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Vanadium is used mostly as an alloying element for iron. "Vanadium steel" is a common alloy used for tools like wrenches, socket sets, etc. Vanadium as an impurity gives the color to many pretty gemstones, like emeralds. It's rarely seen or used in pure form, but is quite common in alloys and compounds.
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Bottle of antique vanadium lumps.
A lot of people seem to have an element or two in their attic. Much to my delight, after a few decades they start to wonder why, and when they hear about my periodic table project, they decide that I can give their elements a good home where they will be lovingly cared for and displayed for the enjoyment of the whole world. My interview on NPR's Science Friday radio show general several donations like this, including a highly radioactive Fiestaware bowl. But I was amazed when the producer of the show, Charles Bergquist, himself said "oh by the way, I have these elements that have been sitting around...". He donated vanadium, which is the second-hardest-to-get element in the first complete row of 18 elements (second only to scandium, which is truly hard to get).
The lumps were all covered with a thick layer of oxide from decades of exposure to the air, but I've scraped off one of them so you can see the solid metal that remains inside each lump. They are far from consumed by oxidation. For the time being I'm going to leave them alone, because cleaning them would only accelerate the oxidation process. Some day I plan to find a source for sealable clear Mylar bags that I can fill with helium to preserve these sorts of samples. Then I'll carefully clean all the oxide off and seal the shiny lumps up in a bag.
Source: Charles Bergquist
Contributor: Charles Bergquist
Acquired: 14 August, 2002
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Donated
Size: 0.1
Purity: >99%
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Tiny cylinder.
Ed bought half a dozen different tiny metal cylinders from David Franco, intending to make some kind of puzzle out of them (Ed's a puzzle person). But they turned out to be too irregular, so he donated them to the table.
Source: David Franco
Contributor: Ed Pegg Jr
Acquired: 19 August, 2002
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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 Vanadium emerald.
This is a simply lovely pale green emerald which gets its green color from an impurity of vanadium, as discussed in Uncle Tungsten. It was sold with the intention that it be cut into a jewel, but I think it's lovely just the way it is.
The sellers, Ray Gaetan and Jill St. Michael, supplied the following information about vanadium emeralds:
Emeralds vary in color from light to deep green. It's commonly thought that an emerald's color derives from the presence of chromium and/or vanadium, replacing some of the aluminum in the mineral's structure. The stone can, however, lose its color when heated strongly.
The emerald belongs to the beryl family of minerals that include aquamarine (the March birthstone), heliodor and morganite. Beryl, or beryllium aluminum silicate in chemical jargon, is a six-sided symmetrical crystal. Beryl contains beryllium, aluminum, silicon and oxygen.
Emeralds are most frequently found inside a form of shale -- a fine grained sedimentary rock. Emerald-bearing shale has undergone recrystallization due to changes in the physical environment such as pressure and temperature. Colombia produces the largest and highest quality emeralds. They were also discovered, and subsequently mined, in the Ural Mountains of Russia around 1830. In the United States, emeralds can be found in North Carolina. Around the world, they also occur in Zambia, Brazil, Pakistan, Norway, Austria, India, Malagasy and Australia.
Emerald is a variety of the species beryl. Its chemical composition is a combination of beryllium aluminum silicate and it appears as a colorless crystal in its pure state. Trace elements present in the chemical mix cause the colors of the various beryl varieties. The elements that can cause the green in beryl are chromium, vanadium or iron. In order to be considered a true emerald, the Gemological Institute of America states that a beryl crystal must be colored green by the element chromium or vanadium or both.
http://webmineral.com/data/Beryl.shtml
Source: eBay seller rrgaetan
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 22 August, 2002
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
Price: $10
Size: 0.15"
Purity: <2%
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Vanadium wrench.
This wrench is presumably a fairly standard chrome-vanadium steel alloy. Why they chose to label it as a "Vanadium" wrench I don't know, but it's good enough for me to put it here.
Source: eBay seller sammy13
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 August, 2002
Price: $10
Size: 8"
Purity: <2%
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 Sample from the RGB 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 RGB
Contributor: Max Whitby of RGB
Acquired: 25 January, 2003
Text Updated: 11 August, 2007
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: 99.7%
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Sample from the Everest 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 (except gases) weigh 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
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Donated
Size: 0.2"
Purity: >99%
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Vanadium crunchies.
When Max Whitby orders kilograms of rare earths and other elements from China, I sometimes piggyback a bit for my collection. This half-kilogram bottle of high-purity vanadium is a great example. It would be prohibitively expensive from a domestic chemical supplier, but as part of a bulk shipment from China, the price is a lot more reasonable.
He orders elements for the small element sets he sells, as well as for the large museum displays we produce together in a joint venture.
"Crunchies", by the way, is a British term for a particular type of breakfast cereal, which Max feels this vanadium greatly resembles.
Source: Max Whitby of RGB
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 1 November, 2003
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: $142
Size: 5"
Purity: 99.9%
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Hollow cathode lamp.
Lamps like this are available for a very wide range of elements: Click the Sample Group link below to get a list of all the elements I have lamps like this for. They are used as light sources for atomic absorption spectrometers, which detect the presence of elements by seeing whether a sample absorbs the very specific wavelengths of light associated with the electronic transitions of the given element. The lamp uses an electric arc to stimulate the element it contains to emit its characteristic wavelengths of light: The same electronic transitions are responsible for emission and absorption, so the wavelengths are the same.
