When you buy through links on our site , we may gain an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
Beautiful drear atomic number 27 is a modulation metal , perched in the midst of the Periodic Table . Long used in impure form as a pigment , this ingredient now appears in attraction , high - tech turbine and even in cancer treatments .
In saturated form , Co is silvery - blue-blooded and brittle . It is similar to Fe and nickel , according to theEnvironmental Protection Agency , and — like iron — can be made magnetised . As a issue , some high - powered magnets are made from alloys of atomic number 27 and Al or Ni , fit in to theRoyal Society of Chemistry . A manmade isotope , Cobalt-60 , is unremarkably used in cancer treatments ; the da Gamma radiation liberate by this radioactive isotope can target tumors , according to the American Brain Tumor Association , particularly brain tumour that demand preciseness handling .
Erythrite mineral containing cobalt.
Just the facts
fit in to the Jefferson National Linear Accelerator Laboratory , the properties of atomic number 27 are :
Cobalt controversy
Cobalt salts were used to decorate ancient Formosan pottery with brilliant blue designs . Other ancient civilizations hear the aesthetic voltage of cobalt without knowing what metal they were using . One 2014 studyfound cobalt blue glass beads in a Danish grave 3,400 years old . The same spyglass is retrieve in ancient Egyptian tomb , include King Tutankhamen ’s , the researchers reported . The uncovering hint at swap connections linking the two far - flung localization .
Ancient origins aside , Co itself was not find out until the 1730s — and even then , it was years before the scientific community of interests agreed that this new metal existed . Until the 1700s , the pigment made from cobalt were called smalt or safflor , and were thought to be made of atomic number 83 , copper , iron and arsenous oxide . Then , Swedish scientist George Brandt pulled an unknown metallic element out of some ore from the Riddarhyttan mines of Sweden . ( It pays to have connexion : Brandt ’s family owned these mine . )
Brandt described the metal and its properties , admit its magnetics , and even describe what happens when cobalt is dissolved in ammonia . ( It turns scarlet , " like cherry juice , " accord to a 1967 profile of Brandt in the journal Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science . ) The discovery was controversial , accord to the Brandt profile , and even in 1760 , Brandt was still defending the find in a talk at the Academy of Science . Fellow Swedish scientist Torbern Bergman would finally channel further field to confirm Brandt ’s finding in 1780 , according to a2011 clause in Nature Chemistry .
The only static isotope of cobalt is Co-59 . But radioactive Co can occur naturally , too . In August 2014 , a squad of astrophysicists reported thediscovery of cobalt-56 in supernova SN2014J , an exploding star 11 million light - years from Earth . The supernova pass off about 60 percent of the sun ’s mass in cobalt-56 , the investigator report in the diary Nature . The isotope has a half - life of 77 mean solar day and bit by bit decay into iron-56 .
Who knew?
Current research
Though still used in pigment , cobalt plays a mixed bag of role in modern technology . In September 2014 , researchers in Denmark reported that they ’d created acrystalline materialthat can describe oxygen from air , store it , and then bring out it as need . Just 2.6 gallons ( 10 liters ) of the material can sop up all the air from a room , the researchers said . Just as smoothing iron is an essential ingredient in hemoglobin , the line of descent protein that snags atomic number 8 from the lung , atomic number 27 is a fundamental constituent of this new textile .
If O - slurp cobalt were n’t odd enough , a grouping of American researchers are working to integrate the metal into the food - safety process . Today , nutrient are test for dangerous bacteria with a DoL - intensive operation that involves taking a sampling , isolating and culturing any bacteria and waiting for them to rise . During this meter , the batch of food being try has to seat on the shelf — a especially adult problem for fresh fruits and vegetable .
Now , Sam Nugen , a intellectual nourishment scientist at the University of Massachusetts , Amherst , hop to come up with a good solution . Nugen and his squad have develop a way to confiscate cobalt - branding iron nanoparticles to phage , or viruses that taint bacterium .
The phage interlock on to specific bacterium , such asE. coli . Next , researchers use a attractor to draw in the cobalt - iron nanoparticles , fundamentally jerk the phage ( and their bacterium loads ) out of the food sample . ( This mental process would be done only on small sample of any given food , and the phages and nanoparticles would not be introduced into the food supply . )
With traditional iron oxide nanoparticles , this magnetic mental process would take all night , Nugen told Live Science .
" By using Co , which has dissimilar magnetic properties than the iron oxide , we ’re able to make a much unassailable attractor , " Nugen tell . The bacteriophage and bacteria " can be tear out in seconds . "
This process is well visible in a YouTube picture send by Nugen that shows the difference betweentraditional nanoparticles and Co - iron nanoparticles .
Ultimately , Nugen aver , the idea is to direct the bacteriophage to facilitate detect , as well as isolate , dangerous bacterium . phage infect bacterium by injecting them with their own genetic fabric , turning the bacterial cell into a factory for more bacteriophage . researcher could order for the phage to thrust the bacterium to express sure factor or protein that solid food scientists could then discover .
In June 2014 , Nugen and his team encounter a grant tot up nearly half a million dollars from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to perfect the technique . They ’re now working to optimize the separation .
" For us , this all relates to nanotechnology , and what we can do most efficiently because of the diminished size of it we have , " Nugen say . " The Co countenance us go minuscule while still being able to pull the particles out tight . "
Additional resource
Read the entree on atomic number 27 from these scientific organizations :
