Big Al

This is Big Al. He is the mascot of the week. He is also University of Alabama's official mascot. I googled up some pictures of him and drew him, using the pictures as a model. I think I will alternate element of the week and mascot of the week.
Big Al is just a goofy guy that runs around, in a costume. Some schools
(such as Colorado) keep real, live animals. Big Al has to move around in every sport just like every mascot. But unlike the players, who have to travel for one sport, he has to move around for both basketball, and football.
Alabama has an elephant, but there are two stories of how he came. Both of the stories come from the 1930 season.
One story says that the Alabama football team was borrowing some suitcases from a company. The company's logo was of an elephant standing on a red suitcase. When the team arrived in Pasadena for the Rose Bowl, some people associated the elephant to their logo.
The other story was like the linemen of the Alabama football team were so big, a fan called them "the red elephants". From then on, the Alabama linemen were known as "the red elephants. Then someone wanted an elephant mascot. Whatever the story, Alabama did not accept the elephant as an official mascot until 1979. The name 'Big Al' was a student vote.

Make sure that he doesn't mess with this guy, who he hates!

Rhodium, the element of the week

This is a continuation of element of the week. My mom picked out Rhodium because she never heard of it. Rhodium and Rhenium (75) are easy to confuse. When I first heard of the elements I had a hard time distinguishing the two because they both start with "Rh". Now forget about Rhenium, and think about Rhodium.

Rhodium is a supershiny metal. In fact it is too shiny. It is shinier than platinum (78), gold (79), silver (47), and palladium (46). It is found in South Africa, Russia, and in minute quantities around Sudbury,        Ontario. South Africa is the world's leading producer of rhodium. Rhodium is prone to price swings. As of October 2007 Rhodium was worth eight times as much as gold, and thousands of times as much as copper (wow!). It is now still worth twice as much as gold, which is still precious. Rhodium is used in jewelry because it enhances the luster. Rhodium's melting point is 1966 degrees Celsius and its boiling point is 3727 degrees Celsius. It is a transition metal located around gold and silver, in what I call "the precious metals corridor".
Although it is a precious metal it is sometimes used in the manufacturing of cars, but I don't know exactly how.

Now you know more about one of the most precious metals. And now, inform all the pirates that there is a metal more precious than gold.

Technetium, the element of the week

The last few posts were about elements. I am doing a new thing called "element of the week". I asked my brother to pick out a random element that he had never heard of. I got stuck with technetium. Please do ignore the four of hearts in the corners, I had to scan my periodic table playing cards in order to represent technetium. This darn old playing card just gave away all the facts for you. Its symbol is Tc, its atomic number is 43, It is radioactive, it is- WAIT STOP! there is something unusual here. All elements with atomic numbers over 83 are radioactive. There are only two elements with atomic numbers less than 83 that are radioactive (technetium and promethium). This is odd. Now, back to the facts, it is synthetic, it- STOP AGAIN! Again technetium and promethium (61) are the only synthetic elements until neptunium (93). All the others before 93 are naturally occurring although time to time technetium atoms appear (from the decay of other elements) but break down after about a minute. Technetium's atomic weight is 98.91 and, FYI the atomic weight is the number of protons plus neutrons. You might be thinking "how do you get 0.91 neutrons?". What we do is calculate the average of all the different isotopes of technetium and presto! you end up with the atomic weight. Technetium's melting point (the point when it changes from solid to liquid) is 2,172 degrees Celsius and the boiling point (liquid to gas) is 4,877 degrees Celsius. At the bottom of the card it shows technetium's uses. Medical research and radioactive diagnosis use technetium. Now remember, Tc, and not TCU, the college football team.