Not So Elementary Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1780s

Originally detected (in the form of its oxide) by the German Martin Klaproth in 1789, and named for the recently discovered planet Uranus, the metal was first isolated in 1841 by Frenchman Eugene Peligot. Its radioactive properties were not discovered until 1896, by Henri Becquerel.

Answer: Boron

Boron, element no 5, is a semi-metallic solid that has to be heated to 3660 degrees C before it will boil! (Compare the Sun's surface temperature of about 6000 C.)
The other three are all "noble" gases - radon being the radioactive one causing concern among environmentalists. Krypton, in spite of having a similar name to Kryptonite (the only substance to which Superman is vulnerable), is indeed a gas, not a solid.

Answer: Fluorine

Noble gases argon and xenon were obtained by William Ramsay between 1894 and 1898, through fractional distillation of liquid air. Chlorine was first discovered by Carl Scheele as far back as 1774 (and called by him "oxymuriatic acid"! - it was only a generation later that Humphry Davy showed it to be an element, and gave it its present name).
Fluorine is one of the most reactive and downright dangerous substances there is, and proved incredibly difficult to obtain in elemental form. Moissan's death at just 54 is believed by many to have been due to its poisonous effects.

Answer: Phosphorus

Phosphorus was first discovered by Hennig Brand in Hamburg in 1669.
The others all came later: cobalt in 1739, by the Swedish scientist Georg Brandt; hydrogen in 1766, by Henry Cavendish; while sodium had to wait till 1808 for Humphry Davy and his newly invented electrolysis techniques.

Answer: Ytterby

The quarry at Ytterby was the original source of the ore gadolinite, named for the Finnish chemist Johan Gadolin who first analysed it. Over the next few decades it was found to contain more and more different metal oxides, and the names given to the metals became less and less imaginative.

They included ytterbium, yttrium, terbium and erbium, all derived from the name of the quarry. Still another was christened gadolinium, after the ore itself.

Answer: Samarium

Gadolinium you now already know about from Q5.
Samarium has nothing to do with the region of ancient Judaea whence came the famously helpful man in the Bible story. The name derives from the mineral samarskite in which it was first detected, and which itself was named after a Russian mining engineer called Samarski.

Answer: Germanium

This discovery was one of the first major vindications of Mendeleyev's periodic table. He'd used it to predict the existence of certain elements, unknown at the time, based on the patterns he'd already identified among the properties of known ones. One of the gaps in his table indicated the existence of a substance with properties rather like those of silicon, but with a higher atomic weight. Mendeleyev provisionally named it eka-silicon, but its present name comes from the nationality of its discoverer.

Answer: Selenium

Selenium gets its name from the original Greek moon goddess Selene, who in later times was largely supplanted by and identified with the more powerful Artemis (the Roman Diana). A key component in photocopiers used to be the selenium drum that picked up the image for eventual printing-out, but this technology is now being superseded by faster and more accurate digital copiers.

Answer: Strontium

The mineral strontianite was first found in a lead mine near the village of Strontian, late in the 18th century. Who should get credit for first discovering the element seems to be in some dispute, but there's no doubt that Humphry Davy was the first to isolate it - yet another triumph for electrolysis.

Answer: Antimony

Antimony on its own is brittle and of little practical use, but when mixed with lead and traces of other metals, the result is an alloy much more durable than either metal alone. The name is from the Greek anti (opposite, against) + monos (one, unity) - it was always found in combination with other metals, never by itself.