10 Uses for Mostly Useless Chemical Elements
Riddle of the Week #10: Einstein's Riddle
10 Uses for Mostly Useless Chemical Elements
Gold. Titanium. Oxygen. Some elements get all the glory. But even the least practical residents of the periodic table can find a purpose.
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By John Wenz
Aug 20, 2013
They're the elements with the big atomic numbers. The ones from the far reaches of the periodic table who rarely get mentioned in the same breath as elemental superstars like carbon, nitrogen, or helium. But don't sleep on the weird, rare, and oddball elements. They're surprisingly important.
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The Transuranics: Berkelium (Element 97) and Up
As the name would suggest, the transuranics are those elements with atomic numbers higher than that of uranium, and are typically synthesized in a lab. While neptunium through curium have their places, mostly in nuclear power, berkelium starts a sea of relative uselessness. The elements beginning with einsteinium and going up, in fact, have never been spotted in nature. Most have half-lives of a minute or even fractions of a second, which factors into their not-so-abundant nature.
Uses: Physicists believe that there may be an " island of stability " above these elements with comparatively prolonged half-lives. You know, if we could manage to make the darn things. To that end, creating and studying the transuranics in the lab is a step toward one day perhaps finding even heavier elements.
Actinium (89)
You'll notice two running themes in this list. Often, the hallmark of uselessness in the periodic table involves elements that are expensive to create or extract and highly radioactive. This one–two punch makes it difficult to create uses for actinium.
Uses: Thus-far limited application in radiation therapy (though more research is underway) for certain types of cancer such as myeloid leukemia, and some scientific research, including the production of neutrons.
Rhoda Baer/National Cancer Institute
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Scandium (21)
Scandium is the lightest element on our list, typically found in nature in small amounts but tied up with other elements. It's hard to find and, once found, difficult to extract. Short of finding a large supply somewhere, scandium will be of scant use.
Uses: Scandium is useful in small amounts, usually in alloys. It shows up in the odd aluminum-alloyed baseball bat or aircraft. Roughly 44 pounds of the stuff per year is used in a compound found in high-intensity lights used in stadiums and on movie sets, as the light created is bright-white.
Rrausch1974 at Wikipedia
Polonium (84)
Polonium is nasty stuff: It's a volatile, radioactive, toxic metal first found by Marie Curie. It occurs naturally in uranium ores, though most polonium today is created artificially by bombarding bismuth. Apollo 16 went on a polonium hunt from lunar orbit in an attempt to determine the abundance of uranium on the moon.
Uses: Polonium's high radioactivity was used to keep satellites and other spacecraft components, including some Russian moon rovers, from freezing during the early space program. A capsule of just half a gram can reach temperatures of 500 degrees C. It's occasionally used as a static reducer. And one isotope, polonium-210, was used by an assailant to poison former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko . Great track record, that.
Armael at Wikipedia
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Protactinium (91)
Just below uranium on the periodic table, protactinium does . . . well, not much. It occurs naturally as a result of uranium decay, but it's highly radioactive and toxic.
Use: Protactinium has found one particular niche use: The isotope protactanium-21 is used to date sediments back roughly to 175,000 years ago, owing to its long half-life of 32,760 years.
Rob Lavinsky/iRocks.com
Thulium (69)
Poor thulium. The much-picked-on element was called the most useless by science writer John Emsley during an National Public Radio interview. Theodore Gray, another science writer and element collector (which is apparently a thing) appearing on the same episode of Science Friday, rushed to its defense .
Uses: Thulium has some applications in portable X-ray devices, superconductors, and lasers. So it may be rare and expensive, but it isn't useless!
Jurii at Wikipedia
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Radon (86)
Unlike some elements on this list, radon is really too common. The element has been at the heart of numerous public service announcements warning of the dangers of radon in the home. It's second to smoking in terms of lung cancer–causing carcinogens, and the deadly gas is often emitted from the ground, allowing it to accrete in poorly ventilated basements.
Uses: There is limited medicinal use: small, targeted radon "seeds" are used in radiation therapy to destroy cancerous cells. But it's controversial and possibly harmful. Some arthritis sufferers seek out radon therapy , a treatment involving intentional exposure to radon to alleviate pain; it's against the law in the United States.
Lutetium (71)
This rare-earth element binds well with other such metals, making pure lutetium scarce—so much so that it fetches $10,000 per kilogram. Commonly regarded as the rarest of the rare-earth metals, the price point prevents much use.
Uses: In oil refining, lutetium is used as a catalyst to help break down crude oil into smaller chains of molecules in a process known as cracking. It is also used in imaging technologies in radiation research.
Jurii at Wikipedia
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Astatine (85)
The rarest of rare elements (at least in the everything-below-uranium category), astatine has never been found in nature, and less than 28 grams of the highly radioactive stuff are thought to be found on earth at any point. The name itself derives from the Greek word astatos, meaning "unstable." First synthesized in 1940, the most stable isotope lasts just 8 minutes.
Uses: It's thought to have some potential use in radiation therapy for certain kinds of cancer, though one isotope, 210, decays into polonium-210, the murderous uses of which we've already covered.
MarlonMarin1 at Wikipedia
Francium (87)
Francium is highly radioactive, completely unstable, and rarely found in nature. Its most stable isotope has a half-life of 22 minutes, and when it decays, one of its nastier byproducts is radon. Its instability means that in order to get francium, you have to make francium . . . and watch it quickly disintegrate. At any given moment less than 30 grams exist in nature .
Uses: Francium's use is recursive: The production of francium is mostly done to study francium, because there aren't many other ways to get francium.
Kgrr/Flickr