早期研究化學元素的十大奇聞趣事(上)

Chemistry as we learn it in school can be a pretty dry subject that involves memorizing a lot of numbers and chemical reactions. But that doesn't have to be the case, and it turns out that there are a lot of fascinating stories about how we first learned about the elements on the periodic table. Chemistry has a lot of neat stuff buried in its history.

我們在學校中所學的化學是相當枯燥的科目，涉及記憶大量數字和化學反應。但也不一定，從前人們研究化學週期表上的元素時就有很多吸引人的故事。時過境遷，很多關於化學的趣聞軼事都湮沒在歷史的塵埃中了。

n Elements From One Mine

10.一個礦裏藏了七種元素

Ytterbium, yttrium, terbium, and erbium—they're a mouthful to say, and there's a reason that they're listed together. All four were found in a rather unlikely way, taking their name from the quartz quarry in Ytterby, Sweden, where they were unEarthed. The quarry is known as something of a gold mine when it comes to documenting new elements. Gadolinium, holmium, lutetium, scandium, tantalum, and thulium were also found there. If it seems like that might cause confusion, it absolutely did.

鐿、釔、鋱和鉺這四種頗爲拗口的元素被排列在一起是有原因的，它們都是通過幾近不可能完成的手段採獲的，其名稱都取自其發現地——瑞典伊特比的一處石英採礦場。這處採礦場以黃金礦山聞名，彼時在黃金礦山發現的諸如金軋、鈥、鑥、鈧、鉭和銩這些元素都被載入了新元素。沒錯，它們的確很容易混淆。

In 1843, a Swedish chemist named Carl Gustaf Mosander took gadolinite and separated it into the rare-Earth materials yttria, erbia, and terbia. Once he shared his findings, though, something got lost in translation, and erbia became known as terbia, while terbia was called erbia. In 1878, the newly christened erbia was further broken down into two more components—ytterbia and another erbia. It was surmised that ytterbia was a compound that included a new element, which was named ytterbium. This compound was separated into two elements, neoytterbium and lutecium. Are you confused yet? Would it help that neoytterbium got another name change and became just plain old ytterbium again, and lutecium became luteium? The end result of what came out of the Ytterby quarry was a whole handful of elements that were found for a couple of reasons. The mine was ripe for the picking, thanks to glacier activity during the last ice age. There was also a rather odd coincidence going on around the same time: The mine was originally opened to mine feldspar, which had recently been highlighted as a key component in the creation of porcelain. Making porcelain had been a closely guarded secret of the Far East, until some alchemists got involved. The mine at Ytterby had opened to help with the demand for porcelain, and chemist Johan Gadolin was working at the mine because of his friendship with an English porcelain maker.

1843年，瑞士化學家C.G.莫桑德爾把硅鈹釔礦分解爲稀土材料氧化釔、氧化鉺和氧化鋱。然而有一次當他分享他的發現時，翻譯漏掉了字母，於是氧化鉺被認作氧化鋱，氧化鋱被認作氧化鉺。1878年，新命名的氧化鉺被分解成了兩部分——氧化鐿和新的氧化鉺。人們猜測氧化鐿是種包含了新元素的化合物，這種新元素就叫做鐿。氧化鐿被分解爲鐿和鑥兩種元素。你已經困惑了嗎？neoytterbium是否會再次變爲簡單的舊名ytterbium，而lutecium又是否會改爲luteium？來自伊特比採礦場的礦元素最終被歸爲一種元素，這種歸類來之有因。由於冰川時期末期的冰川活動，礦藏已經足夠成熟到可以開採。有個相當奇怪的巧合在同一時間發生：礦藏最初用於開採長石，後來卻被強調是生產瓷器的關鍵因素。在遠東製作瓷器的過程是被嚴格保密的，直到後來一些鍊金師參與進來才逐漸被公開。開放的伊特比礦藏可以幫助製作瓷器，化學家加多林爲了幫助他的朋友--一位英國瓷器生產商，而在這裏工作。

um Was Mistaken For Witchcraft

9.鋇曾被認爲是巫術

Today, barium is a pretty common element that's used to make paper whiter, paints brighter, and as a colorant to block X-rays and make problems with the digestive system more noticeable in scans. In the Middle Ages, it was a well-known substance, but not as we think of it today. Smooth stones, found mostly around Bologna, Italy, were popular with witches and alchemists because of their tendency to glow in the dark after only being exposed to light for a short amount of time.

