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C. H. BeHeuKHH O PEAKHX H PACCEflHHblX PaccKa3bi o MeTajuiax MocKBa
H3AaTe^bCTBO
«MeTa J 'i J 'iyprHH»
S. I. Venetsky
Tales about Metals
Translated from the Russian by N. G. Kittell
Mir Publishers Moscow
First published 1983 Revised from the 1980 Russian edition
The Russian Alphabet and Transliteration Aa a Xx kh Kk k b B6 JIa 1 Uu ts V Bb ch Mm m Tr g sh Ulm Hh n d shch m m Aa Oo 0 " Ee e T>T> rin P Ee e blbi y Pp r zh X j k fab cc s z 33 e Tt 33 t i Mm yu IOio yy u Ah y Ha ya f
TO THE READER Mir Publishers welcome your comments on the contents, translation and design of the book. We would also be pleased to receive any suggestions you care to make about our future publications. Our address is: USSR, 129820, Moscow, 1-110, GSP, Pervy Rizhsky Pereulok, 2, Mir Publishers.
Ha ammiuCKOM H3bixe
©
M 3aaTejibCTBO «MeTajuiyprnH»,
1980
© English translation, Mir Publishers, 1983
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
About This Book Ours is an age of incredible breakthroughs in science and technology: man has blazed a trail into outer space, harnessed the energy of the atomic nucleus, built "thinking" machines and unravelled the mystery of the living cell. Humanity is moving into ever new and fascinating fields, but there is one field of activity which, while being old as the hills, is no less fascinating. This field is metallurgy, the production and working of metals and alloys. At the dawn of civilization people were familiar with only a few metals. But as ages passed and ever more new elements were discovered, the range of useful metals extended as well. In the case of some metals scientists and engineers did not take long to acknowledge and appreciate them, with others, it took years before they began to be applied. There were valid reasons for their "idleness". First, the content of many of them in the earth's crust is minute and therefore, it is extremely difficult to extract them; some have no minerals of their own and occur only as impurities in other metals (such "scattered" elements belong to the group of trace elements). Second, up to a certain period science lacked information on most metals and since those we are going to discuss were used very rarely in industry, they were called rare metals. The explosive development of technology is the hallmark of the 20th century, a time when instrument-making, chemistry, aviation, rocketry, electronics and nuclear power — all started to place orders for new materials with unique properties. This is what prompted scientists to delve deeper into the world of rare metals. A careful study of those "recluses" revealed that many of them were quite "gifted". Thus began the advent of rare metals in industry. 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 manufacture of so-called liquid seals in vacuum equipment and