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Platinum   /plˈætnəm/  /plˈætənəm/   Listen
Platinum

noun
1.
A heavy precious metallic element; grey-white and resistant to corroding; occurs in some nickel and copper ores and is also found native in some deposits.  Synonyms: atomic number 78, Pt.



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"Platinum" Quotes from Famous Books



... Oh, pshaw! You ought to see Rocky. He's made out of platinum, an' armour plate, an' pure gold, an' all strong things. I'm mountaineer, but he plumb beats me out. Down in Curry County I used to 'most kill the boys when we run bear. So when I hooks up with Rocky on ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... dress uniform, specially tailored for a physician in the Blue Service of Diagnosis, the insignia woven into the cloth with gold and platinum thread. Reluctantly he turned away from it, a luxury he could never dream of affording. For Tiger, who had been muttering for weeks about getting out of condition in the sedentary life of the ship, there was a set of bar bells and gymnasium equipment ingeniously designed ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse

... &c., the ash will be about 60 or 65 per cent, of the weight tested, and be colored with the iron always present in the adulterating substances, and which is never found in pure guano. This test, to be accurate, must be done with a nice pair of scales and a platinum cup, which may be heated over a spirit lamp. Ten grains of the guano are placed in the platinum cup, which is held by the tongs in the flame of the spirit lamp for several minutes, until the greater part of the organic matter is burnt away. It is allowed to cool for ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... presently exploited; iron ore, chromium, copper, gold, nickel, platinum and other minerals, and coal and hydrocarbons have been found in small, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... The face of a platinum-blonde beauty appeared on the screen beside Jones'. "And am I glad to see you, Barbara, even if I did just meet you yesterday! I didn't know whether I'd ever see another ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith

... her cheek, and she sat up, broad awake in an instant and shivering a little. It had turned much colder, and a wind had risen which whispered round her of coming storm, while the blue sky of an hour ago was hidden by heavy, platinum-coloured clouds massing up from ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... of our physical laboratory at Irvington were almost all lit by electric lamps constructed somewhat on the principle of Edison's, but using platinum wires, and the old residents of that village may recall the singular, lonely house half hidden in broad sycamores, sending out its electric radiance late at night while my father and frequently myself, then a boy of thirteen years, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... went out to her, and she could hardly keep her eyes on the stage. The unknown seemed to take almost as much interest in her, for twice Lydia surprised her backward scrutiny. She found herself wondering who she was. The girl was beautifully dressed, and about her neck was a platinum chain that must have hung to her waist—a chain which was broken every few inches ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace

... want maximum value and minimum bulk," he continued. "Jewels, objects of art, furs, the better grades of luxury goods of all kinds. Rare-element metals. And monetary metals, gold and platinum. You have a metallic-based currency, ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... tractor, he found that tiny platinum plates had been taken from the thermocouple units. It was clear that, with paranoid thoroughness, Rodan had concentrated all capacity to move from the camp's vicinity in himself. He had probably locked up the missing items in the ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun

... United States was allied in the Great War with Bulgaria France Turkey 26 27 "Treasure Island" tells about Long John Micawber Uncas 27 28 Madame Curie is noted for the discovery of platinum radium pyrite 28 29 "The Star-Spangled Banner" was written by Alcott Burns Key 29 30 The earliest of these inventions was railroad stagecoach ...
— Stanford Achievement Test, Ed. 1922 - Advanced Examination, Form A, for Grades 4-8 • Truman L. Kelley

... instantly the Forest glade was deserted. But in a place midway between the earth and the sky was suspended a gleaming crypt of gold and platinum, aglow with soft lights shed from the facets of countless gems. Within a high dome hung the precious Mantle of Immortality, and each immortal placed a hand on the hem of the splendid Robe and said, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus • L. Frank Baum

... shows the chemical change that occurs. This oxidation can be brought about by purely chemical means. While alcohol will not readily unite with oxygen under common conditions, if the alcohol is allowed to pass over a bit of platinum sponge the union readily occurs and acetic acid results. This method of acetic-acid production is possible experimentally, but is impracticable on any large scale. In the ordinary manufacture of vinegar the oxidation is a true ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn

