The laws and principles of chemistry seem pretty set in stone. But as a chemist explains, the field is always evolving, including such fundamental principles as what is a chemical bond.
Phosphorus was first discovered by boiling down thousands of litres of urine.
Shutterstock/Lesterman
From heavy metal to lighter than air gas, these elements and others from the Periodic Table are transformed into artworks that go on display from today.
How do you return Aboriginal remains to their place of origin when you have no record of where they came from? Look to a chemical element that’s laid down in teeth as people grow up.
Random arrangement of the elements.
arleksey/Shutterstock.com
2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table. The person who typically gets credit for its creation is Dimitri Mendeleev. But there were many more chemists who should be recognized.
The periodic table of chemical elements turns 150 in 2019.
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Alongside their famous dangers, radioactive materials have many beneficial uses. With as many more predicted as have already been discovered, nuclear physicists are searching for more isotopes.
A laser beam (yellow) causes a path of red fluorescence in a rare earth crystal.
Stuart Hay, ANU
Rare earth elements aren’t actually that rare - but they certainly are useful. Erbium is used right now in the internet’s optical fibre network, and could one day be applied in quantum networks.
Illustration of hot, dense, expanding cloud of debris stripped from the neutron stars just before they collided.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab
Until the recent observation of merging neutron stars, how the heaviest elements come to be was a mystery. But their fingerprints are all over this cosmic collision.
Boron is often ignored, but it’s got a lot of important qualities.
David Ellis/Flickr
The periodic table is one of the classic images of science that is found in labs as well as on t-shirts, mugs, even set to music. But what exactly is the periodic table?