Word: boron
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...Boron chloride, a new abrasive and second only to the diamond in hardness, is on exhibit. Samples of whiskey are present which have been prematurely aged by the catalytic hydrogenation of compounds responsible for "greenness." A recent development of Grinnoll Jones, professor of Chemistry, bearing the trade name "Pamilla Cloth" is included. It is used as a wrapper for silverware--the silver hydroxide it contains prevents tarnishing...
Last week the word was out that the books would have to change their tune, as the result of four years' patient work by bulky, plural-chinned Harold Simmons Booth and his co-workers at Western Reserve University. Early in their experiments it appeared that in boron trifluoride, the boron "accepted electrons" (i. e., was the go-between) in forming compounds with certain other elements. Why not with aristocratic argon...
...Booth's apparatus and methods were intricate. He had to devise a special stopcock-sealing grease that boron trifluoride would not attack, a system of magnetically controlled rods for stirring his mixtures in closed vessels. Every time he generated the trifluoride he washed the maze of tubes, flasks and stills 20 times with air which had been freed of carbon dioxide. Argon 99.9+% was repeatedly distilled for further purification and the boron trifluoride was cleaned until it showed pure in the spectroscope...
...beyond which point pressure increase has no effect. On this basis, trying different proportions of argon from 1% to 60%, the chemists found six plateaus on their graphs of freezing points which indicated six unstable compounds of argon, containing, respectively, one, two, three, six, eight and 16 molecules of boron trfliuoride...
...Paris last year the Curie-Joliots were firing alpha particles at another light element-boron. Neutrons leaped out. But after the bombardment stopped, the boron continued to emit positive electrons as though the attack had stirred it into a sort of radioactivity. This unlooked-for discovery made necessary a new phrase: artificial radioactivity (TIME...