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What
the name means:
Zirconium derives from the Persian word
zargun, meaning “like gold” and the
Arabic translation from the Persian,
zarkun.
Who
identified
zirconium? The
gemstone zircon was prized by the ancients.
In 1789, Martin Heinrich Klaproth, working
in Berlin, studied a sample of zircon from
Sri Lanka (at that time known as Ceylon).
He concluded that it was made of about 70%
of an oxide of a new metal. He called this
oxide zirconia. In 1824, Jöns Jakob
Berzelius managed to extract an impure
sample of zirconium. It took another ninety
years to obtain a pure sample of the metal.
About
zirconium:
Zirconium is never found as the free
element in the Earth’s crust. It is a hard,
silvery metal and extremely resistant to
corrosion. It is used in the walls of
nuclear reactors since it does not easily
absorb neutrons. Interestingly enough,
although Zirconium is rare in the Earth’s
crust, it has a greater percentage
occurrence in lunar rock samples. |
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