25 Manganese

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You've probably heard of manganese nodules, those funny blobs found in the deep ocean. Remember when Howard Hughes built a ship to explore mining them, and they were going to be a great new natural resource? Turns out the whole thing was a cover story for the CIA's attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine. Seriously, it is now a well established fact that the Hughes Glomar Explorer was built to CIA specs, and the manganese nodules story was just as story.

The nodules are real, and they do exist in the deep ocean, they just aren't nearly as exciting as they were made out to be. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of anything exciting to say about manganese other than this story. It's used in the Sacagawea Dollar coin?

Detailed Technical Data

Compare at other websites:
www.webelements.com
Los Alamos National Labs
Royal Society of Chemistry
Isotope information
Minerals
Translations and Etymology
Science Fiction (Main Site)
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Collections:
Elements in the Human Body
Minerals
Elements I Have Extra Of
Samples with Rotatable Images

Small lump 99.95%.
Kindly donated by David Franco, who sent many elements after seeing the slashdot discussion.
Source: David Franco
Contributor: David Franco
Acquired: 17 May, 2002
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 99.95%

Fine Powder.
This is a fine powder of manganese. Gets on everything. Weighs more than you'd expect for a powder. Highly toxic.
Source: Mark Rollog
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 20 July, 2002
Price: $7
Size: 0.0001"
Purity: >99%

Lots of lumps.
This is about a pound of lumps similar to the one I got from David Franco (see above). Since I know Franco sends only the very purest of samples, and since these look identical to the one he sent, I feel reasonably confident in assigning them a similar purity. They were obviously created by the same basic process.
Source: eBay seller snooj
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 22 August, 2002
Price: $10
Size: 0.75"
Purity: 99.9%

Sample from the Red Green and Blue Company Element Set.
The Red Green and Blue company in England sells a very nice element collection in several versions. Max Whitby, the director of the company, very kindly donated a complete set to the periodic table table.

To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description or the company's website which includes many photographs and pricing details. I have two photographs of each sample from the set: One taken by me and one from the company. You can see photographs of all the samples displayed in a periodic table format: my pictures or their pictures. Or you can see both side-by-side with bigger pictures in numerical order.

The picture on the left was taken by me. Here is the company's version (there is some variation between sets, so the pictures sometimes show different variations of the samples):

Source: Max Whitby of The Red Green & Blue Company
Contributor: Max Whitby of The Red Green & Blue Company
Acquired: 25 January, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 99.9%

Sample from the Everest Element Set.
Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (excepted gasses) weight about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid.

To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order.

Source: Rob Accurso
Contributor: Rob Accurso
Acquired: 7 February, 2003
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%

Rhodochrosite. (External Sample)
Rhodochrosite.
Location: John Gray's Collection
Photographed: 11 March, 2003
Size: 3"
Composition: Mn C O₃