Hunting The Elements

[Vernie Montagna]

Its a journey that dives deep into the metals of civilization, marvels at the mysteries of the extremely reactive, reveals hidden powers, and harnesses secrets of life, from hydrogen to uranium and beyond.

Like all elements, gold is an atom that gets its identity from tiny particles-- positively charged protons in the nucleus balanced by negatively charged electrons all around, plus neutrons, which have no charge at all.

JUNG: So we'll put this down into here... POGUE: Ralph places the form into a circular steel sleeve, then fills the space around it with a mixture of sand and epoxy to withstand the searing heat of the hot metal.

MULLER: This is like having a map of the United States, and eventually we want to zoom in, and we wanna pick out one car parked somewhere in the U.S. POGUE: We'll have to zoom in a hundred million times to see an atom.

They are meant to absorb and reflect sound because the microscope itself is so sensitive that if you were to talk, just the pressure wave from your voice is gonna... is gonna give enough mechanical vibration to shake this thing around.

If both contain the same number of marbles, but the blue container weighs twice as much, you can infer that the blue marbles weigh twice as much as the red marbles, even if you can't see the marbles at all.

Though his chart displayed only the 63 elements known at the time, his understanding of the family properties was so strong he was able to leave gaps in his chart, bold predictions of elements yet to be discovered.

GRAY: Being an inert gas, being unwilling to mix with the other elements, react with them-- this is a very clear-cut distinction that sets apart this particular column from all the others in the periodic table.

We're going to set off one of the most powerful off-the-shelf explosives there is: in the trunk of this car, 300 pounds of ANFO, unassuming white pellets that contain enough oxygen, as well as nitrogen and hydrogen, to turn this car into a scrap heap.

POGUE: ...measured... and scanned-- and by the way, in the real world, this costs some serious money-- she puts me on a treadmill to measure my oxygen use, which could be impaired if I have an iron deficiency.

RICE: We had sharks in a tank like this, and a pump broke on one of our tanks, and so we were playing with these magnets and we put the magnets down by the tank to go fix the pump, and when we put the magnet by the tank, the sharks took off.

In fact, at the bottom of the periodic table, beginning with number 84, polonium, all of the elements and their isotopes are radioactive, including the element that stands for both the promise and the peril of radioactivity: uranium.

POGUE: In a reactor, one neutron splits a uranium atom, which releases energy and two or three more neutrons, which in turn split more atoms, releasing more neutrons and so on, causing a chain reaction.

Over his long career, Seaborg went on to isolate or create nine more man-made elements, including Americium, which is in minute quantities including Americium, which is in minute quantities in the smoke alarms in our homes.

Doesn't sound like much, but for a chemist, a ten-second activity actually allows you to do something with it, but it isn't enough that you can put it in a bottle and put it on the mantelpiece and admire it the next day.

He believes that somewhere beyond today's largest man-made elements, scientists will find an island of stability on the periodic table where some super-large atoms will be both stable and useful, perhaps satisfying the needs of our future civilization.

At Element Outdoors we strive to be the leader in the most comfortable and affordable, outdoor technical hunting apparel! As most of us that enjoy the outdoors EO was formed and is still operated by blue collar individuals with the passion to create and offer some of the best products at the best possible price so you can enjoy them for years to come.

In this video excerpt from NOVA: \\"Hunting the Elements,\\" New York Times technology columnist David Pogue explores how the periodic table of elements took shape. Learn how the periodic table developed its current form when Dmitri Mendeleev organized the elements by families with similar properties as well as by relative weight. In addition, find out how Mendeleev was able to predict elements that had not yet been discovered, and how the periodic table has accommodated dozens of new elements that have since been discovered.

In this video excerpt from NOVA: \\"Hunting the Elements,\\" New York Times technology columnist David Pogue learns about a set of elements commonly referred to as rare earths. Hear how rare earths are often used in technological applications and visit a rare earth mining site to learn more about where they are mined. Discover that rare earths are not really that rare and explore how their atomic structures make them nearly indistinguishable from one another.

