Treebeard's Stumper Answer 18 February 2000

An Elementary Scavenger Hunt

Everything in the world is made from the same 92+ chemical elements listed below. Some are commonplace, like iron and oxygen. Others are profoundly uncommon, like hafnium and yttrium. Many are unfamiliar, but they have regular uses, like lithium camera batteries. This vacation stumper is a scavenger hunt. Can you find natural or manufactured objects that contain each of the natural elements, either as a pure sample or an important ingredient? The more familiar and useful, the better! Find them, and we'll make a collection!

The Elements Listed by Atomic Number			Tom Leher's song The Elements (1960)
1 Hydrogen H 2 Helium He 3 Lithium Li 4 Beryllium Be 5 Boron B 6 Carbon C 7 Nitrogen N 8 Oxygen O 9 Fluorine F 10 Neon Ne 11 Sodium Na 12 Magnesium Mg 13 Aluminum Al 14 Silicon Si 15 Phosphorus P 16 Sulfur S 17 Chlorine Cl 18 Argon Ar 19 Potassium K 20 Calcium Ca 21 Scandium Sc 22 Titanium Ti 23 Vanadium V 24 Chromium Cr 25 Manganese Mn 26 Iron Fe 27 Cobalt Co 28 Nickel Ni 29 Copper Cu 30 Zinc Zn 31 Gallium Ga	32 Germanium Ge 33 Arsenic As 34 Selenium Se 35 Bromine Br 36 Krypton Kr 37 Rubidium Rb 38 Strontium Sr 39 Yttrium Y 40 Zirconium Zr 41 Niobium Nb 42 Molybdenum Mo 43 Technetium Tc 44 Ruthenium Ru 45 Rhodium Rh 46 Palladium Pd 47 Silver Ag 48 Cadmium Cd 49 Indium In 50 Tin Sn 51 Antimony Sb 52 Tellurium Te 53 Iodine I 54 Xenon Xe 55 Cesium Cs 56 Barium Ba 57 Lanthanum La 58 Cerium Ce 59 Praseodymium Pr 60 Neodymium Nd 61 Promethium Pm 62 Samarium Sm	63 Europium Eu 64 Gadolinium Gd 65 Terbium Tb 66 Dysprosium Dy 67 Holmium Ho 68 Erbium Er 69 Thulium Tm 70 Ytterbium Yb 71 Lutetium Lu 72 Hafnium Hf 73 Tantalum Ta 74 Wolfram W 75 Rhenium Re 76 Osmium Os 77 Iridium Ir 78 Platinum Pt 79 Gold Au 80 Mercury Hg 81 Thallium Tl 82 Lead Pb 83 Bismuth Bi 84 Polonium Po 85 Astatine At 86 Radon Rn 87 Francium Fr 88 Radium Ra 89 Actinium Ac 90 Thorium Th 91 Protactinium Pa 92 Uranium U (There's more!)		There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium, And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium, Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium (inhale) And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium. There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium, And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium. (Isn't that interesting? I knew you would. I hope you're all taking notes, because there's gonna be a short quiz next period.) There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium And phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium And manganese and mercury, molybdinum, magnesium, Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium And lead, praseodymium, platinum, plutonium, Paladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (inhale) And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium. There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium And chlorine, cobalt, carbon, copper, Tungsten, tin and sodium. These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.
There are unstable elements beyond Uranium, but they don't occur naturally on Earth. I hope you don't find them, especially number 94 (Plutonium, Pu)! Here's a printable checklist so you can keep score.				You can listen to Tom Leher if you have QuickTime installed!

Coleman lanterns for camping use silk mantles soaked in a solution of thorium, cerium, and manganese oxides. The stronger new mantles use yttrium oxide. Many elements are commonplace, but it's interesting that these unfamiliar materials are just what we need to make something as down to earth as camping lanterns. I think of the chemical elements as the universal Legos of the universe. There are all the common blocks, but sometimes we need that special piece hidden down in the bottom of the box! Our final list of elements is below.

Notes:

This was a fun scavenger hunt at school, and the Dunn Middle School kids rose to the challenge. I'm still collating our results, so this list is mostly mine. I'll update it when I can. Of course this list is not "complete". It's not meant to be. I originally found uses for 55 of the elements. With some research, we've found most of them without using generic answers like the Earth's crust or seawater, though metal alloys and special glass and semiconductors are pretty close to generic. Some of these are questionable, expect errors. The kids found that vitamin supplements and junk food labels are remarkable resources. A few jokes were irresistible.

There's a short form of this list that prints on both sides of one piece of paper on my 300 dpi laser printer, if I reduce all margins as much as possible and eliminate the usual header and footer.

There are many Web sites with info on the chemical elements, but most of them are too-technical databases. Here are a few links I found especially useful or interesting:

• Mark Winter's WebElements is a comprehensive site with much information on the chemical elements, including recognized uses, cost, and occurance. Great resource.

• The Spectrum Laboratories Periodic Table has a clickable periodic table with the full entries from the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.

• The Los Alamos National Laboratory's Periodic Table of the Elements has more info and uses.

• The Periodic Table of Poetry offers poems for many of the elements.

• The Periodic Table of Comic Books collects references to the chemical elements in comic books. I love old comics! I have most of the classic DC Metal Men comics (and lots more), so I was delighted to find this site. This is a labor of love by F. James Holler and John P. Selegue of the University of Kentucky chemistry department. I love the Web for making these obsessions public!

• In case you missed the link, be sure to listen to Tom Leher's song The Elements. It's all the elements set to music! You'll need the Quicktime player.

• The American Chemical Society (ACS) and General Chemistry Online have general chemistry info and links.

• Coleman Lanterns are part of what makes America great. They do their job. You can read about how they work. There's an interesting history of Coleman lantern mantles in the patent application for the new yttrium mantles, available from the IBM Intellectual Property Network. The original stage-lighting system involved heating a block of quicklime with a gas torch, hence "being in the limelight". The classic Welsbach mantles (1889) and the new yttrium mantles (1983) make bright gaslight possible at much lower and safer temperatures. For an interesting demo, hang a mantle from a ringstand clamp and gently heat it with a propane torch to make it glow without being consumed. All mantles contain radioactive thorium, so don't breath the dust when they (inevitably) break!

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