It's an Elemental World Trivia Quiz

Answer: Francium

Although the existence of the element that later came to be known as francium had been the subject of 19th century theories, it wasn't until 1939 that it was formally discovered. It was the last element to be first discovered in nature, rather than synthesised in a laboratory. However, a science laboratory is really the only place where you would be likely to see any francium as it is a fast-decaying element which quickly turns itself into astatine, radon and radium. The only isotope that is found naturally - francium-223 - forms (in trace amounts) in uranium and thorium ores and has a half-life of just 22 minutes.

Marguerite Perey was a French physicist who trained under Marie Curie. She discovered francium (initially named eka-caesium or actinium-K) in 1939 while working at the Curie Institute in Paris and later went on to work at the University of Strasbourg. She died of cancer in 1975 (the same fate suffered by Curie) after years of working with radioactive substances. Ironically, one of the few applications of francium that have been investigated over the years was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to use it in cancer detection techniques.

Answer: Transition metals

Hassium is an extremely short-lived radioactive element that has only been produced within laboratory experiments. The term 'transition metals' can be used to refer to any element in groups 3 to 12 of the periodic table (the 'd-block'). Hassium is believed to be the heaviest known element of group 8, but many of its properties have not been observed and its appearance, atomic structure and chemical or physical properties are mostly predicted from theory.

The discovery of hassium was the subject of some international argument as a Russian team from the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna had conducted experiments on element 108 in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However, a joint inquiry by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) found in favour of the German claim. As the right to name any new element traditionally belongs to its official discoverer, the element was subsequently named after the German state in which the city of Darmstadt is located.

Answer: Americium

Americium is a member of the actinide series of the periodic table, which appears in row (period) 7 of the table, directly below the lanthanide series. The lanthanide element that appears directly above americium in the table is europium - hence the reason for naming americium after the continent of its discovery. (Technically, the Americas are sometimes referred to as one single continent and sometimes as two separate ones: North America and South America.)

The isotope generally found in smoke detectors is americium-241, which is radioactive and has a half life of around 470 years. Luckily you only need a very small amount of it to successfully detect smoke - 0.28 of a microgram (a microgram being equivalent to one-billionth of a kilogram) - so there is no health risk associated with having these devices in your home. In fact, not having one is probably a much greater danger to your life given the number of house fires that occur around the world each year.

Answer: Silvery-white metallic appearance

Scandinavia is a term used for the three countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden - Scandium was discovered by a Swedish scientist, Lars Fredrik Nilson, in 1879. Nilson extracted scandium oxide from euxenite and gadolinite, the silvery-white metallic version of scandium was not produced until 1937.

A major use of scandium since 1960 has been in an aluminium-scandium alloy, which was commonly used in range of aerospace components, notably in various Russian military aircraft such as the MiG-21 and MiG-29. Scandium alloys have also found their way into firearm components, sports equipment (including the lacrosse sticks), dental lasers and white-light producing lamps used by the TV and film industry.

Answer: Strontium

Group 2 of the periodic table consists of the alkaline earth metals: beryllium, magnesium, calcium, strontium, barium and radium. All of these, with the exception of beryllium (the lightest) react with water - with the heavier elements reacting much more vigorously than the lighter ones.

Strontium is one of the most abundant elements on Earth (estimated to be ranked approximately 15th out of around 120 identified elements) and was first identified by William Cruickshank in 1787 and first isolated by Sir Humphry Davy in 1808. A major use for strontium in the 19th century was in the strontian process for extracting sugar from sugar beet, while in the 20th century the majority of strontium ended up in cathode ray tube television sets. The key use of the 21st century may be still to be discovered, but known uses include creating red fireworks, cancer treatments and toothpaste for sensitive teeth.

The village of Strontian is in the Lochaber area of the Scottish Highlands, on the shore of Loch Sunart. The ores in which strontium was first discovered were found in mines near the village in the late 18th century.

