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cobalt: a beautiful piece of bad news for beer drinkers

element cobalt is cobalt

today, beautiful! This element is known by the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As you can see in the picture above, cobalt is a lot like her sister of transition metals, with silver-gray, shiny, solid at room temperature. Its name comes from the German

KOBOLD _{ore, elf, and bounce toxic fumes containing arsenic at the foundry, and contained a small number (known) metals. But despite the discontent of the cobalt mines, which was widely known and appreciated since the Bronze Age, as it offers a beautiful blue color and distinctive jewelry and paintings, and of course, is the basis of cobalt blue glass. Today, cobalt is used in a variety of important issues such as the professor mentioned in the video, but I'm more interested in its biological importance and, of course, in its palette of beautiful colors .}

As I said, color cobalt blue is known for: silicate of cobalt and cobalt (II) aluminate (coal

, "cobalt blue") provide a distinctive blue color to glass, ceramics, inks, paints and other substances. In the right image is a beautiful glass bottle cobalt blue. Cobalt was added to the glass to protect the fluids that might contain the harmful rays of light. (Image courtesy of Jurii, Creative Commons Attribution 1.0.) But as his sister transition metals, cobalt can take a number of beautiful colors, bluer. When combined with various partners cobalt halides, anhydrides are color coded, for example, cobalt (II) fluoride (COF

) is colored pink , cobalt (II) bromide (COBRA
) is green, cobalt (II) iodide (CIO ) is a very dark blue-black, and perhaps most interesting is the cobalt (II) (CoCl
), which is blue, while its hydrate is red. Just for fun, here's a video that captures the color changes in an aqueous solution of CoCl


Cobalt is not found in its elemental state in nature, but traces of cobalt are found in most everything from rock to bacteria, fungi, algae, plants, animals and even you and me. Cobalt is an essential trace element and is the key ingredient in the cobalamin coenzyme, which is probably the most familiar of vitamin B12 (for fans of quiz, it is the only vitamin that contains a metal ion). This vitamin is manufactured for us by our friendly intestinal flora. A unique story that I found while researching this piece is that the compounds of cobalt were added to beer to Canada in 1966, making the beer foam more time. Unfortunately, none of the types of companies that have allowed it to happen stopped thinking that this can be potentially dangerous, may cause the consumption of large doses of cobalt, which can be toxic. And, of course, the experiment was performed on an unsuspecting public, and we found that high doses of cobalt are toxic, resulting in cardiomyopathy, which later became known as "beer drinker's cardiomyopathy" [doi: 10.1081 / CLT-100102420].
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Video journalist Brady Haran is the man with the camera and the University of Nottingham is the place with scientists. You can follow him on twitter @ periodicvideos Brady and the University of Nottingham on twitter @ UniNottingham
You met these elements:
Iron:
, atomic number
of manganese
, atomic number
Chrome:
, atomic number
Vanadium:
The atomic number
titanium
, atomic number
scandium:
, atomic number
Calcium:
, atomic number
Potassium:
, atomic number
Argon:

, atomic number

chlorine:

sulfur:

, atomic number

Phosphorus:

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