Discover the significance of rare-earth elements, their applications in technology, and the global race for their resources.

In chemistry, we have He, Fe and Ca — but what about do, re and mi? Hauntingly beautiful melodies aren’t the first things that come to mind when looking at the periodic table of the elements. However, ...

The periodic table, which arranges elements based on chemical behavior and physical properties, is a triumph of science. Yet the first table, developed in the late 1860s, was riddled with gaps created ...

For five years, Dr. B. Smith Hopkins, professor of inorganic chemistry at the University of Illinois, had been searching through a gathering of old friends and nodding acquaintances to discover one of ...

Scientists in Japan think they've finally created the elusive element 113, one of the missing items on the periodic table of elements. Element 113 is an atom with 113 protons in its nucleus — a type ...

Creating new heavy elements is a faint bit like working a pinball machine; it takes a nice judgment of speed. Last week a group of University of California scientists led by Professor Glenn Seaborg ...

A Popular Science columnist has transformed the prosaic periodic table into a drop-dead gorgeous coffee-table book. Each of the first 100 elements gets a stunning spread with a brief bio, including ...

Welcome to the world, elements 113, 115, 117 and 118! Four new elements will join more than a hundred others on the periodic table of the elements, the International Union of Pure and Applied ...

WASHINGTON -- Five years of preparation, eight months collecting a few drops of precious radioactive material from a nuclear reactor in Tennessee, five trans-Atlantic flights, millions in research ...

Chemistry's periodic table can now welcome livermorium and flerovium, two newly named elements, which were announced Thursday (Dec. 1) by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The new ...