Vanadium - Atomic Number 23 Traditional Cache

This cache is the 12th in a series of 22 hides to be named after chemical elements and placed on Ramsey streets (and sometimes points North) with the same name. The series will speed up the qualification requirements for challenge cache GC2P5TJ, since some already published elements require traveling great distances. The closest cache named Vanadium is located 120 miles Northwest.

History:The discovery of vanadium happened "twice". The discovery of vanadium was claimed first by Andres Manuel del Rio (a Spanish mineralogist) at Mexico City in 1803. He prepared a number of salts from a material contained in "brown lead" (now called vanadite, from a mine near Hidalgo in Northern Mexico). He found the colours reminiscent of those shown by chromium, so he called the element panchromium ("something which can take or have any colour"). He later renamed the element erythronium ("red") after noting that most of these salts turned red upon heating. It seems he withdrew his claim after a Frenchman, Collett-Desotils, disputed his claim, and it was only 30 years later that it was shown that del Rio's work was, in fact, correct.

Iin 1831, Nils Gabriel Sefström (a Swedish chemist) was working with some iron ores and was able to isolate a new oxide. This lead to the element being named in honour of the Northern-Germanic tribes' goddess Vanadis (Vanadis, a by-name of Freya referring to beauty and fertility) because of its beautiful multicoloured compounds. In the same year, Friedrich Wöhler came in to possession of del Rio's "brown lead" and confirmed del Rio's discovery of vanadium, although the name vanadium still stands rather than del Rio's suggestion of erythronium.

Metallic vanadium was not made until 1867 when Henry Enfield Roscoe reduced vandium chloride (VCl₃) with hydrogen gas to give vanadium metal and HCl.

Sources:Vanadium is not found as the free metal in nature. It is however found in many minerals, of which perhaps the most important are carnotite [K(UO₂)(VO₄)1.5H₂O], roscoelite [a mica: 2K₂O.2Al₂O₃.(Mg, Fe)O.3V₂O₅.10SiO₂.4H₂O], vanadinite [3Pb₃(VO₄)₂.PbCl₂], mottramite [Pb, Ca, Cu)₃(VO₄)₂], and patronite (VS₄). It is also present in some crude oils. Vanadium has been identified in the spectra of the sun and other stars.

• Its structural strength and neutron cross section properties makes it useful in nuclear applications.
• The metal is used for producing rust-resistant springs and steels used for making tools.
• About 80% of the vanadium now produced is used as ferrovanadium or as a steel additive.
• Vanadium foil is used as a bonding agent in biding titanium to steel
• The pentoxide V₂O₅ is used in ceramics and as a chemical catalyst.
• Vanadium compounds are used for dyeing and printing fabrics.
• A vanadium-gallium mixture is used in producing superconductive magnets.