Word: phosphorus
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Until 1220 when Alchemist Albertus Magnus discovered arsenic, mankind knew only ten elements-carbon, sulphur, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead, tin, antimony and mercury. In the next 500 years alchemists discovered only bismuth, zinc and phosphorus. Then scientific chemistry began By 1900, before which time perspicacious Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyeff figured that there must be 92 elements on earth, no more, no less, chemists had isolated 83. Last discovery of a tangible element, which could be handled and weighed, occurred in 1926 when Professor B. Smith Hopkins of the University of Illinois found Element No. 61 among some rare earths...
Astronomers suspect that all the 92 known elements are present to some extent in the sun. Up to last week they had identified 58. Last week, phosphorus was quietly plucked out of the limbo of uncertainty to take its place as the 59th...
Forthcoming from Dr. Charlotte Emma Moore, 35-year-old Princeton Observatory researcher already known for her spectroscopic measurement of sunspot temperatures, the identification followed a triangular cooperation. Dr. Moore took some especially clear laboratory spectra of phosphorus provided by Dr. Carl Clarence Keiss of the Bureau of Standards, compared them minutely with some very faint lines lately observed on the infra-red solar spectrum by Mount Wilson's Harold Delos Babcock, found that three lines coincided...
...analysis showed J. Thewlis a close analogy between the structure of tooth enamel and the fertilizing mineral apatite. He hopes that further study will show how to prevent tooth decay. Enamel and apatite consist of fibres made up of hexagonal crystals in which precisely the same elements (calcium, oxygen, phosphorus) have precisely the same atomic arrangement. In tooth enamel some of the fibre-axes are inclined 20 degrees to the tooth surface, others 10 degrees. (In dogs' teeth the fibre-axis is at right angles to the enamel surface.) According to the degree of fibring, there are three kinds...
...little as 2% of beryllium carbonate to the diet of rats, the rats grew humpbacked, wobbled as they walked, showed practically all the other signs of rickets. No amount of cod-liver oil, viosterol, ultraviolet light or sunlight improved their condition. Best deduction is that the beryllium combines with phosphorus, which is essential for healthy bones and muscles, forms an unassimilable beryllium phosphate, thus starves the body of phosphorus...