On Rare And Scattered Metals (gnv64)

On Rare And Scattered Metals (Tales About Metaks)
By S.I.Venetsky
MIR | 1983 | English | PDF | 152 pages | 13 mb
scanned to PDF by gnv64

It would probably be correct to say that today not a single new area of technology can do without rare metals, their alloys or compounds. For example, fine-filament suspensions for navigation instruments of high precision are made from rhenium alloys; gallium goes into the manufac-ture of so-called liquid seals in vacuum equipment and high-temperature thermometers and pressure gauges; cesium is the most important compo-nent of photocells used in flaw detectors and some other instruments; hafnium is the material from which control rods of nuclear reactors are made and is also promising as a component of superalloys being de-veloped for aviation and rocketry; a thin layer of indium deposited on ball-bearings protects them from erosion and increases
This book tells about some rare metals (including those called trace elements) and can be regarded as a second part of S. I. Venetsky's Tales About Metals (It was published in English by Mir Publishers, Moscow, in 1981).
The author follows the same principle as in his previous work: rather than giving the reader any exhaustive information about every chemical element he describes, to tell him some interesting facts, curious incidents and tales associated with rare metals, to tell about the thorny path of any major scientific discovery and about some paths yet to be trodden in the amazing world of metals.

Contents
About This Book 6
The Triumpth of a Great Law (Gallium) 8
An Evil Genie (Rubidium) 17
The Secret of the Bengal Priests (Strontium) 24
A Find in an Old Quarry (Yttrium) 31
Dinosaur Resurrected (Technetium) 39
An English Scientist's Joke (Palladium) 47
Named After Cadmus of Phoenicia (Cadmium) 55
Associated with the Land of Wonders (Indium) 64
Once in Schtalhausen Monastery (Antimony) 70
Two Blue Strangers (Cesium) 77
The Good Luck of a Shoemaker from Bologna (Barium) 85
Only a Trace (Hafnium) 93
The Secret of Old Waste Dumps (Rhenium) 100
An Insult to a Noble Metal (Osmium) 107
All the Colours of the Rainbow (Iridium) 114
Budding Twig (Thallium) 121
A Space Mission (Bismuth) 127
The Rarest of the Rare (Francium) 136
Eternal Rays (Radium) 143