Last time we discussed technetium, and now we shall discuss the only other element with Z < 82 with no stable isotope, promethium (Z = 61).  But there is more business than just that, and it has to do with a suggestion that commenter Wreck Smurfy‘s suggestion that I use actual hyperlinks to key terms rather than just bolding them.  There shall be more about that later.

Promethium is actually not as interesting as technetium, but still has its moments.  It has a storied tale of claimed discoveries, and one of my personal interests is the history of chemistry, in particular infighting by contributors.  I got into one of those contests myself back in the day, when I supported a particular geometry for the lowest triplet excited state for cyclohexen-2-one, but that is another story altogether.

Promethium, chemical symbol Pm, is a member of the lanthanide series, and those are often called the rare earth elements.  They are not all that rare, at least several of them, but their chemistry is such that they were extremely difficult to separate and purify until modern ion exchange chromatographic methods were developed after World War II, many of those techniques outgrowths of classified work during the Manhattan Project.

Last time we talked about the origins of The Moody Blues and some of their earlier work.  We ended on “The Best Way to Travel” from In Search of the Lost Chord.

I was called away to help my friend do something to get ready to attend a wedding the next day, so we shall finish that album tonight and start on the next one, On the Threshold of a Dream.  That was also a fine album.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

The bulk of the story is concerned with the little town of Gull Lake, Alberta, Canada.  There is some background first, so please bear with me.  First of all, this is a rare post in this series that contains a considerable amount of profanity.  There was no way to tell the story properly without it.

Second, I did not know this man.  I saw him only once at a restaurant in Gull Lake.  He certainly made an impression, though!

Last week a commenter suggested this topic, and I am always happy to get reader feedback and try to honor requests.  Technetium is one of only two elements with an atomic number (Z) less than 82 (Z =  43) without a stable isotope, the other one being promethium, with Z = 61.  Dimitri Mendeleev predicted this element after he had perfected the Periodic Table of the elements in 1871.  He called it ekamanganese since it occupies the place in the table one row under manganese.

Technetium was claimed to have been discovered over and over, and credit to its discovery goes to Emilio Segre and Carlo Perrier in 1936.  It was discovered in a foil that Ernest Lawrence had given Segre that was composed of molybdenum.  Some of the molybdenum had been transmuted into technetium, and the Italian team confirmed this.

I am very fond of The Moody Blues, although regular readers know that I am at heart a fan of The Who.  This short (probably two or three installments) was suggested to me by my dear friend Steve.  He and go back to the eighth grade, and we still speak almost every day, sometimes more than once per day.

To digress, I am very impressed with modern high speed communication.  We live almost 900 miles apart from each other, yet can communicate by telephone for essentially no cost since we both have unlimited cellular minutes.  When we were in the eighth grade, a landline station to station call cost around 25 cents per minute, end we lived only around 15 miles apart at the time.  How things have changed!

In any event, The Moody Blues were one of the older bands from the UK, having formed on 19640504, with the lineup appearing after the fold.  Mark I was not horribly successful, but Mark II were spectacular.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Tonight I am going to cover something a little different.  Rather than recollections as a very small child, I shall fast forward to when the former Mrs. Translator were married and living in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  When time permitted, we were quite the outdoor types, backpacking, rafting, spelunking, and just all around outdoor and nature enthusiasts.

Our mutual love of the out of doors was a real bonding element in our relationship, and even after the boys were born we did not stop going out of doors, but obviously we could not backpack with infants.  We just modified how we enjoyed going until they got old enough to carry their own backpacks.

The germ of this piece came from an undertaking that I am considering.  That undertaking is to write a post for every chemical element.  The recent successes of my more technical pieces have made me decide to concentrate more on the harder part of science rather than less technical material.

The problem with that is that it would take over two years to cover all of the elements, and in reality even longer because there are topics out there that will surely be more topical.  I am not sure that this is feasible.  Maybe I could look at families, but then that gets way too general.  Any thoughts on how to approach (or even if I should) this huge array of subjects would be appreciated.

In any event, I would start with hydrogen and work my way to heavier elements.  One of the first things that came to mind was the isotope effect, because hydrogen has the largest isotope effect of any element.  Please stay with us!

James Joseph Croce (aka “Jim”), was born on 19430110 in South Philadelphia.  If a tragedy had not intervened, he likely would still be with us.  Unfortunately, he was killed in an aeroplane crash on 19730920, not yet 31 years old.

Croce had the unusual ability to write both comedic and serious material with aplomb (I always wanted to work that word into a piece).  Only a few writers have been able to do this, and for the most part he wrote his own material.  He did record some material written by others, but what artist has not?

He also had the ability to attract a very diverse listenership.  My father was about as opposed to popular music as could draw breath, but love “You Don’t Mess around with Jim”!  Let us take a few minutes to look at the way too short life and listen to some of the work of this talented writer and performer.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I have mentioned this is passing before, but here is the whole story about Ma getting running water.  In those days, and I am thinking around 1964 or 1965, the City of Hackett decided to start a central water supply.

That was a BIG deal for lots of folks in my little town, and Ma was typical.  Before we get into the details, let us see how she lived before running water.

Beryllium, atomic number (Z) 4, is the second metallic element in the periodic table.  By looking at the periodic table, one would think that it would be very similar to magnesium and calcium, but one would be wrong on several accounts.  There shall be more about that later.

Beryllium is a comparatively rare element, both on earth and in the cosmos.  There are a couple of reasons for that as well, and again there will be more about that later.

Most people have never seen the pure metal, but most of us have seen compounds of it, at least in jewelry stores, because it is an essential component of real emeralds.  Let us take a look at this little know element and see what good it is, and any ill that it might cause.

First of all, I apologize for missing Wednesday’s installment of My Little Town.  If anyone is interested why, I shall be happy to explain in the comments.  Briefly, yesterday was very busy.

The Lovin’ Spoonful were a short lived band that several well known hits.  Their music was more catchy than substantive, but better than much of the pap that was available at the time.

This is the only time that I intend to write about them, but they were quite popular for a few years.  There is controversy about the origin of the name for the band, and we shall address that first.

Last time we discussed lean finely textured beef, commonly referred to as pink slime.  Tonight we shall finish this short series by discussing two other forms of recovered meat.

Mechanically separated meat is derived from a process that dates back to around forty or a few more years.  A newer process is called advanced meat recovery and has certain advantages over the older processes for some applications, but the older process is still used in others.

These products are in LOTS of prepared foods and interestingly are subject to a higher degree of regulation than lean finely textured beef, at least for beef products.  Please join for the discussion to follow.