» About     » Archive     » Authors     » Search     » Random     » Statistics     » Forum     » RSS Feed     Updates Monday-Friday

No. 569: Periodic Table: 49 Indium

First | Previous | 2017-05-01 | Next | Latest

Periodic Table: 49 Indium

First | Previous | 2017-05-01 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/dinosaur/?comic=569

Strip by: David Morgan-Mar

T-Rex: T-Rex presents The Periodic Table:
T-Rex: 49 INDIUM
T-Rex: A post-transition metal used in semiconductors. It has properties intermediate between group 13[1] neighbours gallium and thallium, and is highly malleable.
T-Rex: Chemists Ferdinand Reich[2] and Hieronymous Richter[3] named
T-Rex: it after its indigo spectral lines.[4]
Utahraptor: They should have named it mallium.
T-Rex: Reich, Richter: you could have been legends.
T-Rex: But you just lost chemistry.

The author writes:

[1] Group 13, a.k.a. the boron group, is anything but boring. It consists of, in increasing atomic mass: boron, aluminium, gallium, indium, thallium, and the recently named nihonium. They really missed a trick though. They should have named the last five members: allium, gallium, mallium, thallium, and zallium. Besides being (almost) evenly spaced through the alphabet, it would have both solved the aluminium/aluminum controversy[5], and given the name "mallium" to a nice malleable metal.

[2] A German chemist, born in Bernburg.

[3] Another German chemist, born in Dresden.

[4] I had always assumed it was named after India, until now.

[5] Okay, so you'd be drinking Coke out of a can made from a metal with the same name as the garlic family, but it's still cool.