Nobel Prizes | The Episodic Table of Elements

88. Radium: Several Sordid Affairs

October 18, 2021

6:00 am

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Albert Einstein, Art & Science, Cosmetics, Eben Byers, France, Frank Zappa, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Irene Joliot-Curie, Labor, Marie Curie, Mark Twain, Medicine, New Jersey, Nobel Prizes, Paul Langevin, Paul Painlevé, Pierre Curie, Radioactivity, Radium Girls, Satan, William J. Bailey, Women In Science

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Out of all the characters who encounter radium in this episode, the only one to emerge unscathed is the guy who comes face-to-face with Satan.

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36. Krypton: It’s A Metric

May 6, 2019

6:00 am

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Comics, Dmitri Mendeleev, France, Geography, International System of Units, James Clerk Maxwell, Napoleon, Nobel Prizes, Radioactivity, Space Exploration, Spectroscopy, The Cold War, William Ramsay

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Like argon, today’s noble gas coincidentally features prominently in science fiction — albeit in name only. But krypton also takes a place in the science factual story of international weights and measures.

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27. Cobalt: Mischief Managed

December 17, 2018

6:00 am

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Albert Einstein, Chien-Shiung Wu, Fallout, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Georg Brandt, Leo Szilard, Magnetism, Medicine, Mining, Mythology, Nobel Prizes, Nuclear Weapons, Parity, Radioactivity, Symmetry, Wolfgang Pauli, Women In Science, World War II

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Cobalt is a tricksy little element, which means the scientists who’ve dealt with it the most are some of the cleverest people to have ever walked the Earth.

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17. Chlorine: Too High Or Too Low, There Ain’t No In-Betweens

July 23, 2018

6:00 am

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Cholera, Dante Alighieri, DDT, Dorothy Colson, DuPont, Environmentalism, Fritz Haber, John Leal, Malaria, Mosquitoes, Nobel Prizes, Paracelsus, Paul Muller, Poisons, Public Health, Purgatory, Rachel Carson, Satan, Typhoid, Women In Science

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Chlorine is an element that causes some extreme reactions, and occasionally inspires some pretty extreme reactions in humans, too.

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