Do ruthenium and Russia have anything in common?

               The first impure form of ruthenium was discovered in Russia. In the Latin language, Russia is known as Ruthenia. Therefore, the element ruthenium gets its name from Russia. And that is the connection between Russia and ruthenium.

               Although many scientists claimed that they had discovered the element in the first half of the 19th century, it was Karl Ernst Klaus, a Russian chemist, who successfully isolated the element in 1844.

              The Native Americans knew the use of the metal many years before its discovery. Ruthenium is the seventy-third most common metal on Earth. It is an extremely rare metal in nature. Due to its scarcity, only around twenty tonnes of ruthenium is produced annually.

               Pentlandite is the mineral from which most of the ruthenium is mined. Adding ruthenium is one of the most effective ways to harden platinum and palladium. Ruthenium can also be extracted from nuclear waste such as uranium-235.

               Ruthenium is used most commonly for creating a coating over electrical contacts for wear-resistance. Ruthenium’s atomic number is 44, and it is represented as Ru.

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