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Jan 1, 1000
Carbon
If you were heat a Diamond too much, it burns up into carbon dioxide gas. Examples of the uses of Carbon : Pyrolytic graphite.
A small chip of pyrolytic graphite, suitable for levitating on magnets. Borrowdale graphite.
The mine at Borrowdale was the first, and for a century the only, source of graphite, making it critical to the world's supply of pencils in the 1700s. -
Jan 1, 1000
Sulfur
Examples of the use of Sulfer:
Onions.
Onions get their smell from sulfur compounds. Copper sulfate crystal.
An individual crystal of copper sulfate from a bottle of root killer (designed to poured down drains to get rid of roots growing into drain lines). -
Jan 1, 1010
Lead
Lead pipe.
If you were playing a real-life game of Clue(TM) and you needed a lead pipe, this is the pipe for you. Crusty because it's a well-used sink drain from an 1890's house. -
Jan 1, 1016
Antimony
Beautiful, sparkling lumps of broken crystal like this are how bulk antimony is commonly sold. Most of it is melted down and added to lead to make bullets and batteries or alloyed with other metals. -
Jan 1, 1021
Tin
Tin is mostly used for art and old coins -
Jan 1, 1030
Sliver
To make flutes look fancy
I seen a real sliver flute and it look super sexy and fancy Silver halide film.
Back in the dark ages people used silver halide film to take pictures. -
Jan 1, 1030
Gold
Cheap mall jewelry.
Cheap gold plated jewelry from some store in the mall. The wonder of gold is that no matter how cheap, no matter how thin the plating, it's still gold, and gold is beautiful. -
Jan 1, 1035
Iron
Iron Dextran-100.
Highlighting the importance of iron to all mammals (and most other animals as well) this is an injectable form of iron supplement designed for use in horses suffering from anemia (iron deficiency). -
Jan 1, 1050
Copper
US Nickel coin.
Nickels (five-cent) coins are made of 75% copper. Only 25% is nickel, which makes the name a bit misleading. Cheap mall jewelry.
Cheap hammered brass/copper bracelet. -
Jan 1, 1250
Arsenic
Arsenic was the poison of choice until its detection became easy. Combined with gallium it forms a semiconductor used in creating high-speed integrated circuits for supercomputers and cell phones. -
Jan 1, 1500
Zinc
Sacrificial zinc anodes are used to protect steel tanks, rails and ship hulls from rusting. Ordinary zinc-plated bolt and nut.
This is a perfectly ordinary hardware-store variety galvanized (zinc-plated) steel bolt and nut. -
Phosphorus
Kitchen matches.
Ordinary kitchen matches -
Platinum
Platinum electrode.
Very pretty solid, pure platinum basket electrode. -
Nickel
Nichrome wire.
These coils are made of nichrome (nickel-chromium alloy) wire, and are meant as heating coils in a pottery kiln. US Nickel coin.
Nickels (five-cent) coins are made of 75% copper. Only 25% is nickel, which makes the name a bit misleading. -
Nitrogen
Nitroglycerin tablets.
Nitroglycerin is a powerful explosive that also works to treat chest pain caused by blood vessel constrictions. There does not appear to be any connection between these two properties of the substance. -
Chlorine
A pale yellow-green gas, chlorine killed soldiers in WWI. Today it mainly purifies drinking water and swimming pools. Combined with sodium, chlorine makes common table salt and is thus essential to life. -
Oxygen
Portable oxygen tank.
This is a pair of empty oxygen tanks with regulator, probably intended for people who need supplemental oxygen, or maybe for paramedics to carry around. -
Aluminum
Aluminized survival blanket.
Blankets packed into tiny plastic pouches and are designed to be used in emergency situations. They retain heat by reflecting it back from a shiny aluminum layer vapor deposited on a Mylar sheet. Aluminum oxide grinding disk.
Grinding wheel made of aluminum oxide bonded to a fabric mesh. Sort of like hardened sandpaper in the form of a disk meant to be used with a small angle grinder. -
Fluorine
Florical tablets.
Tablets that contain sodium fluoride and are meant to be taken to prevent tooth decay by people whose water supply is not fluoridated. -
Argon
Argon indicator light, lit.
See two samples back for a description of this argon indicator lamp. Its is showns with 120V AC applied to it, creating the purple glue. Argon-filled double-pane window.
Inexpensive insulated double-page windows are often filled with argon gas because it's cheap and helps a bit to increase the insulating properties of the window. It leaks out after a few years. -
Helium
Ordinarily a colorless, inert gas, helium glows pale peach when an electric current runs through it. A glass blower bent a tube to the shape of the letters He and filled it with pure helium. I lit it with high voltage. Examples of the use of Helium:
Classic helium balloons.
Three latex balloons inflated with helium. -
Radium
Radium was widely used in self-luminous clock and watch hands, until too many watch factory workers had died of it. Antique watchs is still quite radioactive, and will stay that way for -
Polonium
Radioactive polonium foil is used in antistatic brushes as an electron source. The foil is silver with a thin plating of polonium, and an even thinner plating of gold over that. The gold is what you actually see. -
Neon
Neon signs really are made with neon, like this Ne-shaped tube filled with this inert gas. A high voltage transformer sends an electric current through the tube, creating a characteristic bright neon-red arc. Examples of the uses of Neon: Tiny neon bulb lit.
This bulb was extracted from a 120V indicator lamp purchased at Radio -
Krypton
Krypton Large krypton bulb Sylvania K205PS25 incandescent lamp, said to be filled with krypton, and said to have a lifetime of 12,000 hours, which is huge for an incandescent bulb. It must operate at a very low filament temperature, and thus be extraordinarily inefficient at producing visible light. Fancy mini-flashlight bulb.
Fancy krypton bulb for a mini-flashlight. -
Actinium
when it is needed by bombarding radium with neutrons in a nuclear reactor -
Randon
Electronic radon gas detector.
Continuous electronic radon gas monitor that reads out in Pico-curies per liter. You can choose between averaging over a few days, or over the whole time the monitor has been installed. Radon is an invisible, radioactive gas, thus hard to photograph. This granite ball reminds us that the source of most radon in people's basements is the decay of traces of uranium and thorium in granite bedrock. -
Francium
Due to the small amounts produced and its short half-life, there are currently no uses for francium outside of basic scientific research. -
Plutonium
Used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators to provide electricity for space probes that venture too far from the sun to use solar power. -
Americium
Smoke detector circuit board.
The circuit board inside a cheap hardware store ionization type smoke detector, with the ionization chamber removed so you can see the americium button inside. Cheap smoke detector.
The case of a cheap hardware store ionization type smoke detector. -
Dubnium
Due to the small amounts produced and its short half-life, there are currently no uses for dubnium outside of basic scientific research. -
Ununbium
I think i wrote it wrong because
A) i couldnt find anything and because i was being RUSHED ^-^
