Its resistance to heat is helpful when using it in the heating elements for electrical furnaces, spacecraft applications, welding and other high-temperature applications. It was also used in making different types of lighting for this reason.
The hotter a filament can get without melting, the brighter the bulb. In inventor William D. Coolidge discovered that tungsten was an ideal filament material. Today, though, most bulbs use more energy efficient materials. It is still used in X-ray filaments and in electrical contacts of various electronics, however.
This element is used for trickery. The name wolfram comes from the mineral the element was discovered in, wolframite. Wolframite means "the devourer of tin," which is appropriate since the mineral interferes with the smelting of tin.
How did these elements get symbols with letters that don't even appear in their names? One answer lies in the cosmopolitan nature of the periodic table. Chemists in Europe discovered most of the elements between about and , and while certain countries had the intellectual edge at various points, England, France, Germany, and Sweden all produced brilliant scientists who isolated various elements.
Often, though, it wasn't clear who had discovered an element first, and the same substance might go by different names in different places for decades. The symbol for the element we call "tungsten" in English is W because the Germans call the element "wolfram. In addition to discovering elements, scientists in the 18 th and 19 th centuries were also interested in studying their chemical properties. Like the scholars of today, they often drew on the work of other scientists, to compare notes and avoid duplicating work.
The symbol for potassium, K, derives from an Arabic word al-qili used by Islamic chemists during medieval times. The funny abbreviations for elements like gold Au , silver Ag , and iron Fe trace back to classical texts, mostly in Greek and Latin.
Early chemists had to be fluent in multiple languages and had no trouble flipping back and forth between names like "natrium" and "sodium" symbol: Na or "plumbum" and "lead" symbol: Pb. Still, that doesn't quite explain everything. Virtually no one spoke Latin as a native language after the fall of the Roman empire, and the Greeks, whatever other wonderful work they did, produced almost zero scientific knowledge after Aristotle died.
In the early days of science, before today's huge government subsidies, only the elite could afford to practice it. Tungsten is used in alloys, such as steel, to which it imparts great strength. Cement carbide is the most important use for tungsten: its main component is tungsten carbide WC. It has the strength to our cast iron and it makes excellent cutting tools for the machining of steel.
X-ray tubes for medical use have a tungsten emitter coil and the screen used to view X-rays rely on calcium and magnesiumtungstate phosphors to convert X-rays into blue visible light. Tungsten is also used in microchip tecnology and liquid crystals displays. Very little tungsten has been detetced in the dew soils that have been analysed for it, although around an ore-processin plant in Russia levels as high as ppm were found. The concentration of the element in natural waters is very low.
There are several minerals of tungsten, the most important are scheelite and wolframite. The main mining area is China, which today accounts for more than two-thirds of the world's supply. World production is around Relative supply risk 9. Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance.
Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance.
Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate. Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Tungsten Podcast Transcript :. You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Hello, this week supersonic steels, fast formula cars and upset Spanish scientists. But what are they arguing about? Here's Katherine Holt. What's in a name? How do we decide what to call an element anyway? Is the name of an element the same in all languages? Does it matter? And who decides? The answer to the other questions is mainly 'it depends'! Take for example the case of element 74 - or as we call it in English - tungsten.
Ever wonder why its symbol is W? Chemists in many European countries don't have to wonder why - because they call it Wolfram.
The two-name confusion arises from early mineralogy. The name 'tungsten' is derived from the old Swedish name for 'heavy stone', a name given to a known tungsten-containing mineral. The name 'wolfram' comes from a different mineral, wolframite, which also has a high content of the element we call tungsten.
However in 'wolfram' was dropped and tungsten became the sole official IUPAC name for this element. However, wolfram did not go down without a fight! In particular the Spanish chemists were unhappy to see the change - not least because their compatriots the Delhuyar brothers are credited with the discovery of the element and its isolation from the mineral wolframite.
In their original paper, the Delhuyar brothers requested the name wolfram for the newly isolated element, saying 'We will call this new metal wolfram, taking its name from the matter of which it has been extracted. Although this may be a compelling case, IUPAC argues that is that its working language is English and so Tungsten is the most appropriate name. They make the point that students will have to learn some history of chemistry to know why the element symbol is W.
The same is true also for a number of other elements, such as potassium, mercury, and silver whose symbols bear no relation to their English name. However, it seems unlikely to me that such a colourful name as wolfram will be forgotten. In case you were wondering, it is believed to be derived from the German for 'wolf's foam'.
Many centuries ago mid-European tin smelters observed that when a certain mineral was present in the tin ore, their yield of tin was much reduced. They called this mineral 'wolfs foam' because, they said, it devoured the tin much like a wolf would devour a sheep! Thus over time the name 'wolframite' evolved for this tungsten-containing ore.
In contrast to its semi-mythical role in early metallurgy, these days the applications of tungsten are highly technological, making use of its hardness, stability and high melting point. Current uses are as electrodes, heating elements and field emitters, and as filaments in light bulbs and cathode ray tubes.
Tungsten is commonly used in heavy metal alloys such as high speed steel, from which cutting tools are manufactured. It is also used in the so-called 'superalloys' to form wear-resistant coatings. Its density makes it useful as ballast in aircraft and in Formula one cars and more controversially as supersonic shrapnel and armour piercing ammunition in missiles.
It seems to me that the name tungsten, or 'heavy stone', is justified by these applications, which exploit its strength and density. I'm glad, though, that the birth of chemistry in the activity of those ancient metallurgists and mineralogists is still celebrated by the use of the symbol W for element This ensures that we never forget that there was a time, not so long ago, when many chemical processes could only be explained through metaphor.
I always used to remember tungsten's letter W as standing for the wrong symbol, but can you think of the one letter of the alphabet that isn't used in the periodic table? Now there's something to ponder on. Next week we'll meet the element that was introduced to the world in, its fair to say, a pretty unusual way. The first hint the world had of the existence of Americium was not in a paper for a distinguished journal but on a children's radio quiz in Seaborg appeared as a guest on MBC's Quiz Kids show where one of the participants asked him if they produced any other new elements as well as plutonium and neptunium.
As Seaborg was due to formally announce the discovery of Americium five days later he let slip its existence along with element And Brian Clegg will be telling the story of the radio active element americium and how it keeps homes safe in next week's Chemistry in its element, I hope you can join us. I'm Chris Smith, thank you for listening and goodbye. Chemistry in its element is brought to you by the Royal Society of Chemistry and produced by thenakedscientists.
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