Elements Named for Places Trivia Quiz

Answer: Polonium

Marie and Pierre Curie were working with uranium ore when they discovered Polonium. They gave their discovery a tentative name of radium F, but later named it for Marie's homeland of Poland. Whilst Polonium is more radioactive than radium, it has a half-life of just over 138 days and decays to a stable isotope. It is a rare element partly because of its rapid decay rate but also because of the very small amount that is present, about 0.1mg per metric ton of uranium ore. It is intensely radioactive and highly toxic, so requires specialized equipment for handling.

Phoenix Rising Red crew member leith90 donned a hazmat suit and chemical-resistant gloves to mine this question for the quiz.

Answer: Sweden

The mine had been worked for many years, mainly producung feldspar. The elements, yttrium (Y), terbium (Tb), erbium (Er), and ytterbium (Yb) were all discovered in the same mine, in the 19th century. Later, four more elements were sourced from Ytterby Mine - scandium (Sc) ,holmium (Ho), thulium (Tm), and gadolinium (Gd). The township is not far from Stockholm, the nation's capital. Many of the street names are named after elements, so a periodic table may be handier than a map!

This question was formulated into the quiz by ozzz2002, who was labelled as 'the mad scientist' at school.

Answer: True

Francium (Fr) was discovered in 1939 in France (hence its name) by Marguerite Perey, who had been a student of Marie Curie. Second only to astatine, only 20-30g exists at any one time, mainly found in thorium and uranium ores. It has a half life of 22 minutes and can be produced synthetically. As an alkali metal it is considered to display the same chemical properties as caesium. but it is rarely tested because there is so little of it.

Phoenix Rising's Red Crew member smpdit frankly boggles at the dedication of people in the name of science.

Answer: 21

Scandium has, for a long time, been classed as a rare-earth element, however it is quite a common element. Despite being found in most uranium compounds, it is only mined in volume in a few collieries around the world. Lars Frederick Nilson and his team detected the element, which Dmitri Mendeleev had originally suspected to exist and called ekaboron. It is often made into an aluminium-scandium alloy that is as strong as titanium and as light as aluminium. These unique properties make it ideal for use in the aerospace industry, baseball bats, tent poles and some firearms. Nilson was Swedish, and the element's name is a nod to his Scandinavian origins.

Phoenix Rising's Red Crew member leith90 dug around and managed to extract this question for the quiz.

Answer: Germanium

Dmitri Mendeleev's periodic table of 1869 grouped 63 elements based on atomic weight. Mendeleev analyzed the properties of elements and developed the periodic law from which he also predicted the existence of four elements that he called eka-boron, eka-aluminium, eka-manganese and eka-silicon. These elements turned out to be scandium (Sc, 21), gallium (Ga, 31), technetium (Tc, 43) and germanium (Ge, 32). Germanium was discovered by Clemens Winkler upon analysis of the mineral argyrodite which also contains silver and sulfur and has the formula Ag8GeS6. The element germanium is commonly used as a semiconductor in electronic devices such as transistors. Winkler named it after his country of origin.

Predictably, this question was elementally placed into the quiz by Phoenix Rising teammate and Red Crew member Triviaballer as part of the team's 2022 World Tour.

Answer: Berkelium

Berkelium was discovered in Berkeley, California at the University of California, Berkeley in 1949. Californium was also discovered at UC Berkeley but in 1950. Both elements are grouped into the transuranic element series as they are synthetic and higher than uranium's atomic number 92. Both are unstable and radioactive elements.

Jaknginger from Phoenix Rising's Red Crew synthesized this question into the team quiz.

Answer: Cyclotron

The physicists Stanley Gerald Thompson, Kenneth Street Jr., Albert Ghiorso and Glenn T. Seaborg synthesized Californium in February 1950 with the assistance of the 60-inch diameter cyclotron located at the University of California at Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. The scientists used the cyclotron to cause an interaction of curium and alpha particles to create Californium.

At the same university, between 1929 and 1930, Ernest O. Lawrence invented the cyclotron which accelerates charged particles outwards from the center of a vacuum chamber in a spiral trajectory. The cyclotron was the world's first cyclical particle accelerator and its invention enabled Lawrence to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939.

This question was cycled into the quiz by Phoenix Rising teammate and Red Crew member Triviaballer as part of the team's 2022 World Tour.

Answer: Paris

Lutetium (Lu) is the last element of the lanthanide series and is a silver-white metal. Three scientists independently discovered it in 1907, in the mineral ytterbia, present as an impurity. Georges Urbain, a French scientist, publishing slightly before Baron Carl Auer von Weisbach (an Austrian Mineralogist) and Charles James (an American chemist). Urbain was the person to give it the name Lutecium, later changed to Lutetium, from the Latin name for the Gallo-Roman town of Lutetia, which became the city of Paris, France.

Red Crew's smpdit thinks Lutetia is slightly more romantic sounding than Paris.

Answer: Helmholz Centre for Heavy Ion Research

Darmstadtium, atomic number 110, was synthesized by bombarding lead with nickel nuclei in a heavy ion accelerator. Per Mendeleev's classifications, it could also be called eka-platinum. Russian and American teams were also attempting to synthesize the element, but the German team won out, detecting it three times in November of 1994. A fourth incident was discarded related to a scientific scandal involving data fabricated by a Bulgarian physicist, Victor Ninov.

Player pusdoc bombarded the quiz with this question during the Phoenix Rising Global Tour 2022

Answer: Hafnium

Hafnium was identified in 1923 by Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy while working in Niels Bohr's laboratory in Copenhagen. Coster was Dutch and de Hevesy Hungarian. Coster assisted in Lise Meitner's escape from Nazi held Austria, and de Hevesy later won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Hafnium is used in filaments, electrodes and some semiconductors.
Player pusdoc carried this question across the border during Phoenix Rising's Global Tour