the.com/rubidium
a metal so soft and eager it bursts into flame the instant it meets air.
means Rubidium is a soft, silvery alkali metal (element 37) so reactive it ignites on contact with air or water, used in atomic clocks and specialty glasses.
from From Latin 'rubidus,' meaning deep red or ruby-colored. When the chemists Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered the element with their newly invented spectroscope, it announced itself by two brilliant ruby-red lines in the spectrum — so they named it for the color of its light, not the look of the metal itself, which is dull silver.
- violent reaction
- explodes on contact with water, no exceptions
- name origin
- Latin for deep red, from its spectral lines
- melts in hand
- liquefies at just 39 degrees Celsius
- atomic clocks
- its frequency helps keep GPS precise
- slightly radioactive
- a fraction decays into strontium over eons
rubidium-87 — most abundant naturally occurring isotope, comprises 27.83% of all rubidium on earth
rubidium fountain clock — atomic clock at nist achieving 1-second accuracy over 15 million years
rubidium-82 generator — medical imaging device used in pet scans, produces 82 rubidium from strontium-82 decay