"I knew it, I knew it! You must not have come to me with such a smile on your face, nothing good must have happened! ”

Old Prague picked up a note that Chen Muwu had put on his desk with a somewhat unkind face, and read it word by word: "Yttrium, zirconium, niobium, molybdenum, ruthenium, rhodium...... Dr. Chen, don't be kidding, what do you want these things for? Could it be that you really want to change careers from physics and go further and further on the road of chemistry? I even regret it a little now that I tricked you into Davy Faraday's lab! ”

The names of these elements were written on the note, and old Prague stumbled over them.

This is not because he was shocked by the news that Chen Muwu was going to change careers that he imagined in his mind, but that he really didn't have any opportunities to contact these less common niche elements.

When I was in school, most people memorized the periodic table, and they would only memorize the top 20 according to the teacher's requirements, from "hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron", to "sulfur, chloride, argon, potassium and calcium".

The top students may memorize ten or twenty more in the future, but basically they can only memorize "zinc" or "zirconium".

After all, who wouldn't think about carrying these things except for professional related people?

If you are really idle and have nothing to do, and if you want to accumulate a blow capital for yourself, it is better to memorize a few more pi by memorizing the periodic table.

A few days ago, Oppenheimer did not go to Liverpool with everyone to attend Chadwick's wedding, so he did not follow everyone back to Cambridge, but got stuck in a bug and stayed in the Royal Institute.

Chen Muwu also realized this incident after returning to London.

This is a bit embarrassing, he can't just say to Oppenheimer, "You have nothing to do and go back to Cambridge, we won't take you to the next experiment"!

But for now, it seems that Oppenheimer's stay in London still has some effect.

When Chen Muwu wrote that note, he relied on a periodic table that Oppenheimer had dug out of his notebook.

Of course, he couldn't remember the names and symbols of the elements, let alone the English names.

The current system of the periodic table is very different from the one attached to the end of the chemistry book.

For example, the noble gases of group zero are placed in the first column instead of the last.

Of course, they are still called noble gases now.

For example, instead of gallium, indium, and thallium, the boron and aluminum of the third main group are occupied by the third subfamily doves, such as scandium, yttrium, lanthanide, and actinium.

On the contrary, gallium, indium, and thallium, which originally belonged to the main family, became the secondary family by mistake.

That's right, this periodic table has only lanthanides and no actinides, and uranium in No. 92 is the last in the whole table.

The search for transuranic elements larger than the atomic number of uranium has always been a dream for chemists.

Moreover, there are many symbols of elements on this periodic table, which are not the same as those in Chen Muwu's cognition.

Let's say the symbol for argon is A, not Ar.

Chen Muwu is very clear about this, it seems that after World War II, with the rise of the United States, the status of English in the world has become more and more important.

The same was true in scholarly communication, where the authority of German-language journals in defeated Germany plummeted, and English became the dominant academic language.

In order to prevent confusion between the symbol A of argon and the definite article a in English, chemists got together for a meeting and changed the symbol of argon from A to Ar.

Fortunately, Germany's academic status has plummeted, otherwise if the periodic table had been in German and English, the chemical community would have to be in disarray.

For example, in the 1925 periodic table of the Germans, the first place was not hydrogen H, but an imaginary zero element Nn.

The relative atomic mass of element zero is set to 1.0090, which is about the same as 1.0078 for hydrogen.

Unlike hydrogen, element zero is considered to have no electrons outside the nucleus, so the amount of electricity in its nucleus should be zero.

Before the neutron was discovered in the real world, the Germans had already predicted the existence of the neutron.

In addition, in the German periodic table, the symbol for argon is Ar, not A; The symbol for iodine is J, not I; There is also the symbol for xenon which is X, not Xe;

and element 71 in the lanthanum series, which is a public case in the history of element discovery.

In 1907, the French chemist Georges Urban discovered this element, and he named this new element Lutetium, lutetium, and the symbol Lu after the old name of Paris where he worked.

However, as for the discovery of lutetium, the Germans believe that it was first discovered by the Austrian mineralogist Carl von Wellsbach in 1907.

Wellsbach named this element Cassiopeium after Cassiopeia, so on the German periodic table, the symbol written on the position of number 71 is Cp.

There is also element 43, an unknown element that has always been thought to exist, but can never be found.

In 1871, Mendeleev predicted the existence of four unknown elements, namely aluminum, boron, silicon, and manganese.

A few years later, the first three elements were discovered by scientists: gallium 31, scandium 21 and germanium 32.

However, the No. 43 element manganese was not seen until Mendeleev's death.

Since then, mineralogists and chemists have been no less enthusiastic about finding manganese than they are about finding transuranic elements greater than 92.

First of all, in 1908, Masataka Ogawa said that he had discovered element No. 43 in the mineral, and named it Nipponium, and the etymology is the name of the country.

It's just that later people can't repeat Ogawa Masataka's experiment of discovering this element, so they don't approve of his results.

More than a decade later, the Germans also claimed that they had discovered element 43 by diffraction of niobium iron ore by X-rays, and named it Masurium after Masuren in the Masurri region of East Prussia.

However, the Germans claimed that the discovery of the eagle was exactly the same as that of Ogawa Masataka more than ten years ago.

No one else can get the same results from the same experiments except themselves.

But the Germans refused to admit that the experiment failed, and on the periodic table, they always used Ma to represent element No. 43.

In contrast, is Oppenheimer's American version of the periodic table for Chen Muwu more sincere, they are directly below the manganese, between molybdenum and ruthenium, and they are not marked with any element symbols, but only with a question mark"? ", indicating that the element has not yet been discovered.

Of course, Chen Muwu knew what this No. 43 element was, and after he "discovered" deuterium, he thought that after the accelerator was built, he would use deuterium to bombard molybdenum and then "discover" this new element.

