Heavy Metal Trivia Quiz

Answer: Osmium

Osmium, with atomic number 76, is the element we're looking for. It was first identified by Smithson Tennant in London in 1803. Pure osmium is a hard, shiny gray metal, with a very high melting point. But pure osmium has a tendency to oxidise to the poisonous, malodorous osmium tetroxide (OsO4), a water-soluble yellowish volatile solid. Osmium usually is found in alloys with iridium and / or platinum, or as a by-product of copper mining.
One of the typical uses for osmium was the filament in light bulbs. To resist the high temperature in the bulb, the filament used to be either tungsten or osmium, or even an alloy of these two elements. As light bulbs are gradually replaced by more efficient lamps, this use of osmium will become obsolete.
Lithium, element number 3, has a density (0.53) less than water and is named after the Greek word for stone. Xenon is a noble gas (element number 54), named after the Greek word for foreign. Niobium, element number 41, has a density of 8.4. This element was named after a Greek mythological character, a mother who lost all her fourteen children when she bragged about having given birth to so many offspring.

Answer: Platinum

Of the four elements listed here, platinum is the only noble metal. It is silvery-white, malleable and ductile. Its appearance is hard to tell from silver, and that's the reason why Antonio de Ulloa (who first isolated the metal in 1735) named it "little silver" in Spanish.
Platinum is very rare, and over 75% of the production comes from one single country (South Africa). Russia, Canada and (on a very limited scale) the USA also have some platinum reserves.
When miners dig for copper and nickel, they might find some platinum too.
A little side note on platinum jewellery: platinum can cause allergic reactions such as skin rash.
Tellurium (element 52) has a density of 6.24. This metalloid is frequently used in metallurgic applications.
Selenium (element 34) has a density of 4.79. It is used (among other purposes) in the glass industry and in solar cells.
Magnesium (element 12) has a density of 1.74 and it is used for (among others) aluminium alloys and for fireworks.

Answer: Rhenium

Rhenium (atomic number 75) is the metal we're looking for in this question. You might not be familiar with it, for the most common application (alloys used for parts exposed to high temperatures, such as jet engines or nuclear reactors) needs only a minor percentage of rhenium.
3 to 6 % rhenium are sufficient to give these parts the necessary resistance to temperature differences.
Rhenium (named after the river Rhine) was only discovered in 1925, although Mendeleev predicted the existence and some of the chemical properties of this element already in 1869. Its appearance is a silvery-white powder, and it can be packed into solid lumps (by applying heavy pressure and high temperature in a vacuum).
The melting point of rhenium (when it would become liquid) is not the highest of all naturally occurring elements: there it would be preceded by tungsten and carbon. But tungsten and carbon evaporate at a slightly lower temperature than Rhenium.
All the red herrings are gaseous elements, so they have evaporated below room temperature. Fluorine has a boiling point of 53.53 K, nitrogen boils at 77.36 K, and argon at 83.80 K. By the way: you can easily find on the internet the formula to substitute temperatures in Kelvin (K) by degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit.

Answer: Gold

Although all these elements have a yellowish hue, gold is the only heavy metal listed here.
Gold does not need any introduction: it has been a rare collector's item since ancient times. As it is chemically very inactive (so it won't corrode or dissolve in contact with most other substances), monetary applications and the use in precious jewellery were self-evident.
One surprising application of gold is based upon its malleability and its reflection of infrared radiation. These two properties combined, led to the use of gold in the visor of astronaut's helmets.
Gold has atomic number 79. Only one isotope is stable, whereas more than thirty isotopes are more or less radioactive.
Copper (element 29) is also a yellowish metal, but its density is 8.96 - not even half the density of gold.
Sulphur (element 16) is a yellowish non-metal, with a density of 2.07.
Chlorine (element 17) is a yellowish - greenish gas.

Answer: Uranium

The spouses Pierre and Marie Curie, and their friend Becquerel, were active in Paris investigating radioactivity since about 1895. Their research involved elements such as radium, uranium, and plutonium. Pierre and Marie Curie also discovered polonium, while later researchers named curium after them.
Pierre and Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. Marie would repeat this success a few years later, as the sole winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911. By the way, Marie's daughter Irene would also win a Nobel Prize for Chemistry (in 1935).
Uranium (element 92) is one of the best known radioactive elements. Uranium and plutonium (an element synthetically made out of uranium) are used in most nuclear fission reactors. Alas, uranium was also used to make the A-bomb, and it is used to harden high-penetration projectiles.
The density of uranium is about 19.07, so slightly less than gold. To put this in more concrete terms: if you were to fill up a bucket of 1 litre with uranium, the amassed uranium would weigh 19.07 kilo. If you were to fill up the same bucket with pure water, the weight would be 1 kilo (at a temperature of 4° C).
Calcium (element 20) has a density of 1.55. Silicon (element 14) has a density of 2.33. And krypton (element 36) is a noble gas.