... James Darcy, as he reached over to switch on the light above the little table where he set precious stones into gold and platinum of rare and beautiful designs. "Raining and cold! I ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... thus drop and sphere begin to fall at the same moment. Before, however, the drop reaches the surface on which it is to impinge, the timing sphere strikes a plate D attached to one end of a third lever pivoted at Q, and thus breaks the contact between a platinum wire bound to the underside of this lever and another wire crossing the first at right angles. This action breaks an electric current which has traversed a second electro-magnet F (Fig. 2), and releases the iron armature N of the lever NP, pivoted at P, thus enabling a strong ...
— The Splash of a Drop • A. M. Worthington

... concessions and guarantees.... I know of no reason why a Socialistic commonwealth like ours cannot do business indefinitely with capitalistic countries. We don't mind taking their capitalistic locomotives and farming machinery, so why should they mind taking our Socialistic wheat, flax and platinum?" ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto

... all the electric actions invented had proved more or less unreliable, and Willis, who had an artistic reputation to lose, refused to employ them. As an instance of their clumsiness we may mention that the best contact they could get was made by dipping a platinum point in a cell containing mercury! Other forms of contact rapidly oxidized and ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... companion spoke again. "Oh, yes, I'm here. A little late to worry tired folks, isn't it? No. Mr. Hallam's away just now. Wire from Somasco just come in—and we're to let him have it as soon as we can. Oh, yes, I understand you. 'Platinum, galena, cyanide, Alton, oxide. In a vise.' You've got that, Nellie? Do I know when Hallam will get it? ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... analysis, all things in Nature, from a fleeti g thought or emotion to the hardest piece of diamond or platinum, are modes of motion or vibration. A few years ago physical science assumed that an atom was the smallest imaginable part of a given element of matter; that although infinitesimally small, it still represented solid matter. Now, in the light of better evidence, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... well, and should it be deemed necessary to tone to a black tone, use a weak solution of bichloride of platinum and chloride of gold, or a very weak solution of iridium, in equal quantities, allowing the picture to lie in the solution till the color has changed right through to the back of the glass. Should a warm pinkish tone be desired, I tone with weak solutions of ferri cyanide of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various

... replied the doctor. "The principal controlling fact is the reduced gravitational attraction of Mars, which will make things weigh about one-third as much as on the Earth. The air will be far less dense than here. In the mineral kingdom the dense metals will be very rare. I doubt if platinum will be found at all; gold and silver very little; iron, lead, and copper will be comparatively scarce, while aluminium may be the common and useful metal. Gases should abound, and doubtless many entirely new to us will be there. It is not unlikely that many of these will serve as ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... class of igneous deposits may be mentioned also diamonds, platinum, chromite, corundum, and other mineral products, although for the formation of commercial ores of many of these substances further concentration by weathering and sedimentation ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... more powerful and obedient than gas, electricity did most of the cooking. Arriving under the stoves, wires transmitted to platinum griddles a heat that was distributed and sustained with perfect consistency. It also heated a distilling mechanism that, via evaporation, supplied excellent drinking water. Next to this galley was a bathroom, conveniently ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... vessel, c, we do not expect the glass to change them, unless a or b or the compound a b has the power of dissolving the glass. But if for a I take oxygen, for b hydrogen, and for c a piece of spongy platinum, I find the first two combine with the common signs of combustion and form water, the third in the mean time undergoing no perceptible change. It has played the part of the unwedded priest, who marries a pair without taking a fee or having any further relation with the parties. We ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... he collects some pay, he goes off on the prospecting trail, and then heads for Vancouver with a bag of specimens that aren't worth anything. When the mineral men hear of a new Hollin discovery they smile. Guess he's found most everything—gold, copper, zinc, and platinum—and never made fifty cents out of them, 'cept once when, so the boys say, a mining company fellow gave him five dollars to promise he wouldn't worry him again. Now they've orders in all the offices that if ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss

... influence of light, undergo chemical changes, have the power of restoring themselves to their original condition in the dark. This is more remarkably displayed in the iodide of platinum, which readily recieves a photogenic image by darkening over the exposed surfaces, but speedily loses it by bleaching in the dark. The ioduret of Daguerre's plate, and some other iodides, exhibit the same peculiarity—This leads us to the striking ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling

