My esteemed colleague refers to another of the half-fractional elements,
Laplandium-68.5. This is in the half-Lanthanide series between Thulium
(the close but no cookie answer) and Erbium. This material was somewhat
plentiful in the days of the ancient Greeks in northern climates, with the
permafrost protecting it from oxidation. The material, in its +4 valence
state, is somewhat sweet, making it attractive to the reindeer that inhabit
Lapland, and as a malleable metal, it was often chewed by reindeer, which
would only pass a small fraction of laplandium into reindeer poop. Over
the years, the pure deposits have been depleted and the only way to get
refined Laplandium is to process about 500 tons of reindeer poop. A task
not for the faint of heart.
Lapladium was first isolated by the eminent Norwegian Chemistry scholar
Olaf OlafOlafson, working at the University of Norway – Breivikeidet.
There was an incredibly dense population of reindeer in that area, and
Laplandium tends to glow an odd purple color at night. By refining tons of
reindeer poop, he was able to get enough of the pure metal to chemically
characterize it and propose it as a new element to the international
committee. Originally, Olaf wanted to call it poopium, but wiser heads
prevailed. Sadly, less is known about this element as Olaf came to an
untimely and tragic end. Laplandium, when kept at permafrost temperatures,
is perfectly stable. When heated, it becomes unstable and unfortunately,
highly explosive. The average body temperature of a reindeer is just
under the tipping point. Reasoning that elevated temperatures could be
used to improve the extraction methods, he brought over 500 reindeer into
his lab area. The resulting temperature increase caused mass instability
and when Olaf lost his temper and kicked a reindeer in the ass, well, let’s
say it didn’t go well. It was one of the first mushroom clouds ever and
leveled everything in a 5 km radius. Had his lab not been well outside
town, many others would have perished.
Doug Pauls
Principal Materials and Process Engineer
Rockwell Collins
On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 8:00 AM, David Hillman <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Here is the Element Quiz Question:
>
> The Question:
> The name for this element describes the Greek word for the most northerly
> habitable land in ancient Greek mythology. This element is a metal and can
> be cut easily with a knife. To produce 4 kilograms of this element, you
> have to process 500 tons of earth. Which element is being described?
>
>
> The winner of the quiz will get the services of Clumpy and Kloumpios for
> the week.
>
>
> So far Clumpy and Kloumpios have done the following:
>
> Past Quiz winners/tasks:
> Week 1 Ravinder Ajmani, Western Digital
> -assisted with ???
>
> Week 1 Ron Feyereisen, SigmaTron Intl.
> -The boys can set a course through the wormhole to Elk Grove Village,
> Illinois. (aptly named since elk live in a forest preserve grove near
> here). They can give us a hand with our continuous improvement projects and
> hourly coffee making/testing.
>
> Week 2 Louis Hart, Compunetics
> - I can get the boys on Compunetics' turkey distribution list for
> Thanksgiving
>
> Week 3 Mark Kostinovsky, Schlumberger Ltd.
> -I got tons of unread e-mails in my Inbox. Therefore, I am going to ask
> Clumpy and Kloumpios to read them all and just debrief me, so I can take a
> few days off and spend some time consuming turkey with my family.
>
> Week 3 John Burke
> -I will be checking out their failure analysis skill set - onward to the
> laboratory!
>
> Week 4 ????
> - assisted with ????
>
>
> Everyone have a great weekend!
>
> Dave Hillman
> Rockwell Collins
> [log in to unmask]
>
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