OPOpenPithMake curiosity visibleCHEMISTRY LAB / 02

The Periodic Table

118 elements, raised by their properties.

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About Hafnium

Hafnium is a chemical element; it has symbol Hf and atomic number 72. A lustrous, silvery gray, tetravalent transition metal, hafnium chemically resembles zirconium and is found in many zirconium minerals. Its existence was predicted by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, though it was not identified until 1922, by Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy. Hafnium is named after Hafnia, the Latin name for Copenhagen, where it was discovered. The element is obtained only by separation from zirconium, with most of the world's hafnium production coming from processes that also produce zirconium. These processes make use of heavy mineral sands ore deposits, which include the minerals zircon, rutile, and ilmenite, among others.

The text above is from the lead of the Wikipedia article “Hafnium” (retrieved 2026-11-05), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Data and notes

Column height is a linear display mapping; the shortest column is not zero. Data: PubChem, IAEA.

Solid columns are measured, frosted glass is predicted, empty frames have no value.

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