Category Archives: 51 – Sb – Antimônio

Elements songs

Em 1959, Tom Lehrer decidiu cantar o nome de todos os 101 elementos químicos conhecidos até então, sobre a melodia da música “I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General (The Major-Generals Song)”, da “opera buffa” The Pirates of Penzance, composta por Sir Arthur Sullivan em 1879. Segue abaixo a gravação original de Lehrer, seguida de uma apresentação mais recente da música original de Sullivan:

The element song (Tom Lehrer 1959)

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,

And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,

And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,

And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,

Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,

And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,

And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium, (gasp)

And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,

And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,

And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,

And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.

There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,

And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,

And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,

Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.

And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,

Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,

And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (gasp)

And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There’s sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,

And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,

And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,

And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,

And there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered.

I am the very model of a modern major-general

Gilbert and Sullivan’s raucous operatic tale is captured in all its fun and glory in this production, recorded live at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater.

Como complemento, segue abaixo uma gravação de Lehrer cantando a música em uma apresentação em Copenhagen (Dinamarca), em 1967:

Tom Lehrer – The elements (Copenhagen 1967)

The melody to The Elements is I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General (The Major-Generals Song) from the opera buffa The Pirates of Penzance. It was composed by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and it was first premiered in New York on December 31st 1879. The original libretto for the opera was written by Sir William Schwenck Gilbert. Recording date: September 5th 1967 Location: Falkonercenteret, Copenhagen, Denmark Format: Most probably Ampex Quadruplex PAL 4:3 Status: A rare recording indeed Storage: Most probably Sony Digital Betacam and in a digital format Production and preservation: Danmarks Radio (DR) in Denmark More HERE:

Apresento a versão abaixo pela qualidade das imagens representando os elementos:

The Elements Song

spicytito15

Mais recentemente, Dennis Nowicki regravou a música de Lehrer, em andamento bem mais lento, e atualizando-a para os 118 elementos atualmente conhecidos:

Periodic Table of Elements Song – All 118 Elements

Satirist Tom Lehrer’s Elements song updated to the current 118 Elements. It’s a bit slower to help with easier memorization, and humbly performed by Dennis Nowicki.

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,

and hydrogen, and oxygen, and nitrogen, and rhenium,

and nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,

and iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,

Europium, zirconium, lutecium, vanadium,

and lanthanum, and osmium, and astatine, and radium

and gold, protactinium, and indium, and gallium,

and iodine, and thorium, and thulium, and thallium.

There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium

and boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,

and strontium, and silicon, and silver, and samarium,

and bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.

There’s holmium, and helium, and hafnium, and erbium,

and phosphorus, and francium, and fluorine, and terbium,

and manganese, and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,

dysprosium, and scandium, and cerium, and cesium,

and lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,

palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,

and tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,

and cadmium, and calcium, and chromium, and curium.

There’s sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium,

and also mendelevium, einsteinium, and nobelium,

and argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium,

and chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium.

There’s seaborgium, meitnerium, nihonium, and bohrium,

and hassium, lawrencium, dubnium, livermorium,

tennessine, oganneson, copernicium, flerovium,

Rutherfordium, darmstadtium, roentgenium, moscovium.

118 elements, I think we’ve got these covered

But, who knows, there may still be more that are yet undiscovered.

Em 2013, o canal ASAP Science publicou uma nova música, dessa vez listando os elementos por ordem crescente de número atômico, sobre um acompanhamento de Can Can. Segue abaixo a versão original, e dois vídeos particularmente bem ilustrados (por Andy Tsang e Engineered Labs):

The New Periodic Table Song

AsapSCIENCE – Tema

2013

The Most Colorful (and Cute) Periodic Table (ASAPSCIENCE Song in 2021)

Andy Tsang

The Periodic Table Song with real elements

Engineered Labs

Encontrei no canal KLT uma música impressionante de mais de 47 minutos, na qual cada elemento se apresenta brevemente em forma de rap cantado:

