the.com/boron
The element that makes glass tough and eyebrows lush, never both at once.
means A chemical element (symbol B, number 5), a metalloid used in everything from borosilicate glass and detergents to the boron compounds in cosmetics and fertilizers.
from Named by fusing 'borax' with 'carbon' — the scientists who isolated it in the early 1800s saw it as a carbon-like relative of the mineral borax, from which it was first extracted. Borax itself traces back through Arabic 'buraq' to Persian 'burah', the old name for the crystalline salt mined and traded for centuries before anyone knew an element was hiding inside it.
- atomic number
- 5, wedged between beryllium and carbon
- borax origin
- named after borax, the laundry mineral
- space deposit
- found on Mars by a rover, hinting at ancient water
- human need
- trace amounts help bones, no one knows exactly why