In this video excerpt from NOVA: \\"Hunting the Elements,\\" New York Times technology columnist David Pogue investigates chemical reactions involving sodium. Find out how the electron configuration of sodium, an alkali metal, makes it a highly reactive element. Meet chemist and author Theo Gray, who demonstrates two sodium reactions: a spectacular explosive reaction with water; and an exciting reaction with chlorine, a highly reactive halogen. Examine how sodium and chlorine atoms combine to form the compound sodium chloride (ordinary table salt).

In this video excerpt from NOVA: \\"Hunting the Elements,\\" New York Times technology columnist David Pogue visits the New York Mercantile Exchange to learn about copper\'s essential role in human civilization. Find out about the valued properties of copper and its many applications, including electronics and building materials. Hear about the global copper market and discover how copper is such an important metal that its price can be used to gauge economic health.

In this video excerpt from NOVA: \\"Hunting the Elements,\\" New York Times technology columnist David Pogue explores how isotopes of carbon can be used to determine the age of once-living matter. Learn how variations in atomic structure form isotopes of an element and how the three natural isotopes of carbon differ from each other. Meet paleoclimatologist Scott Stine, who uses radiocarbon dating to study changes in climate. Find out what it means for an isotope to be radioactive and how the half-life of carbon-14 allows scientists to date organic materials.

In this video excerpt from NOVA: \\"Hunting the Elements,\\" New York Times technology columnist David Pogue examines how atomic structure determines reactivity. Meet Theo Gray, chemist and author, who helps David explore how the electron configuration of an atom affects its ability to combine with other atoms. Discover why noble gases are not reactive and why halogens and alkali metals are highly reactive.

In this video excerpt from NOVA: \\"Hunting the Elements,\\" New York Times technology columnist David Pogue investigates the radioactive elements located at the bottom of the periodic table. Learn about the process of nuclear fission and to see a demonstration of what happens inside a nuclear reactor.

At Hunters Element we engineer technical high-performance hunting clothing and test in New Zealand's rugged forests and unforgiving mountains. We have a passion for the wild and do what we can to minimise our impact on the environment and to hand the hunting tradition down to our future generations.

In 2017, we found out about the horrors that were involved in the feather down industry to make the worlds puffer jackets. We wanted no part in animal torture until we found a responsible we could trust.

As a pro rugby player and life long hunter, Ben May knows a week hunting is comparable to the rigors of being an athlete. So we've teamed up to develop a compression base layer range for the hunting athlete.

Pogue travels the globe, visiting places including St. Petersburg, where Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleev first cracked the code of the elements in the 1860s; a U.S. gold mine and refinery; and a facility in Florida where researchers are testing a tank of sharks that may be repelled by rare earth metals.

The film is also punctuated by surprising experiments, in which Pogue and researchers dramatically blow up more than a few items. Pogue visits a research center at New Mexico Tech where the business of violent reactions is booming.

Where do nature's building blocks, called the elements, come from? They're the hidden ingredients of everything in our world, from the carbon in our bodies to the metals in our smartphones. To unlock their secrets, David Pogue, technology columnist and lively host of NOVA's popular "Making Stuff" series, spins viewers through the world of weird, extreme chemistry.

Hunters Element was born and bred in harsh mountains. As Aussie and Kiwi hunters, we demand more from our gear than any other place on earth, so it's here that we develop and stress test our gear to breaking point. We prize these pristine environments and want to see them kept this way for generations to come. That's why Hunters Element is so obsessed with sustainability. From making over 90% of our technical hunting gear out of recycled plastics, packaging all our products in paper and cardboard, and ditching dodgy chemicals, we're dead set on keeping the hills clean for the next lot.

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The superheavy elements are too unstable to be found in nature and are made, one atom at a time, through nuclear fusion. This is achieved by accelerating ions of one element at a target made of a heavier element, hoping the two nuclei combine. For the past 25 years, this has mainly been done (except for nihonium, discovered in Japan) in accelerators at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, in collaboration with US teams at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

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