... the first imaginary living being, the protobion. To get this protobion the chemists summon a reagent known as a catalyser. The catalyser works its magic on the jelly mass. It sets up a wonderful reaction by its mere presence, without parting with any of its substance. Thus, if a bit of platinum which has this catalytic power is dropped into a vessel containing a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, the two gases instantly unite and form water. A catalyser introduced in the primordial jelly liberates energy and gives the substance power to break up the various complex unstable compounds ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... discovered lately. A kettle might be too hot to boil water in. Take a little bar of silver, heated very highly; dip it into water. At first, you have no boiling, and you don't have any at all till the silver has cooled some degrees. Put a drop of water into a platinum dish, heated in the same way, and it will run about without boiling till the heat diminishes; and then it bursts into steam. M. Boutigny, the French chemist, made this discovery. Vapor forms between the drop ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... that platinum heated in a forge fire, in contact with carbon, becomes fusible. Boussingault has shown that this is due to the formation of a silicide of platinum by means of the reduction of the silica of the carbon by the metal. MM. P. Schuetzenberger and A. Colson have ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various

... he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look—expensive!" That was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... and iron ore; chromium, copper, gold, nickel, platinum, and hydrocarbons have been found in small quantities along the coast; offshore deposits ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the exception of carbon, can be melted or reduced to a molten condition, although some of them require a very high temperature to effect this reduction, as, for example, platinum. When a still higher temperature is applied, the metals may be vaporized, or reduced from a molten state to that of a vaporous condition. In the case of solids, the atoms have not a free path in which to ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... a property whereby a metal may be drawn out to form a wire. Some metals, like cast iron, have absolutely no ductility. The metal which possesses this property to the highest degree, is platinum. Wires of this metal have been drawn out so fine that over 30,000 of them laid side by side would measure only one inch across, and a mile of such wire would weigh only a grain, or one seven-thousandth ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... and (5) it can be used for the disinfection of rooms with the richest hangings, bric-a-brac, etc., without danger to these. Formaldehyde is evolved either from paraform or from the liquid formalin; formerly it was also obtained by the action of wood-alcohol vapor upon red-hot platinum. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various

... a knock came to the door, and the servant entered, carrying a large mahogany chest of chemicals, with a long coil of steel and platinum wire and ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... parts of copper, 7 of platinum, and 1 of zinc. When steel is alloyed with 1/500 part of platinum, or with 1/500 part of silver, it is rendered much harder, more malleable, and better adapted for all kinds of cutting instruments. Note.—In making alloys, care must be taken to have the more ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young

... man who thought he must be the last living human, wandered contentedly about the city of Denver looking for the coffin he liked best. He settled at last upon a rich mahogany number with platinum trimmings, an Automatic Self-Adjusting Cadaver-contour Innerspring Wearever-Plastic-Covered Mattress with a built in bar. He climbed in, drew himself a generous slug of fine Scotch, giggled as the mattress prodded him exploringly, ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)

... a platinum badge. "Take that—captain at large—and conscript any of the Municipal Force you want, up to a hundred. Pick out any place you want, train them to handle those damned Legals the way Murdoch handled the Stonewall boys. In return, the sky's the limit. Name your own ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... repeating, breathing so heavily it sickened her to hear and feel it, and all the time fumbling with his free hand down into his waistcoat pocket, bringing up a bit of tissue paper which he tore at with his teeth, revealing the icy flash of a great oval diamond ring set up high in platinum. "It's yours, Lilly. I want to cover you with them. I want you ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... announced for immediate publication is The Man in the Platinum Mask by Samson Wolf (Black and Crosswell). By a curious and wholly undesigned coincidence the name of the hero is ATTILA, while a further touch of actuality is lent to the romance by the fact that the author's aunt's first husband fought in ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various

