Natural History Magazine

nature.net

March 2004

It’s Elemental

By Robert Anderson

Dwindling fossil fuels, declining biodiversity, overtaxed freshwater supplies—what’s next? Well, what about the reserves of the chemical elements, the basic building blocks of matter? Is there enough chromium, cobalt, helium, and manganese—not to mention erbium, europium, and gadolinium—on the planet to last indefinitely? Could future shortages stop technological progress in its tracks?

One way—perhaps the best way—to begin to appreciate the rarity of some of the so-called naturally occurring elements is to collect all ninety-two of them, in as pure a form as possible. Or—next best thing—you can visit Theodore W. Gray’s Web site. Gray’s pursuit of the elements is wonderfully obsessive, and his wooden periodic table is a work of art.

Don’t miss his extensive comments on sample collecting (at the top of his home page, click on “samples”). And under “Events,” click on “museum displays” to view and read about the first commercially produced periodic table Gray collaborated on, now installed at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.

To peruse individual elements, scroll down Gray’s home page and click on one of the labeled blocks in the image of his custom-built table. You’ll find a comprehensive explanation of that element, as well as additional Web links (see the list at the right of each page, titled “Compare at other websites”) for further information on other excellent chemistry Web sites.

Click the “Minerals” entry in any element’s “Compare” list, for instance, and you’ll be transferred to the largest mineralogy database on the Internet, specifically to a page with a catalog of the minerals that contain atoms of that element. If you then click on any of the minerals in the list, you’ll be taken to a page with extensive mineralogical data.

Among the other good resources in the “Compare” list is the Web-Elements Periodic Table). Run by Mark Winter, a chemist at the University of Sheffield, England, it is available in both “professional” and “scholar” editions. For each element you click on, you can also click on "C&E News," which will take you to an essay from the Chemical and Engineering News site. Each essay is by a different chemist. Stand-outs include iron and yttrium.

By the way, it should be noted that many of the elements on the periodic table may soon be in short supply. The United States is now entirely dependent on imports for such vital elements as chromium, cobalt, and manganese. To get statistics on U.S. mineral reserves, click on the site of the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Resources Program.At another part of the USGS site, you can find a report on rare earth elements (REEs), key ingredients in many high-tech components. Most of the world's REE supplies come from only a few sources, and in the past decade the U.S. has become dependent on imports from China.

Robert Anderson is a freelance science writer living in Los Angeles.

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