In theory, each different lamp should produce a different color of light characteristic of its element. Unfortunately, the lamps all use neon as a carrier gas: You generally have to have such a carrier gas present to maintain the electric arc. Neon emits a number of very strong orange-red lines that overwhelm the color of the specific element. In a spectrometer this is no problem because you just use a prism or diffraction grating to separate the light into a spectrum, then block out the neon lines. But it does mean that they all look pretty much the same color to the naked eye.
I've listed the price of all the lamps as $20, but that's really just a rough average: I paid varying amounts at various eBay auctions for these lamps, which list for a lot more from an instrument supplier.
(Truth in photography: These lamps all look alike. I have just duplicated a photo of one of them to use for all of them, because they really do look exactly the same regardless of what element is inside. The ones listed are all ones I actually have in the collection.)
Source: eBay seller heruur
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 24 December, 2003
Price: $20
Size: 8"
Purity: 99.9%
Sample Group: Atomic Emission Lamps
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Stock certificate.
This is a stock certificate for 100 shares of the Vanadium Corporation of America. Or at least, it seems to be, though the fact that it's number 00000 argues against legitimacy. Anyway, if you happen to know it's actually worth a fortune, do let me know.
Source: eBay seller americanaenterprises
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 10 September, 2003
Price: $12.50
Size: 11"
Purity: 0%
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Element coin.
Dave Hamric sells element samples under the name Metallium. He's developed a line of coins struck out of various common and uncommon metals: They are quite lovely, and very reasonably priced, considering the difficulty of creating some of them.
Here is the back side of this coin (click either picture to see it larger):
Click the Sample Group link below to see many other coins made of various elements, or click the link to his website above if you want to buy one like this.
Source: Dave Hamric
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 1 December, 2006
Text Updated: 14 January, 2007
Price: $40
Size: 0.75"
Purity: >99%
Sample Group: Coins
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Funny melted blob.
This is what happens when I get trigger happy on the vacuum arc. I had previously been melting some rhenium in the chamber, so the current was set way up- I took some vanadium 3N raw material to try and melt it into a nice circular button-so much for that. As you can see, the top melted very quickly and poured down the sides, creating an interesting effect. Since vanadium has such a high melting point, the amount of energy released by light emission caused the piece to solidify almost instantly after I cut the arc, resulting in the flow patterns of the molten metal being frozen on the surface.
Source: Ethan Currens
Contributor: Ethan Currens
Acquired: 30 April, 2008
Text Updated: 30 April, 2008
Price: Anonymous
Size: 1"
Purity: 99.9%
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Carnotite.
The yellow crust is the carnotite, an ore of uranium that also contains some traces of radium, which is used to justify the name "Radium Ore Revigator" used to describe the water jug you'll find listed under uranium (and which is lined with carnotite).
Source: eBay seller dr**zarkoff
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 3 June, 2005
Price: $15
Size: 1.5"
Composition: K2(UO2)2(VO4)2.3H2O
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Cavansite.
Description from the source:
Cavansite (Ca (V+4 O) Si4 O10x4 H2O orth.), Wagholi Quarry, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India. 0,8x0,8x0,8 cm each; 8 g with box the two.
Source: Simone Citon
Contributor: John Gray
Acquired: 28 January, 2009
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Trade
Size: 0.3"
Composition: Ca(VO)Si4O10.4(H2O)
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Vanadinite.
Description from the source:
Vanadinite (Pb5 (VO4)3Cl hex.), Apache Mine, Arizona, USA. Little but evident reddish crystals on solid matrix. 7,5x4x2 cm; 43 g.
Source: Simone Citon
Contributor: John Gray
Acquired: 28 January, 2009
Text Updated: 29 January, 2009
Price: Trade
Size: 3"
Composition: Pb5(VO4)3Cl
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Chrome-vanadium steel socket.
This hex socket (used with a handle to tighten or loosen hex nuts) is made of steel with a small percentage of chromium and vanadium to strengthen the alloy. For some reason nut- and bolt-related tools (socked sets, crescent wrenches, adjustable wrenches, spanners, etc) seem to have "chrome vanadium" and "Cr-V" stamped on them at a much higher rate than other tools, even though similar alloys are no doubt used for many other tools. It's probably a historical thing.
Source: Farm & Fleet
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 February, 2009
Text Updated: 8 February, 2009
Price: $1
Size: 1"
Composition: FeCrV
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Chrome Vanadium Wrench.
Many tools are made of chrome-vanadium steel, an alloy that is tough, hard and not too expensive. Typical alloys contain about 1% chromium and a few tenths of a percent of vanadium.
Source: Hardware Store
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 February, 2009
Text Updated: 1 March, 2009
Price: $8
Size: 8"
Composition: FeCCrV
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Chrome Vanadium Wrench.
Many tools are made of chrome-vanadium steel, an alloy that is tough, hard and not too expensive. Typical alloys contain about 1% chromium and a few tenths of a percent of vanadium.
Source: Hardware Store
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 28 February, 2009
Text Updated: 1 March, 2009
Price: $8
Size: 8"
Composition: FeCCrV
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Chrome-vanadium steel socket.
This hex socket (used with a handle to tighten or loosen hex nuts) is made of steel with a small percentage of chromium and vanadium to strengthen the alloy. For some reason nut- and bolt-related tools (socked sets, crescent wrenches, adjustable wrenches, spanners, etc) seem to have "chrome vanadium" and "Cr-V" stamped on them at a much higher rate than other tools, even though similar alloys are no doubt used for many other tools. It's probably a historical thing.
Source: Farm & Fleet
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 8 February, 2009
Text Updated: 8 February, 2009
Price: $1
Size: 1"
Composition: FeCrV
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