It is my great honour and delight to instruct you, fair reader, where and whenever possible. I feel very strongly that a blog should be a learning experience, and also, I admit, that commas should be inserted as often as legally, grammatically, and humanly possible. One has only to peruse former posts to confirm the truth of the latter. The jury is still out on the former, but they'll never convict me.
Today, let's learn about vanadium.
Vanadium, we are told, oxidizes readily at 933 Kelvin. Thank goodness, you're saying. Did you know that 80% of vanadium produced is used as ferrovanadium? My word. When vanadium was first discovered by a Spanish mineralogist in 1801, rival French chemist Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils incorrectly declared the new element was only impure chromium! Oh, Hippolyte, you silly, silly man. Well, history has forgotten Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils, while whatsisface is practically a household name.
Let's expand our minds even further. Vanadium was named after Vanadis, another name for Freya, the Scandinavian goddess. And from Freya, we get Frau, as in "Frau Braun, Frau Braun, would you tell your little boy not to play with the wall plug, I'm afraid he might pull it out..."
Freya, as you'll recall, rides in a cat-driven chariot. Or sometimes upon a battle-swine. I don't know which I'd prefer: the pig-wiggly steed, or the cat car. Assuming I could get the cats into their harnesses without losing an eye, they'd probably just lie there refusing to move anyway.
Come to think of it, Freya's husband Odin is missing an eye, and I think, now, I know why. Oh, he tells people he left it in the waters of Mimir's spring to gain the wisdom of the ages. Probably just too embarrassed to admit he didn't think of getting Freya that horse-drawn chariot, or that dog-sled. Or a rickshaw, even. You could get those fat little flying baby things hooked up to a rickshaw, although probably you'd want to procure diapers first.
What is with those cherubic chubby-butts, anyway? They like, infest certain periods of art like cockroaches. The picture of Freya there must have been taken before the invention of the flyswatter. Probably people just took swarms of them for granted, like fleas in the mattress, and mattresses made out of whatever dung you could scrape from the King's Forest. Life was cruel in those days. To make matters worse, the plague was spread from town to town by those dirty dumpling-shaped wing-a-lings, because they consorted with rats and other pests at yearly conventions.
And that brings us back to vanadium, because rats and chickens are known to need small amounts of vanadium, deficiencies of which result in poor growth and impaired reproduction.
There you have it. If you liked this "full-circle" approach to learning, you may also enjoy some of the crap produced by this other guy. Though he's not as good. In my opinion.
Today, let's learn about vanadium.
Vanadium, we are told, oxidizes readily at 933 Kelvin. Thank goodness, you're saying. Did you know that 80% of vanadium produced is used as ferrovanadium? My word. When vanadium was first discovered by a Spanish mineralogist in 1801, rival French chemist Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils incorrectly declared the new element was only impure chromium! Oh, Hippolyte, you silly, silly man. Well, history has forgotten Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils, while whatsisface is practically a household name.
Let's expand our minds even further. Vanadium was named after Vanadis, another name for Freya, the Scandinavian goddess. And from Freya, we get Frau, as in "Frau Braun, Frau Braun, would you tell your little boy not to play with the wall plug, I'm afraid he might pull it out..."
Freya, as you'll recall, rides in a cat-driven chariot. Or sometimes upon a battle-swine. I don't know which I'd prefer: the pig-wiggly steed, or the cat car. Assuming I could get the cats into their harnesses without losing an eye, they'd probably just lie there refusing to move anyway.Come to think of it, Freya's husband Odin is missing an eye, and I think, now, I know why. Oh, he tells people he left it in the waters of Mimir's spring to gain the wisdom of the ages. Probably just too embarrassed to admit he didn't think of getting Freya that horse-drawn chariot, or that dog-sled. Or a rickshaw, even. You could get those fat little flying baby things hooked up to a rickshaw, although probably you'd want to procure diapers first.
What is with those cherubic chubby-butts, anyway? They like, infest certain periods of art like cockroaches. The picture of Freya there must have been taken before the invention of the flyswatter. Probably people just took swarms of them for granted, like fleas in the mattress, and mattresses made out of whatever dung you could scrape from the King's Forest. Life was cruel in those days. To make matters worse, the plague was spread from town to town by those dirty dumpling-shaped wing-a-lings, because they consorted with rats and other pests at yearly conventions.
And that brings us back to vanadium, because rats and chickens are known to need small amounts of vanadium, deficiencies of which result in poor growth and impaired reproduction.
There you have it. If you liked this "full-circle" approach to learning, you may also enjoy some of the crap produced by this other guy. Though he's not as good. In my opinion.
0 Responses to “Connections: What is vanadium?”
Post a CommentLinks to this post
Create a Link