Periodic Table of Elements Song

KLT

Também fiquei bem impressionado com esta música de David Newman, que lista todos os elementos em ordem crescente de número atômico:

These Are The Elements (Periodic Table Song, in order)

David Newman

2011

E por fim, seguem abaixo a versão original (gravada no disco Here Comes Science, de 2009) e uma versão acústica (gravada em 2010) da música “Meet the Elements”, da banda They Might Be Giants:

They Might Be Giants – Meet The Elements (oficial TMBG video)

TMBGkids

Meet The Elements (Acoustic Version) – They Might Be Giants 26 June 2010

astralbee

Antimônio em Bachelard (2005 [1938])

Mas é sobretudo na prática alquimista que o mito da digestão aparece muito. São inúmeras as metáforas ligadas à digestão nos órgãos alquimistas. Assim: “Os corrosivos comuns, esfaimados como são, tentam devorar os metais; a fim de matar a fome, atacam-nos com fúria”. O antimônio é “um lobo devorador”. Muitas são as gravuras que o representam desse jeito: “Esse sal cristalino, como uma criança com fome, vai comer e logo assimilar em sua própria natureza o óleo essencial que lhe for oferecido”. E toda a operação é descrita como uma nutrição: “Da mesma forma, os álcalis e os espíritos retificados devem juntar-se, de modo que um pareça ter comido o outro”. O número dessas imagens, que um espírito científico julga, no mínimo, inúteis, mostra com clareza seu papel explicativo suficiente para o espírito pré-científico. (Bachelard 2005:217)

BACHELARD, Gaston. 2005. A formação do espírito científico: contribuição para uma psicanálise do conhecimento. (Trad.: Esteia dos Santos Abreu) Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto. [1938]

Enxofre e antimônio em Bachelard (2005 [1938])

É natural que nas ciências atrasadas, como a medicina, esse empirismo prolixo seja mais aparente. Um medicamento, no século XVIII, é literalmente coberto de adjetivos. Eis alguns exemplos, entre mil: “O enxofre dourado é, portanto, emenagogo, hepático, mesentérico, béquico, febrífugo, cefálico, diaforético e alexifármaco” (Encyclopédie, verbete Antimônio).
A genebra é “sudorífica, cordial, histérica, estomacal, antiflatulenta, aperitiva, béquica”. Os “simples” são especialmente complexos. Segundo a Encyclopédie, a mera raiz de cardo-santo é vomitiva, purgativa, diurética, sudorífica, expectorante, emenagoga, alexitérica, cordial, estomacal, hepática, antiapoplética, antiepilética, antipleurética, febrífuga, vermífuga, vulnerária e afrodisíaca, ou seja, tem 17 propriedades farmacêuticas. O fel-da-terra tem 7, o óleo de amêndoa doce tem 9, o limão, 8, a betônica, 7, a cânfora, 8 etc. (Bachelard 2005:140-1)

BACHELARD, Gaston. 2005. A formação do espírito científico: contribuição para uma psicanálise do conhecimento. (Trad.: Esteia dos Santos Abreu) Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto. [1938]

The Curie (polonium, uranium, thorium, hydrogen, bismuth, lead, copper, arsenic, antimony & tin) in Latour (1987)

