Discoveries of Elements Trivia Quiz

Answer: Urine

The process Brand used to collect phosphorus involved heating, evaporating, and filtering urine. Since large numbers of phosphates are dissolved in normal metabolic processes, the element is abundant in urine. Brand believed he had discovered the Philosopher's Stone that could turn metals into gold, and he tried to keep the discovery of phosphorus a secret. Since the substance appeared to glow in the dark, the word phosphorus, derived from Greek terms meaning 'light carrier', was given to the newly discovered element.

Answer: Copper

Niccolite, or nickel arsenide, has a copper-colored appearance. The word nickel comes from the name of a mischievous German sprite, in reference to the fact that cupronickel (copper-nickel) ores stubbornly resisted being refined into copper due to the nickel components. Kupfernickel, the German term from which cupronickel ore gets its name, has a meaning of 'copper goblin' or 'copper demon'.

Answer: Oxygen

During his experiments, Sendivogius recognized that this substance, later discovered to be the element oxygen, was released by heating saltpeter (potassium nitrate). Joseph Priestley, among others, was able to produce oxygen by heating mercuric oxide (HgO). The name oxygen, derived from the Greek word 'oxys' (acid) was coined by the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who mistakenly believed that oxygen was required to form all acids (although Lavoisier did contribute to the discovery of oxygen by understanding how combustion works).

Oxygen is the most abundant chemical element in the Earth's biosphere (the regions occupied by living organisms). After hydrogen and helium, it is the third most abundant element in the universe.

Answer: Nitrogen

In his doctorate thesis at the University of Edinburgh, Daniel Rutherford deduced that nitrogen is an element. Nitrogen gas had been obtained by Henry Cavendish and Joseph Priestley in the 1760s in experiments in which they removed oxygen from the air.

They both noticed that a lighted candle would be extinguished by nitrogen, and that a mouse breathing it would die. Approximately 78% of the Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen, and only 21% is oxygen.

Answer: Chlorine

Heating hydrochloric acid (HCl) with a naturally occurring mineral, pyrolusite, enabled Scheele to produce chlorine for the first time in Sweden in 1774. More than 30 years later, in 1808, a Cornish chemist named Humphry Davy investigated this substance and concluded that it was an element. Scheele was involved in the discoveries of oxygen, barium, manganese, molybdenum, and tungsten from 1771-1781. Isaac Asimov gave Scheele the nickname "hard-luck Scheele", since he made so many elemental discoveries before others who are given credit.

Answer: Osmium and Iridium

Dissolving crude platinum in dilute aqua regia (a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids) left behind a residue that Tennant was able to treat with alkalis and acids to separate into two distinct, new elements: osmium and iridium. Iridium (from Latin for rainbow) was so named because its salts were colorful, and osmium (from Greek for smell) was named for its strong odor. Both elements are extremely resistant to corrosion, but rare and not widely used. Iridium, having a high melting point and being one of the most corrosion-resistant (if not the most corrosion-resistant) materials known, is often used as the contact point in spark plugs.

Answer: Sodium and Potassium

Both sodium and potassium had been used for centuries in compounds such as soda (Na2CO3) and saltpeter (KNO3) for things such as preservatives and gunpowder, but their composition was debated and uncertain until Davy conducted his electrolysis experiments with sufficiently strong electric currents. Both elements are essential to life and are amongst the most common elements found on Earth. Davy went on to discover calcium in 1808 by electrolysis of quicklime. Mr. Davy ended up contributing to the discoveries of magnesium, barium, strontium, and boron in addition to these three that electrolysis helped him separate.

Answer: Iodine

Bernard Courtois was born to a manufacturer of saltpeter. Saltpeter was in high demand in Courtois' time thanks to the Napoleonic Wars, and seaweed collected from French coasts was used in the process of producing saltpeter. A mistake of adding too much sulfuric acid is what truly led to Courtois' discovery of iodine - he noticed a cloud of purple vapor that crystallized on cold surfaces. Iodine comes from Greek 'iodes' (violet-colored).

It is an essential element for humans, and small amounts are added to table salt to avoid deficiencies and concomitant thyroid problems.

Answer: Helium

The sun is the key clue here, as helium was named for the fact that it was first detected in the sun's corona. The American geochemist William Francis Hillebrand had actually isolated helium prior to Ramsay, Cleve, and Langlet, noticing unusual spectral lines while testing another mineral sample, but he attributed the lines to nitrogen.

Helium has many uses, including in medical scanning equipment, as a cooling medium for the Large Hadron Collider and some satellite instruments, and as protection in fiber optics and semiconductors.

Answer: Argon

Argon is the third most abundant element in the atmosphere of Earth, after nitrogen and oxygen, comprising almost 1% of the air we breathe. Argon, etymologically, comes from Greek for 'idle' or 'lazy', in reference to its chemical inactivity. More than 100 years before Rayleigh and Ramsey discovered argon was a distinct element, Henry Cavendish had isolated the gas and noted that about 1% of air would not react even under extreme conditions - that 1% was argon.

The discovery of argon was due to an effort to explain why the density of nitrogen extracted from the air was different from the density obtained by the decomposition of ammonia.