Talk:Gnomium

Fixed mistake

The article had said:

• A theoretical solution would have been an element, very similar and nearly inseparable from cobalt, but with a lower atomic weight, so that its mixture with cobalt would be lighter than nickel.

But this can't possibly be right. This wouldn't explain the fact that cobalt has a higher atomic weight than nickel. Either we need gnomium to be very similar to cobalt but heavier than nickel (and cobalt)... or very similar to nickel but lighter than cobalt (and nickel).

Luckily Wordnik [1] breaks the tie: gnomium is similar to cobalt but heavier.

So I fixed this mistake.

It would be nice to check one of the original papers, but I was unable to do that. John Baez (talk) 01:23, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Your logic is right but it's still possible the result is not correct. The Kruss/Schmidt paper suggests the uncertainty was in the atomic weight of nickel rather than cobalt. However this article suggests that some people thought both nickel and cobalt might contain gnomium and that a certain Dr. Hugo Miller, F.R.S. thought he had isolated it! Curiouser and curiousier. Like you I don't currently have access to the original journal. Chris55 (talk) 17:38, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

BTW, wouldn't gnomium, while solving the problem of the atomic weight reversal of Co and Ni, create the problem of where to put gnomium in the periodic table? Double sharp (talk) 08:07, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

(I suppose at first it wouldn't, since group VIII was a sort of desperation measure at first to cram the remaining elements in, but it would be really weird since there would not be any need for eka-gnomiums for the Rh/Pd and Ir/Pt pairs.) Double sharp (talk) 15:14, 21 June 2016 (UTC)