Mendeleev's Country Table Trivia Quiz

Answer: Silver

Antigua and Barbuda (code: AG) is one of the smaller countries in the Caribbean with the capital St John's being located in western Antigua. It was a British colony for over 300 years, being granted independence in 1981. The main silver (symbol: Ag) connection used to be through piracy, however these days it is through commemorative silver coins such as the 1 oz "Rum Runner".

Answer: Beryllium

The capital of Belgium (code: BE) is the municipality known as the City of Brussels, which is the largest municipality in the Brussels-Capital Region. It is also capital of the Flemish Region and the French Community of Belgium as well as being the administrative centre of the European Union. Beryllium (symbol: Be) has a low atomic number and its x-ray transparency makes it very useful in making "windows" for x-ray applications.

Answer: Calcium

After years of argument, Queen Victoria was asked to choose the Canadian capital. In 1859 she chose the newly renamed Ottawa after the river (meaning 'to trade' in Algonquin). The old name was Bytown. CA is the ISO 3166 code for the country. Calcium (symbol: Ca) is an alkaline earth metal and is most commonly found as calcium carbonate. It occurs in human bones as calcium phosphate.

Answer: Einsteinium

Einsteinium (symbol: Es) was discovered in the debris of the first hydrogen bomb. It is synthesised in some specialised nuclear reactors and has a half-life of around 20 days. Madrid became de facto capital of Spain in 1561 when Philip II moved his court to Madrid. The Duke of Lerma, a favourite of the next king, Philip III, caused a move elsewhere for five years. He bought up Madrid property in the ensuing real estate crash and then encouraged the king to take the capital back to Madrid. Espaņa, the Spanish word for Spain, is the source of the country code ES.

Answer: Iridium

Tehran was chosen to be capital of Iran (country code IR) in 1786, mainly to make it easier to control the country militarily. Tehran is the 32nd capital chosen for Iran (and Persia) however it may not be the last. Relocation plans were announced in 2010 as the city sits on two major earthquake fault lines and suffers severely from air pollution. Iridium (symbol Ir) is a brittle metal with a density about twice that of lead.

It takes its name after the Greek goddess Iris.

Answer: Manganese

Ulaanbaatar started off in 1639 as a mobile monastery with the present location settled in 1778 after more than twenty other sites, although people have been living there since Lower Paleolithic times. The name change to Ulaanbaatar (meaning 'red hero') came in 1924. MN is the country code for Mongolia. Mn is the symbol for manganese, a brittle silvery metal often found with iron and with many industrial uses.

It is also an essential human dietary requirement.

Answer: Sodium

Almost exactly at the geographic centre of Namibia (country code: NA), Windhoek was developed at the site of a hot spring from 1840 by Jonker Afrikaner, Captain of the Orlam people. Subsequent wars destroyed it and it was founded a second time in 1890 by the German Empire when the country was a colony. Sodium (symbol: Na) is a soft metal most commonly encountered as sodium chloride or salt. The free metal is not found in nature.

Answer: Neptunium

Capital of Nepal (country code NP), settlement in the area goes back at least 2,000 years. The name of the city is derived from a building called Kasthamandap, meaning 'wood-covered shelter'. It was destroyed in the 2015 Nepal earthquake, resulting in an archaeological dig which dated the oldest section of that particular building to around the 7th century.

Named after the planet, neptunium (symbol: Np) is a radioactive metal and was initially represented by a blank space in Mendeleev's periodic table. The discovery of the neutron in 1932 led Enrico Fermi to bombard various elements with neutrons to see what would happen. One thing he achieved by this was making neptunium.

Answer: Silicon

Ljubljana has been settled for a long time. Ljubljana Marsh, with its archaeological evidence of pile dwellings and a 5,000 year old wooden wheel, lies to the south of the capital. Slovenia (country code SI) was part of Yugoslavia and did not become an independent country until 1992, which probably explains why it is SI rather than SL (Sierra Leone) or SV (El Salvador), which were both in existence at the time of the first edition of ISO 3166 in 1974.

The chemical element silicon (symbol: Si) is commonly found on the beach. It has a wide range of uses, often as a silicate, such as in cement and building materials, in glass and as an semiconductor in printed circuit boards.

Answer: Thorium

Known in Thai as Krung Thep, Bangkok has been around since at least the early 15th century. Its strategic position saw it expand, becoming capital of Thailand (country code: TH) in 1782 under King Rama I. The city has various names with its full ceremonial name at 168 letters earning it a place in the Guinness Book of Records. The lyrics of the 1989 song "Krung Thep Maha Nakhon" by Thai rock band Asanee-Wasan should help with memorising it.

Thorium (symbol: Th) is a slightly radioactive softish metal. All thorium isotopes are unstable with the most stable form having a half-life of about 14 billion years (roughly the age of the universe). Uses in the past include in TIG welding electrodes and camera lenses (glass doped with thorium dioxide improves the refractive index) however its radioactivity means that alternatives are now used.