler__

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Can you believe that

Cats have started using mascara on their ears to try to improve their looks and hearing.

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It looks like it's had too much lol

1 in 1200 cats will develop “Cat Shingles”, a sudden inflammation that will have them produce large, white calcium deposits. It lasts a short while and does not affect mobility though it does look very awkward

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They can roll over?

It’s impossible for guinea pigs to sit, though a capybaraley can.