  • Pierre and Marie Curie originally had no name for the ‘substance x’ they tried out. In the laboratory of the Ecole de Chimie the only way to shape this new object is to multiply the trials it undergoes, to attack it by all sorts of terrible ordeals (acids, heat, cold, presure). Will something resist all these trials and tribulations? If so, then here it is, the new object. At the end of their long list of ‘sufferings’ undergone by the new substance (and also by the unfortunate Curies attacked by the deadly rays so carelessly handled) the authors propose a new name – ‘polonium‘. Today polonium is one of the radioactive elements; at the time of its inception it was the long list of trials successfully withstood in the Curies’ laboratory:
      (9) Pierre and Marie Curie: – Here is the new substance emerging from this mixture, pitchblende, see? It makes the air become conductive. You can even measure its activity with the instrument that Pierre devised, a quartz electrometer, right here. This is how we follow our hero’s fate through all his ordeals and tribulations.
      Scientific Objector: This is far from new, uranium and thorium are also active.
      – Yes, but when you attack the mixture with acids, you get a liquor. Then, when you treat this liquor with sulphurated hydrogen, uranium and thorium stay with the liquor, while our young hero is precipitated as a sulphuride.
      – What does that prove? Lead, bismuth, copper, arsenic and antimony all pass this trial as well, they too are precipitated!
      – But if you try to make all of them soluble in ammonium sulphate, the active something resists …
      – Okay, I admit it is not arsenic, nor antimony, but it might be one of the well-known heroes of the past, lead, copper or bismuth.
      – Impossible, dear, since lead is precipitated by sulphuric acid while the substance stays in solution; as for copper, ammoniac precipitates it.
      – So what? This means that your so-called ‘active substance’ is simply bismuth. It adds a property to good old bismuth, that of activity. It does not define a new substance.
      – It does not? Well, tell us what will make you accept that there is a substance?
      – Simply show me one trial in which bismuth reacts differently from your ‘hero’.
      – Try heating it in a Boheme tube, under vacuum, at 700° centigrade. And what happens? Bismuth stays in the hottest area of the tube, while a strange black soot gathers in the cooler areas. This is more active than the material with which we started. And you know what? If you do this several times, the ‘something’ that you confuse with bismuth ends up being four hundred times more active than uranium!
      – …
      – Ah, you remain silent… We therefore believe that the substance we have extracted from pitchblende is a hitherto unknown metal. If the existence of this new metal is confirmed we propose to name it polonium after Marie’s native country.

    What are these famous things which are said to be behind the texts made of? They are made of a list of victories: it defeated uranium and thorium at the sulphurated hydrogen game; it defeated antimony and arsenic at the ammonium sulphur game; and then it forced lead and copper to throw in the sponge, only bismuth went all the way to the semi-final, but it too got beaten down during the final game of heat and cold! At the beginning of its definition the ‘thing’ is a score list for a series of trials. Some of these trials are imposed on it either by the scientific objector and tradition – for instance to define what is a metal – or tailored by the authors – like the trial by heat. The ‘things’ behind the scientific texts are thus similar to the heroes of the stories we saw at the end of Chapter 1: they are all defined by their performances. Some in fairy tales defeat the ugliest seven-headed dragons or against all odds they save the king’s daughter; other inside laboratories resist precipitation or they triumph over bismuth… At first, there is no other way to know the essence of the hero. This does not last long however, because each performance presupposes a competence which retrospectively explains why the hero withstood all the ordeals. The hero is no longer a score list of actions; he, she or it is an essence slowly unveiled through each of his, her or its manifestations. (Latour 1987:88-9)

