Welcome To Rubidium Traditional Cache
BigChiefS4: These have served their purpose. Time for something new.
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Welcome To Rubidium
A series of winter-friendly caches by BigChiefS4 that will help you on your journey to completing two different challenges:
Boreal Walker's Periodic Table of Elements Challenge
Bobcam's Challenge of the Century: Welcome To…
Rubidium is a chemical element with the symbol Rb and atomic number 37. Rubidium is a soft, silvery-white metallic element of the alkali metal group, with an atomic mass of 85.4678. Elemental rubidium is highly reactive, with properties similar to those of other elements in Group 1, such as very rapid oxidation in air. Rubidium has only one stable isotope, 85Rb, with the isotope 87Rb, which composes almost 28% of naturally occurring rubidium, being slightly radioactive with a half-life of 49 billion years—more than three times longer than the estimated age of the universe.
German chemists Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff discovered rubidium in 1861 by the newly developed method of flame spectroscopy.
Rubidium's compounds have various chemical and electronic applications. Rubidium metal is easily vaporized and has a convenient spectral absorption range, making it a frequent target for laser manipulation of atoms.
Rubidium is not known to be necessary for any living organisms. However, like caesium, rubidium ions are handled by living organisms in a manner similar to potassium ions, being actively taken up by plants and by animal cells.
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