今天鋇是一種非常常見的元素，曾用於生產白紙、塗料和阻擋X射線的着色劑，在掃描中也會借含鋇的着色劑增加消化系統清晰度。在中世紀，鋇是一種衆所周知的物質，但和我們現在的理解有所出入。當時有種光滑的石頭——多出現在意大利博洛尼亞——在女巫和鍊金師之間十分流行，因爲它們有一種特性：在光照中靜置片刻後再放到黑暗處就會閃光。

In the 1600s, it was even suggested that the so-called Bologna stones were actually philosopher's stones. They had mysterious properties: Heating them up would cause them to glow a strange, red color. Expose them to sunlight for even a few minutes, and they would glow for hours. A shoemaker and part-time alchemist named Vincentius Casciorolus experimented on the stone, trying everything from using it to turn other metals into gold to creating an elixir that would make him immortal. He failed, sadly, and for almost another 200 years, the rock was nothing more than an odd curiosity that was associated with the mysteries of witchcraft. It wasn't until 1774, when Carl Scheele (of Scheele's green fame), was experimenting with Earth metals, that barium was recognized as something independent. Originally calling it terra ponderosa, or "heavy earth," it wouldn't be for another few decades until an English chemist would finally isolate and identify the element that made the witches' stones glow.

在16世紀，有人提出所謂的博洛尼亞石頭實際上是點金石。他們有着神祕的屬性：把它們加熱幾分鐘，接下來的幾個小時它們都會發光。鞋匠文森特·卡斯諾羅也是個業餘的煉金術士，他用盡各種辦法希望利用博洛尼亞石把其他金屬變成金子，並試圖煉出長生不老藥。令人遺憾的是他失敗了。在接下來的200年中，博洛尼亞石都被認爲是與神祕巫術有關的奇珍異寶。1774年，在卡爾·舍勒（因研究軟錳礦而享有盛名）的鹼土金屬實驗之前，鋇元素一直都被視作獨立存在的一種元素。最初鋇金屬被叫做碳酸鋇或者"重土"，直到一位英國化學家分離並鑑定了這能使女巫石發光的元素，才避免了之後幾十年人們繼續誤解鋇元素。

cidental Helium

8.發現氦的巧合

Scientific history is filled with instances where people race to be the first to document or explain something, but finding helium ended in a bizarre tie.

從古至今，科學家們一直都爭相探索獵奇、發現真理，但發現氦元素的背後有着一個異常離奇故事。

The scientific community was new at studying the emissions from the Sun in the late 19th century, and they thought that the best (and perhaps only) way to do so was to look at it during an eclipse. In 1868, Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen set up shop in India, where he watched the solar eclipse and saw something new—a yellow light that was previously unknown. He knew that he needed to study it more in order to determine just what this yellow light was, so he ended up building the spectrohelioscope to look at the Sun's emissions during the day. In a bizarre coincidence, an English astronomer was going the same exact thing at the same exact time, half a world away. Joseph Norman Lockyer was also working on looking at the Sun's emissions, also during the day, and he also saw the yellow light. Both men wrote papers on their findings, sending them off to the French Academy of Sciences. The papers arrived on the exact same day, and although they were first rather ridiculed for their work, it was later confirmed, and the two astronomers shared credit for the find.

19世紀後期，在科學界有關太陽輻射的研究還是個新興領域，科學家們認爲最好（或許也是唯一）的研究方法即是在日食之時觀察太陽。1868年，皮埃爾·塞薩爾·詹森在印度開了家自己的店鋪，在那裏他不僅看到了日食，還觀察到一種不同尋常的現象——未知的黃色光芒。當時的皮埃爾意識到自己要想知道這種奇特光芒的本質就得補充新的知識。在這種想法的驅使下，他最終成功發明了太陽單色光觀測鏡用以在白天觀察太陽輻射。說來也是巧合，遠在半個地球之外的英國天文學家約瑟夫·諾爾曼·洛克耶在同一時間恰巧也做着與皮埃爾同樣一件事——在白天觀察太陽輻射現象，而且他也看到了黃色的光。後來兩人均將自己的研究發現整理寫成論文，寄送給法國科學院，兩篇文章也頗爲神奇地在同一時刻到達目的地。一開始二人的研究成果頗受嘲笑，然而事實表明他們確實作出了偉大的科學貢獻，應共享此榮。

Great Name Debate

7.命名之爭

A lot of the names and symbols of the elements don't seem to match, but that's usually because the symbol comes from a Latin translation, like gold's "Au." The exception is tungsten, whose symbol is "W."