  • The act of defining a new object by the answers it inscribes on the window of an instrument provides scientists and engineers with their final source of strength. It constitutes our second basic principle, as important as the first in order to understand science in the making: scientists and engineers speak in the name of new allies that they have shaped and enrolled; representatives among other representatives, they add these unexpected resources to tip the balance of force in their favour. Guillemin now speaks for endorphin and somatostatin, Pasteur for visible microbes, the Curies for polonium, Payen and Persoz for enzymes, Cantor for transfinites. When they are challenged, they cannot be isolated, but on the contrary their constituency stands behind them arrayed in tiers and ready to say the same thing. (Latour 1987:90)
  • What makes a laboratory difficult to understand is not what is presently going on in it, but what has been going on in it and in other labs. Especially difficult to grasp is the way in which new objects are immediately transformed into something else. As long as somatostatin, polonium, transfinite numbers, or anaerobic microbes are shaped by the list of trials I summarised above, it is easy to relate to them: tell me what you go through and I will tell you what you are. This situation, however, does not last. New objects become things: ‘somatostatin’, ‘polonium‘, ‘anaerobic microbes’, ‘transfinite numbers’, ‘double helix’ or ‘Eagle computers’, things isolated from the laboratory conditions that shaped them, things with a name that now seem independent from the trials in which they proved their mettle. This process of transformation is a very common one and occurs constantly both for laypeople and for the scientist. All biologists now take ‘protein’ for an object; they do not remember the time, in the 1920s, when protein was a whitish stuff that was separated by a new ultracentrifuge in Svedberg’s laboratory. At the time protein was nothing but the action of differentiating cell contents by a centrifuge. Routine use however transforms the naming of an actant after what it does into a common name. This process is not mysterious or special to science. It is the same with the can opener we routinely use in our kitchen. We consider the opener and the skill to handle it as one black box which means that it is unproblematic and does not require planning and attention. We forget the many trials we had to go through (blood, scars, spilled beans and ravioli, shouting parent) before we handled it properly, anticipating the weight of the can, the reactions of the opener, the resistance of the tin. It is only when watching our own kids still learning it the hard way that we might remember how it was when the can opener was a ‘new object’ for us, defined by a list of trials so long that it could delay dinner for ever. […] This process of routinisation is common enough. What is less common is the way the same people who constantly generate new objects to win in a controversy are also constantly transforming them into relatively older ones in order to win still faster and irreversibly. As soon as somatostatin has taken shape, a new bioassay is devised in which sosmatostatin takes the role of a stable, unproblematic substance in a trial set up for tracking down a new problematic substance, GRF. As soon as Svedberg has defined protein, the ultracentrifuge is made a routine tool of the laboratory bench and is employed to define the constituents of proteins. No sooner has polonium emerged from what it did in the list of ordeals above than it is turned into one of the well-know radioactive elements with which one can design an experiment to isolate a new radioactive substance further down in Mendeleev’s table. The list of trials becomes a thing; it is literally reified. (Latour 1987:91-2)
  • It is just as difficult to go back to the time of their [the “complex set-up of sedimented elements” from which “emerges” “the new object”] emergence as it is to contest them. The reader will have certainly noticed that we have gone full circle from the first section of this part (borrowing more black boxes) to this section (blackboxing more objects). It is indeed a circle with a feedback mechanism that creates better and better laboratories by bringing in as many new objects as possible in as reified a form as possible. If the dissenter quickly re-imports somatostatin, endorphin, polonium, transfinite numbers as so many incontrovertible black boxes, his or her opponent will be made all the weaker. His or her ability to dispute will be decreased since he or she will now be faced with piles of black boxes, obliged to untie the links between more and more elements coming from a more and more remote past, from harder disciplines, and presented in a more reified form. Has the shift been noticed? It is now the author who is weaker and the dissenter stronger. The author must now either build a better laboratory in order to dispute the dissenter’s claim and tip the balance of power back again, or quit the game – or apply one of the many tactics to escape the problem altogether that we will see in the second part of this book. The endless spiral has travelled one more loop. Laboratories grow because of the number of elements fed back into them, and this growth is irreversible since no dissenter/author is able to enter into the fray later with fewer resources at his or her disposal – everything else being equal. Beginning with a few cheap elements borrowed from common practice, laboratories end up after several cycles of contest with costly and enormously complex set-ups very remote from common practice. (Latour 1987:93)
  • The two faces of Janus talking together make, we must admit, a startling spectacle [cf. Fig. 2.5]. On the left side Nature is cause, on the right side consequence of the end of controversy. On the left side scientists are realists, that is they believe that representations are sorted out by what really is outside, by the only independent referee there is, Nature. On the right side, the same scientists are relativists, that is, they believe representations to be sorted out among themselves and the actants they represent, without independent and impartial referees lending their weight to any one of them. We know why they talk two languages at once: the left mouth speaks about settled parts of science, whereas the right mouth talks about unsettled parts. On the left side polonium was discovered long ago by the Curies; on the right side there is a long list of actions effected by an unknown actant in Paris at the Ecole de Chimie which the Curies propose to call ‘polonium‘. On the left side all scientists agree, and we hear only Nature’s voice, plain and clear; on the right side scientists disagree and no voice can be heard over theirs. (Latour 1987:98-9)

