Boing Boing » elements

Oceans could yield new sources of rare earth elements

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:27:43 +0000

Rare earth elements aren't actually rare, but right now the vast majority of them (97%) come from a single place — China. Given how important these elements are to the making of everything from computers to cars, that gives China quite the monopoly. With that context, here's the news: Japan just found a big supply of rare earth elements in mud at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Of course, what may be good news for manufacturing is not necessarily good news for the health of oceans.

A visit inside a vault holding $315,000,000,000 in gold bricks

Mark Frauenfelder — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 18:56:59 +0000

A fascinating visit to the Bank of England bullion vault, which stores $315 billion in gold. The narrator is kind of sad because he says gold is useful for many things and it's just sitting here.

The comic book periodic table of elements

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 18:33:43 +0000

University of Kentucky chemistry professors John P. Selegue and F. James Holler are collecting comic book references to chemical elements. On their Periodic Table of Comic Books site, you can click through the standard periodic table to see pages from comic books that mention specific elements. The samples seem to be weighted pretty heavily to classic, Golden and Silver Age stuff — there's a lot of 1940s Wonder Woman and miscellaneous anthology series from the 1960s.

They don't have all the elements accounted for yet. In particular, the lanthanides and actinides — aka, those two rows at the bottom where everything ends in "ium" — are lacking comic book shout-outs. Maybe you can help!

Visit the Periodic Table of Comic Books

Thanks to Jennifer Ouellette!