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.
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 …
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.
Copper - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Element Copper (Cu), Group 11, Atomic Number 29, d-block, Mass 63.546. Sources, facts, uses, scarcity (SRI), podcasts, alchemical symbols, videos and images.
Sodium - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
Sodium is the sixth most common element on Earth, and makes up 2.6% of the Earth’s crust. The most common compound is sodium chloride. This very soluble salt has been leached into the oceans over the lifetime of the planet, but many salt beds or ‘lakes’ are found where ancient seas have evaporated.
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.
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.
What is alchemy? - The Royal Society of Chemistry
The art of alchemy was handed down through the centuries from Egypt and Arabia to Greece and Rome, and finally to western and central Europe. The word is derived from the Arabian phrase "al-kimia," which refers to the preparation of the Stone or Elixir by the Egyptians.
Neon - Element information, properties and uses | Periodic Table
In 1898, William Ramsay and Morris Travers at University College London isolated krypton gas by evaporating liquid argon. They had been expecting to find a lighter gas which would fit a niche above argon in the periodic table of the elements.