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name of the Scandinavian goddess of beauty and fertility, the rainbow colors of vanadium are absolutely adorable

element today is about half of the periodic table and is one of many elements found in the weeks and months ahead as some of you have forgotten, or never heard. I hope this series can change that.

vanadium, denoted by the symbol V and atomic number 23, is a soft gray, gray, ductile transition metal to be purified. Like many transition metals, it is a bit annoying to see once purified, but when contained in a mineral, that is when the true colors shine through vanadium.

Although vanadium is rare on Earth, can be found in a number of minerals, many of which are very colorful (as seen in the mineral, Vanadinite [pictured above]). This element is most famous for the variety of beautiful colors displayed by the various changes of oxidation state. Vanadium is named after these colors: he was appointed to the Scandinavian goddess of beauty and fertility, Vanadis (Freyja), because these names were originally given to a number of delicious colors adopted by vanadium-containing compounds.

You may remember a video I showed you before, one of the chemists at the University of Nottingham, Professor Deborah Kays said his favorite is the chemical reaction of various colors that vanadium shows how the change of oxidation state. Here's a video for the Open University, which captures the series of reactions:

In the video we saw vanadium successively reduced by the elemental zinc to display different colors in its four oxidation states: left 2 (purple), 3 (green), 4 (blue) and 5 (yellow). (Photo: Steffen Kristensen [public domain]).
Call me a fool for pretty colors (and I am!), But as a biologist, I must emphasize that vanadium is concentrated and used a wide variety of living organisms to produce color ( and, possibly, whether to produce a toxin or toxins).
Probably the concentration of vanadium are the most remarkable creatures who live in the sea (significant at least the owners of fish and divers). For example, the concentration of vanadium in tunicates is more than 100 times the concentration of vanadium in sea water around them. The reason we focus on special cells in their bodies vanadium is a biological mystery. But the mystery or not, had to share this photo of a colony of beautiful bluebell tunicates, Clavelina moluccensis vanabins containing (a group of metalloproteins to concentrate and vanadium union) :

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, is also on Twitter @ UniNottingham
You met these elements:
titanium:
You , atomic number
scandium:
, atomic number
Calcium:
, atomic number
potassium:
, the atomic number
Argon:
, atomic number
chlorine:
, atomic number
sulfur:
, atomic number
Phosphorus:

, atomic number

Silicon:

aa, atomic number