Tantalum
Tantalum highlights the importance of ``old'' economy precious metals have in the make-up of ``new'' economy products. It’s a critical component in small mobile phones, as well as the old G9 brick-like phone on sale here made in UK by NEC, and also in portable computers, game consoles such as the Sony Playstation and other electronic devices such as GPS devices and in electronic components in cars.
Vanadium
Vanadium is one of those elements that was discovered twice. The first time by Andres Manuel in Mexico City in 1801, whose detailed notes were lost in a shipwreck on their way to the French Institute, which partly accounted for his sample being wrongly analyzed as chromium.
Thirty years later, Nils Gabriel Sefstrom of Sweden was looking at samples of cast iron that was puzzling for sometimes being strong and other times being brittle. He was able to demonstrate that it was indeed a new element and named it vanadium after the Scandinavian goddess of the Vanir, Freya who amongst one of her many talents represented the goddess of battle and death. She had the right to choose half of all men slain in battle.
Arsenic
A poison in a small dose is a medicine, and a medicine in a large dose is a poison. — Alfred Swaine Taylor, 19th-Century toxicologist.
I was alarmed discover that Allenheads Contemporary Arts had a substantial amount of rat poison - two giant tubs, looming on a shelf, almost as if they were hoarding it for a rat invasion, or perhaps for something more sinister. On closer inspection, they don’t actually contain any arsenic compounds, though some of their contents are noted elsewhere.
Berylium
Only HYDROGEN, HELIUM and LITHIUM are formed during the ‘Big Bang’. BERYLLIUM, which is the next element by ATOMIC weight isn’t formed in the nuclear furnace of a star, but generated during supernova explosions, akin to switching on all the lights.
You use BERYLLIUM in the house every time you switch your lights on or off. It’s used in alloys for domestic light switches (around 2%), to ensure that when you switch them on you can switch them off too.
