March 3, 2025
Wandering Wikipedia: Titanium
This week, I was feeling positively elemental, so when the element Titanium came up as my Wikipedia random article, I got to reading.
Titanium is the 22nd element in the periodic table. It is a transition metal1, and it has various applications from mobile-phone parts (such as certain components of the iPhone) to pyrotechnics or even spacecraft (such as NASA’s Jupiter orbiter Juno.) Titanium was discovered in Cornwall, Great Britain, by a man named William Gregor (a clergyman and amateur mineralogist) in the year 1791 while he was studying deposits of sand. Titanium can also alloy2 with many other metals, such as Iron, aluminum, vanadium, and molybdenum. The resulting alloys are strong, lightweight, and versatile. Some applications of the alloys are in aerospace, military, and automotive. The two most useful properties of this metal are its corrosion resistance and its high strength-to-density ratio.
And that’s all the useless knowledge we have for you this week. Tune in next week for the next edition of “Wandering Wikipedia!”
Footnotes:
- A transition metal is a metal with ions in two of its electron shells instead of just one, allowing it to exhibit more complex (and often colorful) chemical behaviors.
- To alloy simply means “to mix”, for example: two alloyed metals are two metals that have mixed together into one metal alloy. A common example of an alloy is brass or bronze. brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, while bronze is an alloy of copper and tin.