Periodic Table of Death

FYI, I just completed a fairy tale course and will attempt to write this article in that style. And remember, Disney fairy tales have happy endings, but the original folk and fairy tales tended to be, Hans (1, 2) down, more Grimm (3, 4). What to look for in a fairy tale: ‘flatness’ of tone, repetition—especially of numbers, and everyday magic. Once upon 1909, outside of Paris, a girl—Marguerite—was born into a relatively affluent family. Her father owned a flour mill, and her mother took care of their five children. But when the young girl was five, tragedy struck with a stock market crash, …

Beryllium, Criticality, and the Periodic Table of Death & Mystery Part 1 I despaired in finding anything to write about beryllium (Be), and then I saw Oppenheimer (2023). It is a seriously great “middlebrow” (4) movie and I highly recommend it. It also exposed an embarrassing hole in my education of what was probably one of the most profound discoveries in the history of humans*—unlocking the nuclear power of the elements that reside in the Periodic Table. Not only that, but I live in New Mexico, and I have never visited the Trinity Site (only 150 m/250 km from my house) or truly …

When you saw Aluminum (Al), I bet you figured I’d write about aluminum foil, invented in Switzerland in 1910 and first used in the U.S. to wrap candy in 1913 (1). Or its innovative use in the construction of the Empire State Building in New York City (2). Or I’d write about how the best American Christmas TV special ever, A Charlie Brown Christmas*, pretty much single-handedly killed the Aluminum Christmas tree (3). But you’d be wrong. Instead, I’m going to write about Transparent Aluminum. And yes, it’s a real thing, not just made up for Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home (4) as a bargaining chip for 6-inch …

One of the periodic table elements should be “rabbit hole” because I always seem to go down one when I’m doing research. This article is particularly weird because I’m going to lead you through the workings of my mind for Copper (Cu) from the Latin cuprum, atomic number 29 and one of only a few metals that occur on earth in a usable metallic form (1). There’s a line in Milagro Beanfield War by John Nichols (1974) that I decided to use as the base for this essay on copper: “What are pennies made out of?…Dirty copper!” which is directed at Kyril Montana, an undercover …

Zinc (Zn) is a German word derived from the Persian word “sing”, which means stone. Isn’t that lovely? And while it was officially discovered as an element in 1746, Greeks and Romans have known about it for a couple thousand years (1). A silvery-white metal, Zn tarnishes to a pretty blueish tinge. It’s fairly abundant, making up 0.004% of the earth’s crust, and Zn is primarily used to galvanize other metals so they don’t rust. That means zinc-galvanized stuff—like the metal in cars, buildings, ships—lasts for generations (2). Super-duper. Wonderful. What the heck is galvanize? The American Galvanizers Association has ALL the answers. There’s even a movie (3). Galvanizing is literally dipping …