Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A soft silvery-white metallic element of the alkali group that ignites spontaneously in air and reacts violently with water, used in photocells and in the manufacture of vacuum tubes. Atomic number 37; atomic weight 85.47; melting point 38.89°C; boiling point 688°C; specific gravity (solid) 1.532; valence 1, 2, 3, 4. See Table at element.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Chemical symbol, Rb; atomic weight, 85.25. A metal belonging to the group of elements which includes lithium, sodium, potassium, and cæsium: so named from the reddish tint of its salts. It is very soft, is silver-white in color, has a specific gravity of 1.52, and melts at about 101° F. When thrown into water it burns, forming rubidium hydrate, RbOH. Rubidium was first detected by the spectroscope, together with cæsium, in the mineral water of Dürkheim, in which it exists to the amount of two parts in ten million. It has since been found in considerable quantity, together with cæsium and lithium, in several other saline waters, and most abundantly in that of Bourbonne-les-Bains in France. It is also found in several lepidolites: that of Rozena, in Moravia, contains 0.24 per cent. of rubidium, with only a trace of cæsium; that of Hebron, in the State of Maine, 0.24 per cent. of rubidium and 0.3 per cent. of cæsium. The two metals likewise occur, though in smaller quantity, in the lepidolite of Prague, the petalite of Uto in Finland, the lithia-mica of Zinnwald in the Erzgebirge, and other lithia minerals. It has been found also in the ashes of many plants, and in the saline or crude potash obtained from the residue of the beet-sugar manufacture. It has been found in tobacco-leaves, and in coffee, tea, cocoa, and crude tartar. In minerals and mineral waters rubidium and cæsium are always associated with lithium, and generally also with potassium and sodium; but plants have the power of assimilating two or three of these metals to the exclusion of the rest; thus, tea, coffee, and the saline of beetroot contain potassium, sodium, and rubidium, but not a trace of lithium.
Wiktionary
- n. A metallic chemical element (symbol Rb) with an atomic number of 37.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Chem.) A rare metallic element of the alkali metal series, atomic number 37. It occurs quite widely, but in small quantities, and always combined. It is isolated as a soft yellowish white metal, analogous to potassium in most of its properties. Symbol Rb. Atomic weight, 85.48.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a soft silvery metallic element of the alkali metal group; burns in air and reacts violently in water; occurs in carnallite and lepidolite and pollucite
Etymologies
- A New Latin word derived by German chemist R. W. Bunsen in 1861, from Latin rubidus ("red") because its spectrum has two red lines. (Wiktionary)
- From Latin rūbidus, red; see reudh- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Following the very spectacular demonstrations of BEC in rubidium and sodium by the JILA and MIT groups, the field has developed explosively and over 20 groups are now conducting BEC experiments.”
The 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics - Information for the Public
“This suggestion has been of great service in spectrum analysis, and as applied by Bunsen, Kirchoff, and others, has led to the discovery of several new elements, such as rubidium and thallium, as well as increasing our knowledge of the heavenly bodies.”
“The scientific basis of this method is described in detail in Brent Dalrymple’s book The Age of the Earth, and depends upon the known and very long half-lives by which three radioactive chemical elements steadily decay and transform into different, stable elements: uranium slowly becomes lead, potassium slowly becomes argon, and the more exotic strontium becomes the rare element called rubidium.”
“That's because the obsidian from each volcano has a unique chemical signature based on the amount of elements such as rubidium, zirconium and strontium in the glass.”
“(intercalated) with atoms of an alkali such as rubidium or potassium it became a superconductor with a Tc of 18 kelvin (-255 degrees Celsius) or below, which is a relatively high temperature for superconductors.”
“In a paper* to be published in Physical Review A, the JQI team identifies conditions under which a cloud of ultracold atoms of two species (such as rubidium and sodium, or two slightly different forms of rubidium) can spontaneously condense into a state in which there is crystalline structure in the relative positions of atoms, e.g. a chain in which the two different types of atoms alternate regularly, but in which the entire cloud exhibits the frictionless, superfluid properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).”
“Per Wikipedia: Mercury is a heavy, silvery d-block metal [that] is one of six elements that are liquid at or near room temperature and pressure, the others being caesium, francium, gallium, bromine, and rubidium.”
“Strontium is used to generate the active ingredient in CardioGen-82, rubidium.”
“We have exact measurements of rare elements like rubidium, lanthanum and molybdenum and we can now prove that an obsidian artifact unearthed in California, for example, originally came from an obsidian mine in the Mexican state of Jalisco.”
“In 1860 Robert Bunsen (1811 – 1899), along with Gustav Kirchhoff (1824 – 1887), discovered two alkali metals, cesium and rubidium, with the aid of the spectroscope they had invented the year before.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘rubidium’.
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Mirrored Vowels
Rules:
• The word must have an even number of vowels.
• There must be four or more vowels; thus, at minimum, an A-A-A-A or A-B-B-A pattern.
• The vowels must appear in a mir...feminine, solicitor, caruncular, repackager, semiprimes, fetishises, decomposer, demonlover, recomposer, sepultures, lipotropic, colesterol and 385 more...
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IMCO - EU nomenclature
includes words of the "Prodcom list"
abaca, abdominal, abrasive, absorbent, absorber, accelerator, accessory, account book, accumulator, acebutolol, acetaldehyde, acetamide and 4515 more...
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Chemical Elements
A list of chemical elements
hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium and 106 more...
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fredrx's beautiful sounding list
two most beautiful words when put together
womb, philistine, poignant, wombastic, eschelon, macabre, precipitous, panache, misogynist, placebo, cacophony, aplomb and 43 more...
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The Elements
hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium and 99 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for rubidium.
oroboros Rb Dec 1, 2007