First of all happy 17th of May to friends in Norway and abroad. The 17th of May is the Norway's National Day. But did you know that we also has a National Element of the Periodic Table? In 2019 the Norwegian people voted which element that should be our official National Element of the Periodic Table. The overwhelming winner was Thorium, element number 90 in the periodic system. Norway is one of the places in the world with the biggest concentrations of Thorium the world. Thorium is actually named after the Norse God, Thor with the hammer. Thorium was first discovered in 1928 by Morten Thrane Esmark, a Norwegian priest and hoppy mineralogist at Løvøya Island, Telemark, Norway. But if was officially discovered by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1829. Thorium was first observed to be radioactive in 1898, by the German chemist Gerhard Carl Schmidt and later that year, independently, by the Polish-French physicist Marie Curie. In fact thorium might play in important role in the green environment shift, producing cleaner energy. Back in the 1960's it was a run between Thorium and Uranium about what element that should be used in reactors. But where Thorium is cleaner and more safe than Uranium. I might do a follow up on this, as it is very interesting, and I see different labs ask me about mineral samples of zircon for studies. Why zircons, you say? Well, actually zircons holds a small fraction of Thorium. Studies say that 1 kg of pure zircon crystals holds up to 0,67 grams of Thorium. So if you own a zircon crystal, you actually owns a small fraction of Thorium, the official National Element of the Periodic Table. Happy 17th of May. Gratulerer med dagen :)
