Liberal Arts Blog — Periodic Table XXIII: Manganese — Essential To Human Life, Also Steel Making, Plus A Little History
Liberal Arts Blog — Wednesday is the Joy of Science, Engineering, and Technology Day
Today’s Topic — Periodic Table XXIII: Manganese — essential to human life, also steel making, plus a little history
Last time, a distillation of the biochemistry, biophysics, and psychology of optimal breathing.
Today, a return to the series on the Periodic Table with number 25 — manganese. Not be confused with magnesium, which is also essential to life (notably to chlorophyll) and has many of the same letters.
What do you know about manganese that the rest of us would delight to learn?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
MANGANESE AND THE HUMAN BODY — needs depend on age and whether pregnant or lactating
1. “Your body uses manganese to make energy and protect your cells from damage.”
2. “Your body also needs manganese for strong bones, reproduction, blood clotting, and a health immune system.” Who knew!!!!
3. How do I get it? Whole grains (brown rice, oatmeal, and whole wheat bread; clams, oysters, and mussels; nuts such as hazelnuts and pecans; legumes such as soybeans and lentils; some fruits, such as pineapple, and blueberries; tea; many spices such as black pepper.”
FOURTH MOST USED METAL ON EARTH AFTER IRON, ALUMINUM AND COPPER — for example in making steel and aluminum — specifically, beverage cans….
1. Steel: prevents surface cracking at high temperatures, combines with sulfur (an unwanted element in steel, prevents corrosion and makes “steel more resistant to abrasion…”
2. Aluminum: uses include (in addition to beverage cans): “kitchenware, roofing, car radiators, transportation.”
3. Biggest producers are South Africa and Australia but manganese is mined in 30 countries.
NB: “The earliest known human use of Manganese compounds was in the Stone Age when humans used manganese dioxide as a pigment for their cave painting during the upper paleolithic period, 17,000 years ago.”
“The presence of manganese in the iron ore used by the Spartans perhaps explains why their steel weapons were superior to those of their enemies.”
FOUR SCIENTIFIC MILESTONES — German Johan Rudolf Glauber, Swedes Cal Wilhelm Sheele, Johan Gottlieb Gahn, and German-British William Siemens (below, best mutton chops ever?)
1. ‘The German chemist Glauber (1604–1670) obtained permanganate, the first usable manganese salt.”
2. “Nearly a century later, manganese oxide became the basis for the manufacture of chlorine.”
3. “Manganese was recognized as an element by the Swedish chemist Scheele (1742–1786).”
NB: “The metal was isolated in 1774 by one of his collaborators, another Swedish chemist, Johan Gottlief Gahn (1745–1818).
“In 1866, Sir William Siemens (1823–1883) patented the use of ferro-manganese in steelmaking to control the levels of phosphorus and sulphur.”
https://www.manganese.org/about-manganese/
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.