許多化學元素的名稱與符號看起來並不匹配，因爲元素的符號通常來源於拉丁文，如金對應符號的是"Au"。不過也有例外，例如元素鎢的符號就是 "W"。

The difference comes because the element had two names for a long time. The English-speaking world called it "tungsten," while others called it "wolfram" for a very cool reason: Tungsten was first isolated from from the mineral wolframite, and in some circles, it retained its old name until 2005. Even then, it didn't give up without a fight, with Spanish chemists in particular arguing that "wolfram" shouldn't have been dropped off the official information for tungsten. In fact, in most languages other than English, "wolfram" was still used, and it's the name that the men who found it, the Delhuyar brothers, requested be used. The word comes from the German word for "wolf's foam," and its use dates back to the early days of tin smelting. Before we knew anything about elements, people working the smelters recognized a certain mineral by the way it foamed when they melted it. They called the mineral "wolf's foam" because they believed that its presence consumed the tin they were trying to extract from the mineral in the same way a wolf would consume its prey. Today, we know it's the high tungsten content in the ore, but chemists fought long and hard to keep their name. They lost, but the symbol for tungsten still remains a "W."

"鎢"與衆不同的原因在於長久以來它一直都擁有兩個名字。以英語爲母語的國家稱該種元素爲"tungsten",而其他國家認定的名稱則是"wolfram"。爲什麼叫wolfram呢？因爲鎢起初是從一種名爲黑鎢礦的礦石中分離出來的，在2005年以前都還保留着這種叫法。儘管那時關於鎢的"名稱之爭"非常激烈，其中以一批西班牙的科學家最爲堅持，他們認爲政府應當保留"wlofram"這種官方稱呼。其實除了英語之外，很多語言中仍使用"wolfram"表示鎢元素，這也是鎢的發現者Delhuya兄弟的要求。這個詞來源於德語，意指"狼之泡沫"，其起源可追溯到錫冶煉的初期。在人類對元素還一無所知的時候，冶煉工人通常依據礦物熔化時的起沫方式來進行辨別。，人們千辛萬苦想要從礦物中提取錫，而鎢消耗錫的程度就像狼在啃食獵物般兇猛，因此大家將含鎢元素的這種礦物稱爲"狼之泡沫"。如今，我們都知道礦石中含有大量豐富的鎢元素，卻不知道一些化學家爲了守護它的名字付出了多少心血。雖然他們沒能如願以償，不過還好鎢的符號至今仍然保留爲 "W"。

Lights Predate Neon

6.霓虹燈先於氖氣出現

Broadway and Las Vegas certainly wouldn't be the same without the bright neon lights that have made them famous, but oddly, the creation of neon lights is an old one—one that predates knowledge of the element.

光怪陸離的百老匯和拉斯維加斯如今這麼有名，但如果沒有閃閃發光的霓虹燈，那這兩個地方絕對會泯然於衆。霓虹燈的發明是很久之前的事了，在人們對於氖氣一無所知前就已經創造出了霓虹燈。

Neon is one of the noble gases and one of only six elements that's inert. Odorless, colorless, and almost completely nonreactive, neon was found along with other noble gases argon and krypton. In 1898, chemists Morris Travers and William Ramsay were experimenting with the evaporation of liquified air when they documented the new gases. Neon was first used in 1902 to fill sealed glass tubes and create the garish, unmistakeable advertising signs that we now see weren't the first, though; what we now know as neon signs date back to the 1850s, when Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geissler made the first neon lights. The son of a glassmaker, Geissler pioneered the vacuum tube, along with the vacuum pump and the method of fitting electrodes inside the glass tubes. He experimented with a number of different gases and produced many different kinds of colors, while neon is only reddish-orange. Neon's popularity came in part because of the color it gives off, and also because it's incredibly long-lasting, remaining colorful for decades.

氖氣是一種稀有氣體，也是一種惰性氣體，無色無味，幾乎不會發生任何化學反應，和氬氣、氪氣等其他的稀有氣體一同被發現。1898年，化學家莫里斯·特拉維斯和威廉·拉齊姆發現新氣體存在時，他們當時正在做一個關於液態空氣蒸發的實驗。1902年科學家首次把氖氣填進封閉的玻璃管，做成現在隨處可見的那種獨特炫目的廣告招牌。但是這並不是氖氣的第一次應用，我們現在所看到氖氣製成的招牌最早可以追溯到1850年，當時約翰·亨裏奇·威荷姆·蓋塞爾製造出第一個霓虹燈。雖然只是玻璃匠人的兒子，但蓋塞爾是製造出真空管、真空泵並研究出如何把電極焊條裝進玻璃管的第一人。由於氖氣本身只有橙紅色，他便用大量不同的氣體做實驗，製造出許多不同顏色的的霓虹燈。氖氣受到歡迎，部分原因是由於它釋放出來的顏色，還有就是它能在難以置信的長時間內保持這一種顏色，數十年都不會褪色。

審校：彼得潘 編輯：Carrie Xu 來源：前十網