Liberal Arts Blog — Periodic Table XXII — Iodine “Violet” — Essential to Thyroid Function, Two Billion People Deficient, Pregnancy and Breastfeeding, Michigan 1924, Cloud Seeding
Liberal Arts Blog — Wednesday is the Joy of Science, Engineering, and Technology Day
Today’s Topic — Periodic Table XXII — Iodine “violet” — essential to thyroid function, two billion people deficient, pregnancy and breastfeeding, Michigan 1924, cloud seeding
Last week goosebumps (horipillation), blushing (erubescence), and the mystery of tears of joy. The time before that “thinking in threes” and the connections between the pitch, yaw, and roll of airplanes, the sagittal, coronal, and transverse planes in medicine, and the bio-mechanics of the serve in tennis. Today we return to the series on the Periodic Table, the most beautiful picture in human history by far as measured with the yardstick of economy — saying more in less space.
This is the twenty-first in a series on the marvels and mysteries of the Periodic Table.
We began with phosphorus, then nitrogen, potassium, sodium, calcium, oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine, carbon, copper, iron, and lead. Then we proceeded to silicon, zinc, magnesium, gold, platinum. Then a break to discuss the eclipse. Then a return with molybdenum, and helium.
Today, iodine. Number 53 in the periodic table. Discovered by Bernard Courtois (1777–1838), a manufacturer of saltpeter, in 1811 and named by chemist and physicist Joseph LouisGay-Lussac (1778–1850) in 1813. The name is from the Greek for “violet” because the semi-lustrous nonmetallic solid turns to a violet liquid at 114 degrees centigrade and a violet gas at 184 degrees C.
What do you know about iodine that the rest of us would delight to learn?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
GLOBAL HEALTH: THE LEADING PREVENTABLE CAUSE OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES IS THYROID DEFICIENCY
1. “India has 500 million with a deficiency, 54 million with goiter (above), and 2 million with congenital iodine deficiency (formerly known as cretinism).
2. Iodine is essential to proper brain and bone development during pregnancy and infancy.
3. It is an essential component of thyroid hormones which play a key role in metabolism.
NB: Below, iodine vapor in a flask.
2024 — THE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF SALT IODIZATION
1. Started in Michigan in 1924.
2. But as of 1990 only 20% of the world’s population had access to iodized salt.
3. By 2006 had risen to 66%.
NB: Now 89%.
THE “GOITER BELT” — Appalachia, Upper Middle West, Pacific Northwest — the soil in Michigan was especially iodine-deficient
1. “At the time of the draft for World War I, 31% of candidates from one region in Michigan were considered unfit for service to goiter too large to allow them to button a uniform.”
2. “US Public Health Service surveys in the 1920s reported goiter rates of 70 to 100% in schoolchildren in portions of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.”
3. “According to a study in China, providing the sufficient quantity of iodine to pregnant women helped increase a baby’s IQ by a good 12 points.”
HOW MUCH IODINE YOU NEED DEPENDS ON YOUR AGE, WHETHER PREGNANT
THE SEEDING OF CLOUDS WITH SILVER IODIDE — the secret tests of the British Ministry of Defense in August 1952 in the West of England
1. “Silver iodide can be used to seed clouds and thereby initiate rainfall. One gram of silver iodide can provide a trillion seed crystals which water favor will condense into droplets large enough to fall to the earth as rain.” (John Emsley, Nature’s Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements)
2. “An aircraft flying through a rain cloud dispersing this chemical as a fine smoke can produce a torrential downpour.”
3. “Secret test carried out by Britain’s Ministry of Defense. in August 1952 in the West of England resulted in a flash flood that engulfed the seaside resort of Lynmouth, sweeping away houses and sending 31 inhabitants to their deaths. (Induced rain formation was being tested as a strategy for bogging down tanks and troops and thereby hindering their advance.)”
APPENDIX — THE THYROID GLAND — A BUTTERFLY SHAPED ORGAN IN YOUR NECK
How the arrival of iodized salt 100 years ago changed America
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-HealthProfessional/
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac — Wikipedia
Iodized salt: Celebrating the centennial of a major US public health triumph
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
A LINK TO THE LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED BY THEME:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
ATTACHMENT BELOW -
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to science, engineering, or technology.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to science and engineering.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. Or to cement in your mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
