Magic Metal

Today I am going to tell you a magic trick.

You may remember that I talked about magnets in my article the other day.

There were super magnets, artificial neodymium magnets with very high magnetic power.

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Today our topic is again about magnets, but not directly magnets.

Now imagine such a metal that the opposite is the case, that is, we have such a metal that the super neodymium magnet sometimes attracts this metal to itself much more strongly than iron.

I'm talking about a metal that is much more sensitive to magnetic forces than iron.

But let this metal be a magic metal, and sometimes magnetism can't do anything to it!

Sometimes this metal is indifferent to magnetism, just like a piece of aluminum.

And you can somehow control it to do this yourself!

Do you think this is going to happen?

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If I were a magician, such a metal would be very useful to me. 

Who knows what magic tricks I could do with such a metal, people would be amazed.

I would pull my trick and, for example, I would first move a coin made of this metal myself with a magnet, but when I gave the magnet and the coin to the audience, they couldn't do the same thing, wouldn't that be funny?

Okay, I don't have a very good imagination for such things, but a creative magician would probably find some very interesting tricks to do with such a metal.

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Yes, there is such a metal in nature!

The element "gadolinium" with the symbol Gd and atomic number 64 in the periodic table! 

I think it is gadolinium in Turkish.

Above a certain temperature, this element behaves indifferent to magnetism like aluminum, but when it cools down a bit, it sticks to a magnet even stronger than iron.

Isn't that interesting? 

A metal whose response to magnetism can be controlled by heat!

Moreover, it only needs to be cooled to slightly below room temperature to be susceptible to magnetic force.  

You can even cool it with cold water.

In other words, the heat level in question is not a temperature at which magnets can lose their magnetic properties due to excessive heat. 

It is enough to heat a cold coin in your palm for it to lose its magnetism! 

In my magic trick, if you play with a magnet with a gadolinium coin that you have cooled beforehand, warm it a little in your palm and give it to the audience, he will not be able to do the same thing.

He will be surprised.

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Piere Curie, yes, the French husband of Marie Sklodowska Curie, the Pole who discovered the radioactive element radium.

He is also a physicist and a chemist at the same time, and the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to him and his wife together. 1903 Nobel prize, I think.

Marie Curie was the first female scientist to receive the Nobel Prize. And she received this prize twice.

Her husband Piere Curie worked a lot on magnetism and discovered that magnets, or metals called "ferrometals", which are affected by magnets, lose their magnetic properties or are affected by magnetism at a certain temperature level.

This temperature level is called the Curie point or Curie temperature. 

Each ferrometal material has a different Curie point.

The Curie point of the element gadolinium is room temperature, 19-20 °C.

When the element's temperature is below this temperature, it is affected by magnetism, but above it is not affected by any magnet like aluminum.

Iron also has a Curie temperature, but the limit for iron is quite high, 770 °C.

Nickel, for example, is 354 °C.

So these are quite high temperatures.

Gadolinium, on the other hand, is described as a magic metal because its effect on magnetism changes at room temperature. 

Actually, the same magic applies to all ferrometals. It's just that the heat level of the others is quite high.

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Jean Charles Galissard de Marignac found the element gadolinium as an ore in nature in 1880. 

But he sent these ores to the Finnish chemist Johan Gadolin to analyze them.

This oxidized ore was later named "gadolinite" by other chemists in honor of Johan Gadolin. Gadolin was a respected chemist, I understand.

In 1886, it was the French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran who separated the pure element "gadolinium" from gadolinite ore.

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Apart from this element's interesting response to the magnetic effect I mentioned, it also has an extreme attraction to neutrons.

Actually, I say interesting, but all metals affected by magnetism have the same property, it's just that this one's Curie point is at room temperature, so it seems interesting! Other metals do the same thing at much higher temperatures.

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Yes, gadolinium is a neutron monster. 

If there is an idle neutron lying around, it immediately absorbs it.

This is a very useful feature for keeping nuclear reactions under control in nuclear reactors.

As you know, as a result of nuclear reactions, the neutrons scattered from the disintegrating uranium isotopes disintegrate other uranium atoms, and in this way, with a chain reaction, uranium isotopes become a bomb. 

Atomic bomb!

But with gadolinium in the mix, more than enough neutrons are absorbed by this element to allow a controlled nuclear reaction in nuclear reactors.

So we are talking about a very useful element that is also used in nuclear energy technology.

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But if it is such an important element, is it something that can be found easily in the world?

Actually, gadolinium is a rare mineral and can only be found in oxidized form in nature, in the form of gadolinite.

Canada, the United States, Sweden and Norway, Japan, Madagascar, Mozambique and the Republic of South Africa are the only countries where ore deposits are currently in operation.

Norway is the country that exports 95% of its needs to the world.

Do we have any?

I don't know, maybe we can find it if we search for it, we have an organization called the Mineral Research and Exploration Institute (MTA), we have a lot of geological engineers working there, they would probably have found it by now.

I think it is a valuable mineral, if it exists, it must be found!

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I say it is used in nuclear power plants, but there are many other areas where it can be used.

For example, it can also be used in MRI technology in medicine. 

It can even be used in refrigerators because it reduces energy consumption even more.

But what I liked the most was the possibility of using it in temperature-controlled magnetic motor technology. 

You can control the rotation speed and power of the motor with a simple temperature control mechanism. 

Moreover, since gadolinium is a metal that is highly sensitive to magnetic effects, it is a very effective metal in obtaining maximum power from neodymium magnets.

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How do you like it? Do you like this magical element?

For crystal enthusiasts, there are beautiful gadolinite crystals in nature, and it is possible to find and buy them on the internet.

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Our country is a paradise for various minerals. The important thing is what to look for, where to look for it and for what purpose. 

I think we should look for this mineral, maybe we will find it if we really look for it.

Let me end this article here for today.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow.