Have you wondered, oh! ‘that is rare!’ not the fact that you wonder! But something ‘rare’, like maybe your ‘boss’ is HAPPY with your work!
If you think that is rare then there are things which are more rare!
There are only two elements which have been named after a country! Or in other words ONLY one country has two elements named after it! One of them is rare!
If I tell you the country then you can get one element quite easily! At least in name!
The country is FRANCE!
So naturally the element is FRANCIUM! You can never in your wildest dreams guess the second element name after France though it was discovered much earlier than Francium!
The second element is Gallium!
Yes! Even I thought “But Gallium has nothing to do with FRANCE!”
Well; it does!
So Francium is named after France, the homeland of its discoverer, Marguerite Perey. Perey, a French physicist and student of Marie Curie, discovered the element in 1939 at the Curie Institute in Paris.
Then you come to Gallium!
So Gallium is named after Gallia, the Latin word for France. It was named by the French chemist [Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran], who discovered the element in 1875 and named it to honor his homeland!
Now another interesting thing is that Francium is one of the rarest elements on EARTH!
Francium (Fr) has only about 30 grams estimated to exist in the Earth’s crust at any time, typically lasting only 22 minutes before decaying!
An element called francium is present between 20 and 30 ounces on Earth at any one moment! Making it one of the rarest elements on Earth!
But even with that; Francium has to share the rare name! It is only the second most rare element!
The first place goes to Astatine!
Astatine (At) is the rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth’s crust, with an estimated total amount of less than 50–70 milligrams present at any given time. It exists only transiently as a decay product of heavier elements, with its most stable isotope having a half-life of only 8.1 hours!
Astatine is named from the Greek word astatos meaning “unstable”. This name was chosen in 1940 by its discoverers—Dale R. Corson, Kenneth Ross MacKenzie, and Emilio Segrè—at the University of California, Berkeley, because all known isotopes of the element are highly radioactive and short-lived!
One more interesting thing is that it is the only element discovered by a guinea pig!
This was because it was so hard to produce, that the scientists who first created it in 1939 couldn’t detect its existence directly and had to resort to a trick!
They created a tiny bit of astatine within a sample of bismuth by bombarding the bismuth with particles from a cyclotron!
They then fed the whole ‘soup’ to a guinea pig! And after a few hours of digestion the guinea pig’s iodine-hungry thyroid gland had filtered and concentrated the astatine!
It remains the only element discovered by a nonhuman!
Scientists are researching astatine-211 for targeted alpha therapy, a promising form of cancer treatment.
So it is rare to have two elements named after one country; it is rarer still to be Astatine!
Now that ‘Boss’ thing may be still rare for some though!
Rarer still is to have so much talent in one family! When you see my sketch and think he that is Pankaj Udhas! Well; I will tell you, do not be UDAS! It is his elder brother; the equally talented Manhar Udhas!
Now try to have a good sleep which is also pretty rare nowadays!
ramadocblog 