Chemists at the University of Nottingham have made a series of short videos, one for each element of the Periodic Table, and they are a hoot. Not that they're silly; no, they are quite solid (when not liquid or gaseous) and demonstrate actual properties of these most basic substances. But they're definitely put together with a twinkle of the eye.
Take sodium: A scientist in lab coat and safety googles removes a cylinder of the reactive metal from a jar and cuts off a piece to show how shiny it is. He and a colleague carry a big chunk outside and drop it into a stoneware dog bowl full of water: Sizzle! Smoke! Flame! Pop! Little chunks fly out of the bowl -- one pasting itself onto the camera -- and the scientists chuckle like schoolboys. These demonstrations are intercut with shots of Professor Martyn Poliakoff in his cluttered, book-bound office, explaining why sodium is unique and important. It has a warm spot in his heart, he adds, because its chemical symbol is Na, which was his mother's nickname.
Part of Poliakoff's considerable charm is his cloud of gray hair; a cross between Einstein and Afro, it seems poised to take off on an adventure of its own. According to his Wikipedia entry, Poliakoff recently won an award for best hair on the Internet. While I'd take that claim with a grain of sodium chloride, you can see how it might be possible.
I spent some time browsing through elements with a particular connection to high-energy physics; argon, mercury and xenon, which fill the chambers of some particle detectors; iron (did you know that the CMS detector at CERN, the particle physics lab on the Swiss-French border, contains more iron than the Eiffel Tower?); copper; the ubiquitous hydrogen and helium (boffo choices because one explodes into flame, the other makes you talk like Donald Duck.) Not all of the films feature exciting demonstrations. Niobium, for instance, a sleek metal used to fashion radiofrequency cavities, did not make a direct appearance in its video, although it had figured in some of Poliakoff's experiments and he spoke of it fondly. "It was very good to me," he says. "I've always regarded niobium as a very friendly element." But the project Web site says the videos will be updated "with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments."
Some of these elements are getting harder to obtain for physics experiments, according to an article David Harris posted here in April. The growing demand for xenon and helium is driving up prices; ingots of lead from sunken Roman ships are prized because they are free from contamination by thorium and uranium, but they are naturally in limited supply.
He concludes:
The list of materials in demand goes on; it seems that the resource struggle the whole world is facing has an impact on basic science research. Fortunately, the ingenuity of scientists generally finds a way around the problem, but this is one more challenge in the conduct of an experiment.