When the time comes, whether it is Nipponium declared by Masataka Ogawa or the Germans declared Nipponium, they will be able to defeat themselves.

Chen Muwu has even chosen a name for this element 43, and he will certainly not name it Technetium, technetium, technetium, as he did in history, using the Greek word for "artificial".

Masataka Ogawa gave him inspiration, so it would be better to name it Zhonium after the Chinese character, which is of course a bell and the symbol Zh.

In the future, there may be a lot of new elements that appear on the periodic table with names such as Qinium Q, Hanium Ha, Tangium Tg, Songium So, Mingium M, etc., giving the world a little shock of 5,000 years.

It doesn't matter if you run out of dynasty names, you can still use place names!

For example, Beijine (Shibei) Bj, Shaojing halogen?

The more Chen Muwu thought about it, the more excited he became, and now he was full of fighting spirit.

But the premise of knowing these elements is to discover them first.

And the premise of discovering these elements is to get the accelerator out first.

But before the accelerator was built, there was this superconductor in front of Chen Muwu.

This time, he no longer wants to synthesize methyl methacrylate from raw materials little by little, as he did in the previous plexiglass.

These metal materials have long had metal elements, and they can be purchased directly.

And their chemists, who have studied the elements all their lives, will definitely refine the elemental purity much higher than that of his half-.

And the purchase of materials is still left to old Prague.

Having been in London for so many years, he must have known which professor in which laboratory at which university could refine these technical materials.

Chen Muwu originally just wanted to ask Old Prague to find some high-purity niobium metal, because this is the element with the highest superconducting critical temperature on the periodic table at room temperature and pressure.

But he was afraid that his behavior would be too obvious, so he finally selected a few before and after element 41 from the periodic table that Oppenheimer gave him, and copied their names one by one on the slip of paper.

However, Chen Muwu had just picked up the pen when he discovered a new problem.

Why is it that the symbol of element 41 on this watch is not Nb in his memory, but Cb!

At first, he thought it was a typo, so he took a closer look at the small print attached below, which was the full name of the element.

Columbium, literally translated, is the Columbian element.

And Columbus, who discovered the New World, is one of the spiritual symbols of the Americans.

It seems that it is not a typographical error on the watch, but it may be that the Americans really called element 41 Cb (columium).

No way, Oppenheimer's periodic table proved at the last minute that it didn't work.

Chen Muwu had to make a trip to the library of the Royal Research Institute, where he found the name Niobium, and at the same time verified his suspicion that this element did have different names in Europe and the United States.

Finally copied the names of several elements on the note, Chen Muwu took the note and found Old Prague again, and the scene where Old Prague questioned him just now happened.

"Sir Prague, I don't want to study chemistry. I just wanted to test if these metals can produce superconductivity at low temperatures, and if so, what is their critical temperature for superconductivity?

"But I am not familiar with life in London, and I could never buy such a wide variety of metal samples, and I can only entrust this matter to you, Sir Prague, whom I respect most in London, and who at the same time trusts me the most.

"I believe that whether it is at University College London, or at Imperial College, Sir Your prestige, it will not be a problem to find acquaintances in those schools to help with these metals.

"It's just a little thing for you that's easier than blinking."

knew that Chen Muwu was wearing a high hat and carrying a sedan chair for himself, in order to let himself help him run errands.

But what Dr. Chen said was very comfortable, and the elder Prague believed that Dr. Chen would succeed in the experiment, which would also be of great help to the prestige of David Faraday's laboratory.

The director of the laboratory felt that he had no reason to refuse this sincere young man, so he had to make a trip to Imperial College for him.

A few days later, the elder Prague had finally found the metal materials written on the note, and Chen Muwu could finally start his last experiment at the Royal Research Institute in the near future.

Chen Muwu used the machine he bought at a high price from Leiden University to set the ambient temperature of the experiment to three Kelvin.

In fact, the cooling limit of this machine is one Kelvin, and even lower.

But Chen Muwu felt that this was completely unnecessary, because even if he found the superconducting critical temperature of those other elements, it would be of little use to him.

It was enough for him to discover that niobium, which has a critical temperature close to ten Kelvin, has superconductivity.

Old Prague worked hard to find several other elements, which were just Chen Muwu's tricks.

He even wanted to start with element 45, rhodium, then ruthenium, then molybdenum.

These three materials always have resistance at three Kelvin ambient temperatures, and do not reflect the existence of superconductivity.

Chen Muwu was unfazed by this, and his two students, after the third experiment still ended in failure, showed very different attitudes.

Oppenheimer had largely lost interest in experimentation altogether, preferring to see superconductivity as nothing more than a hoax.

In order to deceive him, Mr. Chen even got in with himself.

But Shi Ruwei is still hardworking, although the experiment is constantly failing, but he can master the operation of the refrigeration machine in the process of so many days of experiments.

From the beginning of the evaporation of liquid hydrogen to find deuterium, to the just-ended measurement of the superconductivity effect of molybdenum, Chen Muwu has been operating this instrument from beginning to end.

Although Oppenheimer had also wanted to learn how to operate the instrument when he first arrived at David Faraday's laboratory, the boring cooling process made him quickly give up this idea.

Shi Ruwei's mastery of the use of instruments is at the right time, and Chen Muwu can justifiably be "lazy" now.

"Brother Shunruo, I'm too tired after doing experiments for so long, otherwise, I will ask you to do the next No. 41 element niobium, how about it?"

It's not always a matter if you give credit to yourself every time, and it's okay to make a small discovery like niobium's superconductivity, so let it out.

What's more, he is not giving it to outsiders.

What do you mean by that?

A single flower is not spring, a hundred flowers bloom in spring.

(End of chapter)