Jano bifronte (Latour 1987:99 Fig. 2.5)

  • In our examples we observed that the chain of people who borrowed claims varied from time to time because of the many elements the claims were tied to. If people wished to open the boxes, to renegotiate the facts, to appropriate them, masses of allies arrayed in tiers would come to the rescue of the claims and force the dissenters into assent; but the allies will not even think of disputing the claims, since this would be against their own interests which the new objects have so neatly translated. Dissent has been made unthinkable. At this point, these people do not do anything more to the objects, except pass them along, reproduce them, buy them, believe them. The result of such smooth borrowing is that there are simply more copies of the same object. This is what happened to the double-helix after 1952, to the Eclipse MV/8000 after 1982, to Diesel’s engine after 1914, to the Curies’ polonium after 1900, to Pasteur’s vaccine after 1881, to Guillemin’s GRF after 1982. So many people accept them that they seem to flow as effortlessly as the voice of Alexander Bell through the thousands of miles of the new transcontinental line, even though his voice is amplified every thirteen miles and completely broken down and recomposed six times over! It also seems that all the work is now over. Spewed out by a few centres and laboratories, new things and beliefs are emerging, free floating through minds and hands, populating the world with replicas of themselves. (Latour 1987:132-3)
  • Similarly, the Curies’ polonium was first a claim redesigned after every trial in a single laboratory in Paris in 1898. To convince dissenters that this was indeed a new substance, the Curies had to modify the trials and renegotiate the definition of their object. For each suspicion that it might be an artefact, they devised a trial that linked its fate to a more remote and less disputable part of physics. There is a moment in this story when the claim becomes a new object, and even a part of Nature. At this point the type of people necessary to provide the fact with durability and extension is to be modified. Polonium may now travel from the Curies’ hands into many more, but much less informed, hands. It is now a routine radioactive element in a sturdy lead container, one more box filled up in freshly printed versions of the periodic table; it is no longer believed by only a few bright sparks in a few laboratories, but also by hundreds of enthusiastic physicists; soon it will be learned by ‘simple students’. A continuous chain of people using, testing and believing in polonium is necessary to maintain it in existence; but they are not the same people nor are their qualifications the same. So the story of polonium – like all that have so far been told in this book – may be told either by looking at the people who are convinced, or by looking at the new associations made to convince them. It is the same analysis from two different angles since, all along, polonium is constituted by these people convinced that these associations are unbreakable. […] We may now generalise a bit from what we have learned. If you take any black box and make a freeze-frame of it, you may consider the system of alliances it knits together in two different ways: first, by looking at who it is designed to enrol; second, by considering what it is tied to so as to make the enrolment inescapable. We may on the one hand draw its sociogram, and on the other its technogram [cf. Fig 3.4]. Every piece of information you obtain on one system is also information on the other. If you tell me that Diesel’s engine now has a stable shape, I will tell you how many people at MAN had to work on it and about the new system of solid injection they had to devise so that the engine might be bought by ‘mere consumers’. If you tell me that you think polonium is really bismuth (see p.88), I can tell you that you work in the Curies’ lab in Paris around 1900. If you show me a serum for diphtheria, I’ll understand how far you drifted from the original research programme that aimed at making vaccines and I’ll tell you who are the physicians who will get interested. If you show me an electric vehicle running on fuel cells, I’ll know who has to be won over in the company. If you propose to build a 16-bit computer to compete with the DEC’s VAX 11/780 machine I’ll know who, when and where you are. You are West at Data General in the late 1970s. I know this, because there are very few places on earth where anyone has the resources and the guts to disaggregate the black box DEC has assembled and to come up with a brand new make of computer. I similarly learn a lot about you if you explain to me that you are waiting for the repair man to fix your Apple computer, or that you believe the moon to be made of green cheese, or that you do not really think that the second amino acid in the GHRH structure is histidine. (Latour 1987:138-9)

sociograma e tecnograma (Latour 1987:139 Fig. 3.4)

