The Royal Society of Chemistry
11 December 2024 . Strategic approach for the use and management of materials in the UK. We are taking cross-sector action in writing to government ministers, as the UK urgently needs a strategic, joined-up approach, led by central Government, for the use and management of materials in the UK
Oxygen - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
The credit for discovering oxygen is now shared by three chemists: an Englishman, a Swede, and a Frenchman. Joseph Priestley was the first to publish an account of oxygen, having made it in 1774 by focussing sunlight on to mercuric oxide (HgO), and collecting the gas which came off.
Platinum - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Probably the oldest worked specimen of platinum is that from an ancient Egyptian casket of the 7 th century BC, unearthed at Thebes and dedicated to Queen Shapenapit. Otherwise this metal was unknown in Europe and Asia for the next two millennia, although on the Pacific coast of South America, there were people able to work platinum, as shown by burial goods dating …
Magnesium - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic …
The first person to recognise that magnesium was an element was Joseph Black at Edinburgh in 1755. He distinguished magnesia (magnesium oxide, MgO) from lime (calcium oxide, CaO) although both were produced by heating similar kinds of carbonate rocks, magnesite and limestone respectively.
Nitrogen - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Nitrogen in the form of ammonium chloride, NH 4 Cl, was known to the alchemists as sal ammonia. It was manufactured in Egypt by heating a mixture of dung, salt and urine. Nitrogen gas itself was obtained in the 1760s by both Henry Cavendish and Joseph Priestley and they did this by removing the oxygen from air.
Chlorine - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Hydrochloric acid (HCl) was known to the alchemists. The gaseous element itself was first produced in 1774 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele at Uppsala, Sweden, by heating hydrochloric acid with the mineral pyrolusite which is naturally occuring manganese dioxide, MnO 2.A dense, greenish-yellow gas was evolved which he recorded as having a choking smell and which dissolved in …
Sulfur - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Sulfur is mentioned 15 times in the Bible, and was best known for destroying Sodom and Gomorrah.It was also known to the ancient Greeks, and burnt as a fumigant. Sulfur was mined near Mount Etna in Sicily and used for bleaching cloth and preserving wine, both of which involved burning it to form sulfur dioxide, and allowing this to be absorbed by wet clothes or …
Xenon - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Element Xenon (Xe), Group 18, Atomic Number 54, p-block, Mass 131.293. Sources, facts, uses, scarcity (SRI), podcasts, alchemical symbols, videos and images.
Silicon - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Silicon makes up 27.7% of the Earth’s crust by mass and is the second most abundant element (oxygen is the first). It does not occur uncombined in nature but occurs chiefly as the oxide (silica) and as silicates.
Lithium - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
The first lithium mineral petalite, LiAlSi 4 O 10, was discovered on the Swedish island of Utö by the Brazilian, Jozé Bonifácio de Andralda e Silva in the 1790s.It was observed to give an intense crimson flame when thrown onto a fire. In 1817, Johan August Arfvedson of Stockholm analysed it and deduced it contained a previously unknown metal, which he called lithium.