It's Still an Elemental World Trivia Quiz

Answer: Polonium

The husband and wife team in question were Pierre and Marie Curie. They discovered polonium as part of an investigation into the cause of radioactivity in uraninite, an ore then known as pitchblende. When it remained radioactive after the known radioactive elements of uranium and thorium had been removed, they realised there must be something else still there and subsequently discovered both polonium and radium.

Marie Curie (nee Sklodowska) was born in 1867 in Warsaw, the capital city of Poland. However, at both the time of her birth and her discovery of polonium, the formerly independent country was under Russian control. It is believed that naming of the new element after the country was intended to make a political point. Poland finally gained independence again in 1918 following the end of the First World War - an event Marie Curie was able to witness before her death from cancer in 1934.

Gallium and Francium are both named after France, Pierre Curie's home country. Curium, discovered in 1944, was named after both Marie and Pierre.

Answer: Copper

Copper is a highly malleable and ductile metal with excellent conductivity. Therefore it is found throughout most buildings as it is used to make electrical wiring. It is also found on top of many buildings as it is a popular roofing material, as well as being more widely used in architecture for cladding, spires, domes, guttering and downpipes. Although it might start out shiny and have a nice 'coppery' colour, it is likely to eventually become affected by verdigris - a distinctive greenish-blue covering of copper carbonate caused by oxidation when exposed to air or seawater.

Copper has been known and used by humans for thousands of years and, as a result, the early part of the Bronze Age (a period around 10,000-12,000 years ago) is often referred to as the 'Copper Age'. The Romans referred to copper as 'aes Cyprium' or 'copper alloys from Cyprus' as they obtained large quantities of it from mines in that country. The name eventually became simplified as 'cuprum' and anglicised to copper.

The incorrect options are all copper alloys: brass is copper and zinc; bronze is generally used to describe copper-tin alloys; and cupronickel is made from (as the name might suggest) copper and nickel.

Answer: Paris

The Latin name for France's capital city, Paris, is Lutetia - hence the name 'lutetium' being given to the element in question. Georges Urbain was from the city and worked as a professor at the University of Paris.

Lutetium is the last element in the lanthanide series and is sometimes considered as a member of the transition metals. It is quite rare, pretty expensive and generally not used much commercially. Applications for it do however include medical scanning (Positron Emission Tomography or PET), LED light bulbs and dating meteorites (it's got an isotope with a very long half-life).

Vienna was von Welsbach's home city. If you wanted to name an element after England's capital, London, then you'd probably come up with 'Londinium' - but that is the old Roman name for the city!

Answer: Darmstadtium

The GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research was founded in Darmstadt in 1969 and has proved to be an important location for the discovery of new chemical elements. In addition to darmstadtium, researchers there were also responsible for the discovery of bohrium (after the Danish physicist Niels Bohr), meitnerium (named for Lise Meitner), hassium (named for the German state where Darmstadt is located), roentgenium (after Wilhelm Roentgen, the discoverer of x-rays) and copernicium (for the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus).

Most of the information available about the properties of darmstadtium comes only from predictions, as the small amounts of the element that have been synthesised have a very short half life (around 10-11 seconds at best). This has restricted the amount of research possible and, along with the fact that it is highly radioactive, means that the element has no practical use.

The incorrect options are not real elements, but do include the names of various German cities.

Answer: Neutron

Neutrons are key part of the process of creating nuclear reactions, so an element that has the property of emitting neutrons is very useful to the nuclear industry, both for starting up nuclear reactors and in detection equipment used to scan fuel rods. Other uses include detection equipment for analysing the movement of groundwater, identifying the presence of water in oil wells and analysis of potential gold or silver deposits. Some isotopes of californium have stronger neutron-emitting properties than others - californium-252 is a particularly good example and probably has the widest range of practical uses. However, people working with californium have to be particularly cautious of its radioactive nature. Exposure to it can prevent the human body from producing red-blood cells and, like other radioactive elements, it can cause cancer.

The naming of californium caused some consternation in academic circles, as the names of other elements in the actinide series had been chosen to have a connection to the name of the lanthanide element directly above them on the periodic table, whereas californium was named after the place of its discovery. The lanthanide element above it, dysprosium, was named after the Greek for "hard to get at" - the scientists responsible for naming californium simply pointed out that "searchers a century ago found it difficult to get to California"...

