On 30 June 1808 Humphrey Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated four new metals. One of them was barium. 10 facts about barium:
Barium is a soft, silvery metal with the chemical symbol Ba and the atomic number 56.
The name derives from a Greek word, "baryta", meaning heavy.
Its melting point is 727°C/1341°F/1000 K and its boiling point is 1845°C/3353°F/2118 K.
Barium is never found in nature as a free element. It is only found in combination with other elements.
The mineral barite (barium sulfate, BaSO4) was first observed by Vincenzo Casciarolo, of Bologna, Italy in the early 1600s. He noticed that certain pebbles would shine at night if heated during the day. These stones became known as Bologna stone. In the 1760s, Carl Scheele worked out that Bologna stone was the sulphate of an unknown element.
A mineralogist, Dr William Withering, discovered a mineral in a Lead mine that wasn’t a lead ore. He named it witherite; it was later shown to be barium carbonate, BaCO3.
Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution in London produced barium by the electrolysis of barium hydroxide in 1808.
All barium compounds are toxic. Barium carbonate has been used as a Rat poison. That said, doctors sometimes give patients barium to eat. Barium sulphate is insoluble and can be safely swallowed, and barium, a heavy element, scatters X-rays. Hence a “barium meal” is a diagnostic tool for digestive disorders. Another is the “barium enema”.
Other uses include drilling fluids for oil and gas wells, paint (synthetic barium Copper silicate pigments were used in ancient and imperial China to make the pigments Han Purple and Han Blue) and in glassmaking. Barium nitrate gives Fireworks a Green colour.
The barium mineral, benitoite (barium titanium silicate), is a very rare blue fluorescent gemstone. It is the official state gem of California.
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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