Answer: Ruthenium

Ruthenium is not named after someone called Ruth, but comes from Ruthenia - the Latin name for Russia (Larisi, Urusi and Oroszország are the Haitian Creole, Swahili and Hungarian words for Russia respectively). It is one of six transition metals that are included in the platinum-group of metals - that are classed are precious metals - along with platinum (obviously), rhodium, palladium, osmium and iridium. However, don't rush out to your local jewellery store in search of a nice ruthenium ring as it doesn't have any commercial applications in the jewellery industry. In fact you'd be more likely to find it in small quantities in electrical equipment (it's used to make electrical contacts) or on the nib of a fountain pen.

Ruthenium, which has the atomic number 44, was first discovered by the Baltic German/Russian scientist, Karl Ernst Claus in 1844. He was born in what is now the city of Tartu in Estonia in 1796, however at that time it was a part of the Russian Empire with a large ethnically German population. He was awarded the Demidov Prize (a Russian national scientific prize) for his work on ruthenium in 1846.

Answer: 3,500 ⁰C (6,332 ⁰F)

The melting point of rhenium is at an amazing 3,186 ⁰C (5,767 ⁰F), the third highest of all elements, beaten only by tungsten and carbon. Its boiling point of 5,596 ⁰C (10,105 ⁰F) is the highest of all the known elements. Therefore it would still be stubbornly solid at both 500 ⁰C (932 ⁰F) and 2,000 ⁰C (3,632 ⁰F) but would have become a gas by the time the temperature around it rose to 6,000 ⁰C (10,832 ⁰F).

These properties of rhenium mean that it is a good metal for use in high-temperature environments. It is commonly alloyed with nickel for use in military jet engines as well as being used in electrical contacts, thermocouples and filaments. Some radioactive isotopes of rhenium are also used in the treatment of cancer. It was discovered in 1925 by a team of German scientists, which probably explains why it was named after a river that flows through Germany, forming part of that country's borders with both France and Switzerland.

Answer: Magnesium

While all of the answer options are important minerals for the human body, magnesium is the metal that has the atomic number 12. Its name comes from Magnesia, the area of Greece that now falls within the Thessaly region and has its capital at Volos.

Although magnesium is a shiny grey metal, it is found in small quantities in the human body. In the UK it is recommended that adults consume around 300 mg of magnesium daily since magnesium deficiency is associated with a range of conditions including diabetes mellitus and high blood pressure. Foods that are rich in magnesium include spinach, brown rice and wholegrain breads as well as fish, meat and dairy products. More fundamentally, magnesium (in the form of magnesium ions) is needed in both the nucleic acids that make up our basic DNA and for the activity of hundreds of enzymes in the body.

Answer: Zirconium

The existence of an element with the atomic number 72 had been predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev in the 1870s, but it remained missing from his periodic table until it was identified fifty years later in some zirconium ore by Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy of the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. The element was duly named hafnium, based on the Latin name for the city.

As well as being commonly found together in the same ore, hafnium and zirconium have very similar chemical properties. They look very similar to the naked eye (although to be fair many metals look much the same), have the same number of valence electrons and belong to the same group of the periodic table. They are hard to separate from each other due to their chemical similarities. However, it is worth the effort as the presence of hafnium severely reduces zirconium's usefulness to the nuclear industry - plus as a bonus the process yields the majority of the world's supply of hafnium.

Answer: Yttrium

Although all four elements are referred to as a rare earth elements, only erbium, terbium and ytterbium are members of the lanthanide series. They were all eventually identified from a mineral called ytterbite (or gadolinite) that was found in a mine near the village in the late 18th century. The village is located on the small island of Resarö in the Stockholm archipelago.

Yttrium (identified in 1794) was the first of the four to be identified and has many practical applications including red phosphors for cathode ray tube televisions, red LEDs, lasers and a variety of electrical components. Erbium (found in 1842) is often used a pink colourant, in medical equipment and in the nuclear industry; terbium (also found in 1842) makes green phosphors; and ytterbium (discovered in 1878) is a source of gamma rays and is used in atomic clocks.