The incorrect options are all types of elementary subatomic particles - those particles that don't consist of any other types of particle. A neutron is a composite subatomic particle, consisting of two down quarks and an up quark.

Answer: Holmium

Most holmium produced commercially around the world is extracted from monazite ore and used for a range of purposes including in lasers, colouring glass red or yellow and for generating magnetic fields. It is particularly good for the latter job as it is has the highest magnetic moment of all naturally occurring elements. Holmium would also be a handy element to have around if you were being plagued by a neutron-emitting piece of californium, as it is very good at absorbing any neutrons that might be floating about. As a result it is also sometimes used in nuclear reactors as a burnable poison - a substance capable of reducing the level of reactivity.

Holmium was named after the city of Stockholm as it was the birthplace of the man generally credited with its discovery in 1878, Per Teodor Cleve. He discovered both holmium and thulium while working with some erbium oxide.

The incorrect options are all chemical elements whose names include the first few letters of the names of the capital cities of other Scandinavian countries.

Answer: Superconductors

Superconductors are extremely useful substances in everyday life, as they can be powerful electromagnets (as used in MRI scanners and mass spectrometers) and they create very fast electronic circuitry (as used in mobile phone transmitters). They also have great potential for creating power distribution networks where electricity could be transmitted without the loss of any of the energy in the process. The big problem though is the fact that most elements need to be very cold before they become superconductive and some, such as europium, also need to be subject to very high pressures. To put this in context, 1.8 degrees Kelvin is equal to around -270 degrees Celsius or -456 degrees Fahrenheit, while 80 gigapascals equals 1,000 bar or about 14,500 psi. Clearly, this places a major limitation on the usage of superconductors!

Europium was discovered and named (after the continent of Europe, unsurprisingly) by the French scientist Eugène-Anatole Demarçay in 1890.

Answer: Dubna, a town north of Moscow in Russia

Dubna is located about 125 kilometres (80 miles) north of Moscow and is notable for being home to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, an international research centre. Scientists from the institute were credited with the first discovery of dubnium in 1968. However, like many of the synthetic elements discovered during this period, other research teams in the USA also produced dubnium independently, which led to a lengthy dispute over the right to name the new element. After several options such as nielsbohrium, hahnium and joliotium were rejected, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) finally settled on dubnium in order to honour the contribution of the institute to its discovery.

Dubnium has the atomic number 105 and is classified as a transition metal. As its known isotopes have relatively short half-lives and it has only been produced in trace amounts, the use of dubnium is restricted to experimental chemistry and it has no commercial applications.

Answer: Germanium

Germanium (not to be confused with geraniums) is used in fibre-optics, wide-angle camera lenses, thermal imaging cameras, night vision systems, semi-conductors and solar panels - so its discovery in the 19th century was a key development necessary for quite a few modern gadgets. German chemist Clemens Winkler identified its presence in a mineral called argyrodite and succeeded in isolating it in 1886. Its discovery wasn't completely unexpected though as Dmitri Mendeleev (the creator of the periodic table) had predicted the existence of an element matching germanium's properties in 1869. Mendeleev's predictions about germanium proved to be remarkably accurate - he estimated its atomic mass to within 0.05, its density to within 0.15 grams per cubic centimetre and got its colour spot on.

None of the incorrect answers are names of actual chemical elements, but they would, I suppose, be potential options if someone was looking to name new elements after some of Germany's neighbours - with the probable exception of Belgium...

Answer: Tellurium

The name tellurium comes from the Latin word tellus, meaning 'earth' or 'soil' - so although it is not named after a specific place around the world, it is effectively named after everywhere in the world (that isn't underwater at least). Tellus is also used as an alternative name for the planet Earth itself - particularly in science fiction.

Tellurium (atomic number 52) has a range of uses in the production of metal alloys and in the electronics industry. Therefore, it is quite likely that quite a few people come into contact with tellurium in their working lives, which can pose dangers as the substance is mildly toxic. The key symptom of tellurium exposure in humans is the effect known as 'tellurium breath'. It is caused by the body metabolising the element to create the compound dimethyl telluride - which smells like garlic. Tellurium was first discovered by Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein in a mine near Zlatny in Transylvania, although it is probably just a coincidence that this 'garlic'-inducing substance can be found in an area indelibly associated with vampires...

The incorrect options are all based on names given to the Earth in various mythologies (Terra - Roman, Gaia - Greek, and Jorth or Jord - Norse).