... a wet pillow in his hand, gazing at his borrowed bunk. In the one I had selected, lay a small chamois-skin bag, attached to a narrow pink ribbon. In the bed chosen by Fenton, was a tiny white enamelled watch, on a platinum chain. Both these things had been covered by their respective owners' pillows, and forgotten in the hasty change of quarters. The watch was Monny's. She wore it round her neck every day—therefore the chamois-skin bag on the other bed must be Brigit's. I told myself that in it she probably kept her ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... contact could often be doubled by the jarring of the instrument, thus making the receiver jump twice. Clarke has overcome this defect by so arranging his mechanism that the faintest contact in the primary instrument closes two platinum points in multiple arc with it, thus making a firm and positive contact, which is not disturbed by any jar on the primary contact. This gives the instruments a positive start for the series of operations, instead of the faint contact which would be given, for example, by the light ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... weights commonly used in analytical chemistry range from 20 grams to 5 milligrams. The weights from 20 grams to 1 gram are usually of brass, lacquered or gold plated. The fractional weights are of German silver, gold, platinum or aluminium. The rider is of ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot

... mean time every effort was made to bolster up credit. Endless were the attempts to find a substitute for gold. The chemists sought it in their laboratories and the mineralogists in the mountains and deserts. Platinum might have served, but it, too, had become a drug in the market through the discovery of immense deposits. Out of the twenty odd elements which had been rarer and more valuable than gold, such as uranium, gallium, etc., not one was found ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... was lighted by electricity, and an immense circular chamber beneath the dome was occupied by hundreds of cells of the ordinary form of battery. The lamps were of the incandescent variety, and what we now know as the filament was platinum wire. Vacuum bulb, filament, carbon, dynamo, were all unknown. But the current, and the heat of resistance, and every fact now in use in electric ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele

... pump. Mercury is absolutely the only thing that will do the trick and the mercury is one thing that is conspicuous by it's absence in these parts. So are tungsten for filaments, tantalum for plates, and platinum for leads; and I haven't found anything that I can use as a getter, either—a metal, you know, to flash inside the tube to clean up the last ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... over the entire area Climate: mostly semiarid; subtropical along coast; sunny days, cool nights Terrain: vast interior plateau rimmed by rugged hills and narrow coastal plain Natural resources: gold, chromium, antimony, coal, iron ore, manganese, nickel, phosphates, tin, uranium, gem diamonds, platinum, copper, vanadium, salt, natural gas Land use: arable land 10%; permanent crops 1%; meadows and pastures 65%; forest and woodland 3%; other 21%; includes irrigated 1% Environment: lack of important arterial ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... precaution of collecting the gases, if mingled, out of contact with the platinum, was the necessity of testing the law of a definite electrolytic action, upon water at least, under all varieties of condition; that, with a conviction of its certainty, might also be obtained a knowledge of those ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... too soft, unless alloyed with some hardening metal. Some substances, like arsenic, antimony and bismuth, are too brittle to be used alone. The only metals which can be used alone are aluminum, zinc, iron, tin, copper, lead, mercury, silver, gold and platinum." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay

... platinum has been employed for coin; and it possesses a peculiarity which deserves notice. Platinum cannot be melted in our furnaces, and is chiefly valuable in commerce when in the shape of ingots, from which it may be forged into useful forms. But ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... evaporated, deposits it in the form of crystals. Its empirical form is C23H40N2; it is probably volatile and is notable for its lack of oxygen. It differs from quinoidine in that it is inactive (?) and that in combination with platinum it retains less of this metal than does quinoidine. It differs from paricine in its proportion of hydrogen, and from berberine in containing more carbon. In the presence of sulphuric acid its solution assumes a yellow color, changing to wine-red and then to dark ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera

... are sometimes operated by a compound bar thermostat (see Thermostat), which on a given elevation of temperature closes a circuit and rings an electric bell. Sometimes the expansion of a column of mercury when heated is used. This, by coming in contact with one or two platinum points, completes a circuit, and rings ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... She smoked—it was a new fashion of which Lady O'Gara did not altogether approve—a cigarette now and again and Terry supplied the gold-tipped, scented kind which Eileen took from a cigarette case of platinum with her name in turquoise at the corner. The cigarette case was a new possession. Lady O'Gara supposed that it came from Terry. She had not asked. A violet scent, so good that on its first introduction ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan

... a piece of the swatch should be burnt in a porcelain or platinum crucible over a bunsen burner, care being taken that all carbonaceous matter be burnt off. A white ash will indicate the presence of alumina mordants, red ash that of iron mordants, and a greenish ash ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech



Words linked to "Platinum" :   noble metal



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