INDIO

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Two coworkers had a falling out, discovery

The Indium is a very, soft silvery-white metal with a brillant luster. It is a ductible, malleable and when you bent it emits a unique sound. Indium was discovered in 1863 by Ferdinand Reich at the Freiberg School of Mines in Germany. Reich was investigating a sample of the mineral zinc blende (now known as sphalerite, ZnS) which he believed might contain the recently discovered element thallium. From it he obtained a yellow precipitate which he thought was thallium sulfide, but his atomic spectroscope showed lines that were not those of thallium. However, because he was colour-blind he asked Hieronymous Richter to look at the spectrum, and he noted a brilliant violet line, and this eventually gave rise to the name indium, from the Latin word indicum meaning violet.


Working together Reich and Richter isolated a small sample of the new element and announced its discovery. Subsequently the two men fell out when Reich learned that when Richter, on a visit to Paris, claimed he was the discover.


Indium wire

A crying metal

In­di­um is a very soft met­al. If you bend a piece of in­di­um met­al, it gives a high-pitched squeak. Once you’ve heard it, you’ll nev­er for­get it. This “cry” is caused by the dis­in­te­gra­tion and re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of crys­tals in­side the met­al. This phe­nom­e­non also aris­es when you bend tin, the neigh­bor­ing el­e­ment in the pe­ri­od­ic ta­ble

Uses

This el­e­ment did not have sig­nif­i­cant ap­pli­ca­tion un­til WWII, when it was used for coat­ing bear­ings in high-per­for­mance air­craft. To­day, it is used in LCD tele­vi­sions and com­put­er mon­i­tors in the form of in­di­um tin ox­ide. It is a good con­duc­tor of elec­tric­i­ty, which can send sig­nals to in­di­vid­u­al pix­els on the screen with­out light in­ter­fer­ence from oth­er pix­els. The pro­duc­tion of in­di­um has in­creased con­sid­er­ably in re­cent decades, and Chi­na is the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of it. Based on cur­rent rates of con­sump­tion, sci­en­tists pre­dict that in­di­um sup­plies are only suf­fi­cient for 13 years. So that hu­man­i­ty can con­tin­ue to use tele­vi­sions, com­put­ers and smart­phones, ad­di­tion­al re­cy­cling is re­quired for the ex­trac­tion of in­di­um or we will have to be confident in space mining (see Europium for further information about space mining)

Tiny crown at heart of miniature space thruster

The IFM Nano Thruster is a miniaturised ion thruster – with an electric field applied to accelerate electrically-charged atoms (known as ions) to produce thrust – that uses liquid indium as its propellant.

The IFM Nano Thruster is a miniaturised ion thruster – with an electric field applied to accelerate electrically-charged atoms (known as ions) to produce thrust – that uses liquid indium as its propellant.

The IMF Nano Thruster was initially developed for ESA’s proposed Next Generation Gravity Mission, requiring compensation for air drag at the top of the atmosphere for high-fidelity gravitational measurements.

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spiked tungsten crown