Fluorine
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Fluorine (atomic number 9) is the lightest of the halogen elements, and also the most reactive.
[edit] Crazy cool facts
- It is a yellow gas that killed a lot of the people who tried to isolate it.
- It is so reactive that hydrofluoric acid (HF), if it gets into your bloodstream, will suck the calcium out of your bones into your bloodstream, screwing up your electrolyte balance.
- Fluorine, either free, or as a fluoride ion in hydrofluoric acid, will also dissolve glass.
- Three atoms of fluorine will combine with a single atom of chlorine (F3Cl) to demonstrate emphatically that there are things more entertainingly hazardous than fluorine gas.
Due to its reactivity, fluorine clings like a mofo to practically any molecule you bond it to, a feature which makes Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene) nicely slippery and unreactive. Drug companies like organofluorine chemistry because substituting a fluorine atom for a hydrogen atom does all kinds of nifty things; the chemical industry likes fluorine because it makes nasty things like uranium much easier to work with, and it can do neat tricks like making compounds with some of the heavier noble gases (krypton and xenon; possibly radon, but it doesn't seem like anyone would want to try that one). As a general rule, though, you don't really want to be anywhere near the stuff.
Fluorine, in the form of salts such as sodium fluoride, is an essential element in water fluoridation, which some conspiracy theorists say is a plot to poison us all.
[edit] External links
- Theodore Gray's Periodic Table Table entry on fluorine (including one of the scariest samples in his awesome collection, a quartz vial of fluorine gas)
