万物简史(MP3+中英字幕) 第354期:孤独的行星(19)
日期:2018-01-17 15:35

(单词翻译:单击)

As you might expect, oxygen is our most abundant element, accounting for just under 50 percent of the Earth's crust, but after that the relative abundances are often surprising. Who would guess, for instance, that silicon is the second most common element on Earth or that titanium is tenth? Abundance has little to do with their familiarity or utility to us. Many of the more obscure elements are actually more common than the better-known ones. There is more cerium on Earth than copper, more neodymium and lanthanum than cobalt or nitrogen. Tin barely makes it into the top fifty, eclipsed by such relative obscurities as praseodymium, samarium, gadolinium, and dysprosium.
你也许会想到,氧是最丰富的元素,占地壳的将近50%。但是,其后的排列往往出乎人们的意料,比如,谁想得到,在最常见的元素当中,硅在地球上占第2位或钛占第10位?元素的丰度,与我们对它们的熟悉程度,或他们对我们的有用程度毫无关系。许多不大知名的元素实际上比比较知名的元素还要丰富。地球上的铈比铜还多,钕和镧比钴或氮还多。锡勉强进入前50名,落后于不大知名的镤、钐、钆和镝。
mother earth

Abundance also has little to do with ease of detection. Aluminum is the fourth most common element on Earth, accounting for nearly a tenth of everything that's underneath your feet, but its existence wasn't even suspected until it was discovered in the nineteenth century by Humphry Davy, and for a long time after that it was treated as rare and precious. Congress nearly put a shiny lining of aluminum foil atop the Washington Monument to show what a classy and prosperous nation we had become, and the French imperial family in the same period discarded the state silver dinner service and replaced it with an aluminum one. The fashion was cutting edge even if the knives weren't.
丰度还与发现的难易程度毫无关系。铝是地球是第四常见元素,站到你脚底下的一切的将近十分之一,但直到19世纪汉弗莱·戴维才发现了它,才知道它的存在。在此后的很长时间里,它被作为稀有的贵重金属。为了显示美国是个有钱有派头的国家,国会差一点在华盛顿纪念碑的顶端装点一层闪闪发亮的铝箔。同一时期,法兰西王族在国宴上不再使用银质餐具,改用铝质餐具。这种时尚很解决问题,尽管刀叉却不见得。

分享到