Want to learn more about one of science's heroes from history, Henry Moseley? Moseley solved one of chemistry's greatest puzzles - determining what distinguishes elements from one another and developed a means of identifying elements based on their atomic characteristics. Sadly he lost his life fighting at Gallipoli in WWI.
Learn more about his life and legacy by watching our online film here.
Non-metals tend to have relatively low melting and boiling points and low densities. They are usually poor conductors of heat and electricity, and the solid elements are mostly brittle. They can be divided into two categories - the noble gases and reactive non-metals. Metalloids are also sometimes counted as non-metals.
There are five times as many metal element as non-metals, but the noble gases hydrogen and helium make up more than 99% of the observable universe, and oxygen makes up nearly half of Earth’s crust, oceans and atmosphere. Non-metals form many more compounds than metals, and living organisms are mostly made of non-metals.
Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe, and a common element in all known forms of life. Its name come from the Latin word carbo, for charcoal. Carbon has an unusual ability to form polymers at temperatures found on our planet and forms a unique range of organic compounds, and is sometimes referred to as the "King of the Elements".
The global carbon cycle is key to Earth's habitability, giving our planet a stable and hospitable climate, and an atmosphere relatively low in carbon dioxide. Diagrams of the carbon cycle typically show carbon repositories in the atmosphere, the oceans, and the soil, but not what's going on deeper underground. Earth's mantle potentially holds more carbon than all of the other reservoirs combined. However, investigating the mantle is not easy. It extends from about 35 to 2,890 km below the surface, with temperatures which rise from 200 °C at the upper boundary with the crust to approximately 4,000 °C at the core.
Using diamond anvil cells (DAC) and laser heating to recreate the extreme conditions in Earth's mantle, a team of experimental geoscientists from the University of Bristol investigated what happens to carbonate minerals subducted from the oceanic crust into the mantle. They found that decarbonation reactions prevent subduction of carbonate deeper than around 1500 km and that the mantle stores carbon as diamonds. Read more here.
The world currently relies on coal, oil and gas, not only for fuel but also as raw materials for the production of chemicals. With reserves of these fossil fuels running out, and a growing awareness of the carbon dioxide pollution their use causes, it is becoming increasingly important to develop sustainable carbon sources.
One option is to use dry plant matter - biomass - and a team of researchers have demonstrated a new method for converting biomass into butene gas, which can be processed into the chemicals used in the production of polymers and resins. Their work focused on Gamma-valerolactone (GVL), a chemical processed from biomass raw material, and the catalyst Zn/ZSM-15. They used high-resolution X-ray powder diffraction (SRXD) on Ill to examine the structure of their samples, which yielded valuable information about the reaction mechanism.
This was the first time that SXRD had been used to investigate the structures of adsorbed structures of the Gamma-valerolactone GVL and immobilised Zn-species used in the research. Their results demonstrated that it is possible to use a renewable source material to produce benzene, toluene and xylene, and are a step towards affordable, sustainable chemical production. Read more here.
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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