From: Jim Ward <tomcatpolka@NyOaShPoAoM.com>
Newsgroups: rec.puzzles,rec.games.trivia
Subject: Uncle Tungsten
Date: 27 Sep 2004 00:56:54 GMT
Message-ID: <cj7ogm$381$1@news1.radix.net>

These questions were suggested by Oliver Wolf Sacks'
"Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood".

1. What French chemist first isolated fluorine, and
   claimed to have manufactured the first artificial diamond?
   (The claim was later doubted.)

2. Separate out the true elements from the ones later determined
   to be spurious (previous elements or mixtures of previously
   known elements):

   Alabamine
   Austrium
   Bohemium
   Europium
   Florentium
   Gadolinium
   Helvetium
   Illinium
   Lanthanum
   Moldavium
   Neodymium
   Norwegium
   Praseodymium
   Promethium
   Russium
   Samarium
   Terbium
   Virginium

3. Andres del Rio discovered an element in 1800 and named it
   "panchromium" for its many-colored salts. Other chemists doubted
   his discovery, and it was rediscovered 30 years later under what name?

4. As a child, an author attended Humphry Davy's electrolysis lecture
   at the Royal Institution, and later used bits of the lecture in a
   horror novel. Name the author and the novel.

5. Instead of dipping madelines into teacups, this French chemist
   formulated the law of fixed proportions - all genuine chemical compounds
   have fixed compositions no matter where on earth they are dug up.
   Who was he?

6. The alchemists knew 7 metals and 7 astronomical bodies.
   What body corresponded to these metals?

   copper
   gold
   iron
   lead
   mercury
   silver
   tin

7. In 1860, Mendeleev traveled to the first international chemical
   meeting with a famous composer. Along the route they stopped to play
   church organs. Name the meeting city and the composer.

8. Elements 95 and 96 were first announced to the world on November 1945
   during a radio quiz show - a boy asked "Have you made any more elements
   lately?" Who was asked the question?

9. As a boy, Sacks was fitted with shoes using this X-ray device.

10. Who wrote "The Periodic Table"?

11. What discoverer of X-rays was so shy, he declined to give his
    Nobel speech?

12. What discoverer of hydrogen was so reclusive he communicated with
    his servants in writing?

13. Which elements are named after women?

14. What physicist was inspired by H. G. Wells' "The World Set Free"
    to obtain a secret patent on chain reactions?

15. H. G. Wells' moon people share a name with which element?

16. A city in Sweden has lent its name to four elements.
    Name the city and the four elements.

17. Dubya is Tungsten's symbol. Why? What is Dubnium named for?

18. What metal, once discarded as useless, has a luster equaling
    that of silver? (Its name means "little silver")?

19. What Ivigtut, Greenland mineral is invisible in water? (It was
    used by the miners as a vanishing boat anchor.)

20. What element, so cheap today, was once so costly that Napoleon III
    gave his guests gold plates so he alone could dine on a plate
    made from it?
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