Answer: Tantalum

Coltan contains niobium (formerly known as columbium) and tantalum. If you happen to know the former name of niobium, the name Coltan speaks for itself.
Tantalum (element 73) is a greyish - bluish, shiny solid, named after the character of Tantalus from Greek myth (the chap who was convicted to suffer eternally hunger and thirst).
Both tantalum and niobium are used in electronic circuits, such as needed mobile phones, DVD recorders, game consoles, et cetera.
Tantalum fits in the theme to this quiz, as its density reaches 16.69. Niobium, on the other hand, would not qualify for this quiz: its density is 8.57, and this quiz deals with metals with a density exceeding 10.
The red herrings are other elements named after characters from Greek myth. Titanium (element 22, a metal with a density of 4.51) refers to the deities overthrown by Zeus and the other Olympians. Palladium (element 46, a heavy metal with a density of 12.02) was named after an alternative name for the goddess Athena. And europium (element 63, a metal with a density of 5.26) was named after Europa, one of the numerous characters seduced by Zeus.

Answer: Mercury

Mercury (element 80) is the heavy metal we were looking for. It is indeed liquid at a temperature between -38.83 °C and +356.83 °C. In this temperature range, mercury will act quite peculiarly: it will tend to form little spherical droplets. If you ever saw a mercury thermometer breaking, you certainly know what I'm talking about.
Mercury has a lustrous greyish appearance. The liquidity and the appearance have contributed to the use of mercury in thermometers for most common appliances (for instance measuring the temperature in a refrigerator or in a cooking furnace, or as a thermometer to measure fever).
Other uses for mercury are dentistry, batteries or insecticides.
Bromine (element 35) is also liquid at room temperature, but it is not metallic.
Caesium (element 55) and gallium (element 31) have melting points just above room temperature. Caesium melts at 28 ° C, and gallium at about 30 ° C.

Answer: Technetium

Element number 43 was quite elusive. Many scientists thought to have discovered this element and gave it various names, but the true discovery occurred only in 1936. Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segré produced two isotopes of technetium at the University of Palermo. Since it was the first element synthetically produced, scientists have adopted the name technetium (which I would translate from Greek as "created by craft").
Technetium does occur naturally on Earth, as a by-product of radioactive decay of uranium. But the natural technetium is extremely rare. Some star clusters have been discovered which would contain a lot of technetium (according to spectrographic analysis).
The solid technetium is a silvery gray powder. All isotopes are radioactive, but some have a half-life estimated at some million years. Its density is 11.5.
The red herrings here are all transuranic elements, so with element numbers exceeding 92. Berkelium is element number 97, mendelevium is element number 101 and darmstadtium is element number 110.

Answer: Lead

"With leaden step" you may have found the correct answer to this question. It is lead we're looking for. Often puns have been made about a kilo of feathers weighing exactly as much as a kilo of lead, but I'd prefer the feathers falling on my toe.
Lead is element number 82, a bluish-white solid that rapidly becomes dull gray if exposed to air. Some of the most common applications are ballast for scuba divers, batteries in automobiles, or protection against radioactivity.
Barium is named after the Greek word for "heavy", but its density is only 3.5 - so it won't qualify for the theme to this quiz.
Tungsten is named after the Old-Norse for "heavy stone". It is one of the most heavy metals, with a density of 19.3. I seriously doubt that there be any proverbs using the word "tungsten", as it is a quite rare element.
Cadmium (element 48) is one of the metals frequently named in articles about soil pollution by heavy metals. However, as its density is 8.65, it would not qualify for the theme to this quiz.

Answer: Silver

The category of "precious" metals is something that varies in time. Up till the mid of the nineteenth century, aluminium was esteemed precious because of the difficulty extracting the element from its ore.
Noble metals, on the other hand, are the metals quite resistant to corrosion or oxidation.
The noble metals include gold , silver, platinum, palladium, ruthenium, rhodium, osmium, iridium, and according to some sources also mercury or rhenium. Apart from mercury and rhenium, the same list also can be found as a list of precious metals.
Out of the eight elements that are listed as noble and precious metals, silver is the lightest at a density of 10.3. In order of ascending density, we find palladium (density 12), ruthenium (12.2), rhodium (12.4), gold (19.3), platinum (21.4), iridium (22.5) and osmium (22.6).
Silver has been used in coins and in jewellery since ancient times. The use in (analogue) photography is typical of this element: none of the other precious noble metals are used as such.
The red herrings are some random elements named after geographical places. Polonium was named after the country Poland, erbium is one of four elements named after the Swedish city of Ytterby, and lutetium thanks its name to the ancient Roman name of the French capital Paris.