LATOUR, Bruno. 1987. Science in action: how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Agências químicas elementares no smartphone

What’s in your Smartphone? (2014)

How Do Touchscreens Work? (2018)

How do Lithium-ion Batteries Work? (2019)

What’s in a smartphone? (2019)

What’s a smartphone made of? – Kim Preshoff (2018)

Jogos químicos

Educational Card Game about Radioactive Decay in Atoms

Top 5 Board Games About Chemistry

How to Play Valence

How to Play Periodic

How To Play – Covalence: A Molecule Building Card Game (by John Coveyou)

Ion: A Compound Building Game – A Science Game on the Chemistry of Ions and Neutral Compounds

Festas químicas

Chemical Dance Party 2014

LSU Skit: Chemical Dance Party

Chemical Party Extended Widescreen

Chemical Party in Dresden

Chemical Party

Chemical Party (2º ano Dom Bosco)

Chemical Party

Chemical Party

CHEMICAL PARTY

QuímicArte

Periodic Tales: The Art of the Elements

ELEMENTS : THE BEAUTY OF CHEMISTRY

Highlights of the launch of ELEMENTS : THE BEAUTY OF CHEMISTRY exhibition in SCIENCE GALLERY, Trinity College Dublin in July 2011

Beautiful Elements – Periodic Table of Videos

These portraits of elements are an exhibit was part of “The Elements” exhibition at Science Gallery, Dublin, Ireland. Included are Mercury, Iron, Gold, Platinum, Uranium, Calcium, Carbon, Silicon, Radium, Arsenic, Cobalt, Argon, Copper and Lead.

Irish Elements – Periodic Table of Videos

We visit a display of elements in Dublin, Ireland, including some quirky periodic tables. Our own Irishman, Darren Walsh, pays a visit to the Science Gallery.

Elementos químicos mencionados entre 10 e 100 vezes na Folha de Sp até 31/01/2018 (parte 2)

Elementos mencionados entre 10 e 100 vezes até 31/01/2018

[51 – Sb – Antimônio]

A história dos elementos

” Quando eu era menino, dizia-se que existiam 92 elementos. Eram todos diferentes e podiam combinar-se com outros elementos para formar milhões de compostos. Eram os ‘blocos básicos dos quais era feito o universo’. “


“… A química começou a deixar para trás suas raízes alquímicas no século 18, em parte com a descoberta de grande número de novos elementos. Entre 1735 e 1826, nada menos do que 40 novos elementos foram acrescentados aos nove conhecidos na Antiguidade (cobre, prata, ouro, ferro, mercúrio, chumbo, estanho, enxofre e carbono) e aos quatro ou cinco descobertos durante a Idade Média (fósforo, arsênio, antimônio, bismuto e zinco) “


“… Em 1817, o químico alemão Dobereiner (amigo e professor de química de Goethe) observou que as massas atômicas dos metais alcalino-terrosos formavam uma série, na qual a massa atômica do estrôncio ficava a meio caminho entre as do cálcio e do bário. Mais tarde, ele descobriu que outras tríades desse tipo -lítio, sódio e potássio; enxofre, selênio e telúrio; cloro, bromo e iodo etc.- formavam sequências semelhantes de massa atômica. “

“… Finalmente, em 1860, foi realizada em Karlsruhe a primeira conferência internacional de químicos da história, com o objetivo expresso de esclarecer a confusão em torno dos átomos, moléculas, massas atômicas e valências, e a proposta de Cannizarro, apresentada com argumentos belíssimos, foi aceita, levando a um consenso. Finalmente, com massas atômicas corrigidas e uma idéia clara da valência, estava aberto o caminho para uma classificação abrangente dos elementos. “

FONTE: SACKS, Oliver. 1999. A história dos elementos. Folha de S.Paulo. 13 de junho. +Mais!