Spot the Frippet: tantalum.

Tantalum is a metal. It's hard, shiny, and looks like stainless steel:


photo by Alchemist-hp (talk) (www.pse-mendelejew.de) 

Admittedly you probably won't be able to see any tantalum with your naked eyes anywhere near you, but there will be some near you in your dwelling place - or even in your hand - and you can deduce its existence.

How do I know? Because tantalum, though rare, is used in the electronic innards of more or less everything, including your mobile phone, your camera, your computer, your car, and that old VHS video player you haven't quite got round to throwing away yet.

You also get the stuff in nuclear reactors and missiles. 

So if you do get round to clearing out the loft...

Tantalum has a very high melting point, and it's really difficult to get it to react with acids, which means that it doesn't corrode. It's rare stuff, but, obviously, important.

But the real reason tantalum is featuring on The Word Den is because of it's name. 

What's so tantalising about it?

This.

Spot the Frippet: tantalum. This word used to be tantalium. It's chemical abbreviation is Ta, and this means that its association with the lower halides feature Ta-Ta bonds. (I have very little idea what this means, but it's still cool.)

Tantalum is named after the Greek demi-god Tantalus.

Tantalus is most famous for being punished by being placed eternally in a river under a fruit tree, where the river receded from his hand if he ever tried to scoop up water to drink, and the fruit tree rose out of his reach if he ever tried to pluck a fruit to eat. 

The element Tantalum's habit of refusing to react with acids really is quite annoying, but to call it after Tantalus does seem to have been a bit of an over-reaction.

(Tantalus was really horrible, by the way: not only did he steal the gods' food, but he killed his own son Pelops and tried to feed him to the gods to find out if they'd notice. They did, devised a particularly nasty punishment for Tantalus, and put Pelops back together again.)

The name Tantalus, originally Talantatos, means who has much to bear, from talas, wretched.

But, hey, serve him right.