Chemical Grab Bags Trivia Quiz

Answer: Dysprosium

Lanthanides, also known as rare earths, are a group of fourteen metals that have very similar chemical properties. They have atomic numbers from 58 to 71. Dysprosium is element 66. It has some applications in nuclear technology because it is a strong neutron absorber and it can also be used in alloys to create some exceptionally strong magnets, a use that may become important in the improvement of electrical cars.

Answer: Sulfur

Of the mentioned four elements, only sulfur is a nonmetal, belonging to group 16, the same as oxygen. It is a very common element and also a vital one for life as two amino acids each contain a sulfur atom playing a crucial role in protein folding. In its most common pure state, sulfur forms characteristic yellow crystals made up of ring-shaped S8 molecules.

Answer: Krypton

Like all noble gases, excited Krypton can return to its base state by emitting monochromatic light, a property used in fluorescent lamps and lasers. The wavelength of one specific, strong and well-defined spectral line of Krypton was used to define the meter from 1960 to 1983, when that definition was superseded by one based on the speed of light in a vacuum.

Answer: Beryllium

Beryllium is the lightest of the alkaline earth metals and unusually rare for its low atomic number both on a terrestrial and cosmic scale. This rarity is caused by the unusual stability of the helium nucleus (alpha particle) which results in Beryllium-8 (an isotope with equal numbers of protons and neutrons, representing a configuration that should normally be very stable in light elements and make up the majority of the element in nature) being extremely radioactive with a half-life of only 67 attoseconds (6.7 x 10^-17 seconds).

Answer: Lead

Even though lead is known for its relatively low melting point, it is actually solid until just above 300°C. Many alloys of lead, however, especially with tin, melt at lower temperatures, a property that was widely exploited until the adverse health effects of even low level lead exposure became known. Sodium melts at 98°C, just below the boiling point of water and the other two elements mentioned are, of course, gases at room temperature.

Answer: Hydrogen

Anyone who has ever heard about the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 of course knows of the extreme risk caused by hydrogen's flammability. The element has quite a wide range for explosive mixtures - any hydrogen/air mixture with 4 to 74 percent of hydrogen by volume can explode.

Some finely powdered metals actually do relatively easily ignite and possibly even explode in air, however none of the mentioned three does this.

Answer: Flerovium

None of these four metals is remotely common in nature, with gold actually being the most common of them. Rhodium is about five times as rare and francium only ever exists in minuscule trace amounts - it is generated as part of the radioactive decay chain of uranium, but with its half-life of only 22 minutes, it does itself decay further before any significant amounts can accumulate. Flerovium however, is a synthetic super-heavy element having the atomic number of 114.

Theoretical predictions indicate that Flerovium-298 might be relatively stable for its extreme atomic number, however, creating this heavy isotope with its high neutron to proton rate has so far proven to be entirely impossible.

Answer: Phosphorus

Next to carbon, phosphorus is probably the element with the most widely known allotropes. The element belongs to the same group as nitrogen and arsenic and its white form (which is actually most often seen as a pale greenish yellow color) is well known for its ability to glow in the dark, actually a result of the reaction with atmospheric oxygen.

The red, violet and black allotropes are all much more stable and safe to handle. An exotic blue allotrope exists as well.

Answer: Bismuth

Bismuth was, for a long time, considered the heaviest stable element in existence, but in 2003 it was shown to be radioactive, with its longest-lived isotope, bismuth-209, having a half-life of over 10^19 years - roughly a billion times the age of the universe.

It is significant less hazardous than lead and has supplanted it in some applications, as well as possessing pharmaceutical uses, especially in treating some gastric conditions (stomach upsets).

Answer: Carbon

Catenation is the ability of an element to form long chains. While several elements do have this ability to a limited extent, carbon chains are stable at any length, even to the hundreds and thousands of atoms. This makes carbon the basis for more compounds than any other element although technically, since almost all organic compounds contain both carbon and hydrogen, hydrogen does have slightly more compounds.

In fact, if you want to see some really long carbon chains, just look at a polyethylene plastic bag - the chains in that can reach several hundred thousand atoms.