Lasers – The Episodic Table of Elements

39. Yttrium: It’s A Quiet Village

June 17, 2019

6:00 am

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Carl Axel Arrhenius, Carl Mosander, Electricity, Etymology, Friedrich Wohler, Japan, Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac, Johan Gadolin, Lasers, Michael Collins, Mining, Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Space Exploration, Superconductors, Sweden, Television, Ultracold Experiments, Ytterby

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Welcome to the sleepy Swedish town of Ytterby. I hope you like it, because we’ll be spending an awful lot of time there later in the series.

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37. Rubidium: What’s Cooler Than Being Cool?

May 20, 2019

6:00 am

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Bose-Einstein Condensate, Etymology, Gustav Kirchhoff, Laboratory Equipment, Lasers, Robert Bunsen, Satyendra Nath Bose, Spectroscopy, States Of Matter, Thermodynamics, Ultracold Experiments

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Rubidium is more explosive than the alkali metals above it on the table, but it’s much more interesting when it’s standing almost perfectly still.

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31. Gallium: The Wet Bandits

February 11, 2019

6:00 am

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Crime, Dmitri Mendeleev, Electronics, Etymology, France, Lasers, Neutrinos, Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, Russia, Wetting

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Meet one of the periodic table’s lesser-known liquid metals — and beware some dangerous competition from a few felonious element collectors.

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18. Argon: More Than Meets The Eye

August 6, 2018

6:00 am

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Declaration of Independence, Glass, Illumination, Lasers, Oxidation, Preservation, Science Fiction, Surgery, Washington DC, Weaponry

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Today’s element gets called “lazy,” but that’s actually a terrible misnomer.

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