4/19/11

Cesium, an awesome element

Cesium is not only a cool looking silvery-gold alkali metal element that is liquid at room temperature, but it is also used in atomic clocks. These clocks measure frequency with an accuracy of 2 nanoseconds per day, or one second in 1.4 million years, which means they would be off by about 2 seconds since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Pretty cool application of an extremely pyrophoric element if you ask me. Check out the video of a volatile reaction between water and Cesium below.

24 comments:

  1. Very cool stuff! Great information as I did not know about this.

    Definitely following for more posts :). Keep 'em coming!

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  2. Cool info! Thank you for this :D

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  3. at my school, someone threw a ball of sodium into the pool, can you say BOOM?

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  4. Atomic clocks are really impressive

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  5. Oh, I am going to have some fun with this.

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  6. interesting, i love chemistry in general even though im a political science/economics major :p

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  7. That's an awesome piece of metal :O

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  8. I love Periodic Table of Videos, videos.

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  9. stand back! im viewing science!

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  10. That was pretty cool, was hoping for a bigger bang but nice.

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  11. That guy has awesome hair!

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  12. I don't even like chemistry that much, but you still managed to keep me entertained.

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  13. Yeah, it's stuff that I just don't have the mind for, but it's still interesting.

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  14. That old guys fro was very distracting. Good video and that's a very interesting fact about atomic clocks

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  15. I actually had no idea that this is what kept the clocks running.

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  16. Pretty interesting but i got lost after 0:44

    That person... just... so much

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  17. Wow that was great, never knew about atomic clocks..

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  18. Facinating, nice blast. Didnt know about the clocks.

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  19. i would like to inhale this

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  20. great post! keep up the good work

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  21. Chemistry is some cool stuff.

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  22. Wow. I am still thinking about majoring in Chemistry.

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