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osmium

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osmium

a very hard brittle bluish-white metal occurring with platinum and alloyed with iridium in osmiridium: used to produce platinum alloys, mainly for pen tips and instrument pivots, as a catalyst, and in electric-light filaments. Symbol: Os; atomic no.: 76; atomic wt.: 190.2; valency: 0 to 8; relative density: 22.57; melting pt.: 3033?30?C; boiling pt.: 5012?100?C
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

osmium

[′äz·mē·əm]
(chemistry)
A chemical element, symbol Os, atomic number 76, atomic weight 190.2.
(metallurgy)
A hard white metal of rare natural occurrence.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Osmium

 

Os, a chemical element in group VIII of the Mendeleev periodic system. Atomic number, 76; atomic weight, 190.2. One of the platinum metals.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Andy Oppenheimer, a nuclear, biological and chemical weapons expert for Jane's Information Group, said osmium tetroxide was an unusual choice as a chemical weapon but it could kill.
Andy Oppenheimer, a nuclear,biological and chemical weapons expert for Jane's InformationGroup, said osmium tetroxide was an unusual choice of chemical but it could kill.
Suspects' conversations were eavesdropped on at the GCHQ electronic listening centre and police moved to disrupt the plot at an early stage before any osmium tetroxide was obtained.
According to Webster's New World Dictionary of Science (1998, Helicon), osmium's discoverer, Smithson Tennant, named the element "after the irritating smell of one of its oxides."--P.
A volatile form of osmium is generated during platinum refinement and also during the normal operation of cars, and it gets dispersed globally through the atmosphere.
In a surprising overturn, the lustrous, blue-white element osmium has beaten diamond in a test of compressibility.
Washington, Dec 9 (ANI): Researchers at University of Warwick say that a precious metal called osmium, which has never been used in a clinical setting before, may lead to next generation of improved cancer treatments.
Certain metals, such as osmium, would have been pulled into Earth's central core if they had been present before the planet got wet.
Suspecting that hassium has properties similar to osmium and other so-called group 8 elements, chemists placed hassium on the periodic table directly below osmium.
Smotkin then tested the most promising ones in fuel cells and found that a particular blend of platinum, ruthenium, osmium, and iridium is much more active than the platinum-ruthenium alloy now considered the best catalyst available.
They reacted a 50-50 mixture of carbon-76 molecules with an osmium compound and a plant alkaloid that preferentially grabs one version of the molecule (SN: 1/2/93, p.6).
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