Californium was discovered in 1950 by a team consisting of Glenn Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, Kenneth Street and Stanley G. Thompson at the University of California while performing an experiment of bombarding curium-242 with alpha-particles using a 60-inch cyclotron.

Californium is a synthetic radioactive element found on the bottom row of the periodic table, along with other actinides. It was first discovered in 1950 at the University of California Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley by bombarding curium with alpha particles (helium nuclei).

Californium (Cf), synthetic chemical element of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 98. Not occurring in nature, californium (as the isotope californium-245) was discovered (1950) by American chemists Stanley G.

Titanium and diamonds are both strong, have very high melting points and resist corrosion. However, both substances are also very expensive; their high cost is prohibitive in using them in widespread industrial applications that might otherwise benefit from their structural properties.

Diamond is harder than obsidian, as obsidian is a form of volcanic glass. Obsidian has a hardness of 5 to 5.5 on the mineral hardness scale, whereas diamonds have a hardness of 10.

Cutting edge Obsidian – a type of volcanic glass – can produce cutting edges many times finer than even the best steel scalpels. At 30 angstroms – a unit of measurement equal to one hundred millionth of a centimeter – an obsidian scalpel can rival diamond in the fineness of its edge.

No. Obsidian is relatively soft with a typical hardness of 5 to 5.5 on the mineral hardness scale. In comparison, quartz (crystallized silicon dioxide) has a hardness of 7.0. No, it is glass, glass does not cut steel.

Diamond is the hardest known mineral, Mohs’ 10.

Diamond

Talc

Obsidian knife blades: overkill for slicing your sandwich. The thinnest blades are three nanometres wide at the edge – 10 times sharper than a razor blade. These are made by flaking a long, thin sliver from a core of obsidian (volcanic glass).

obsidian, igneous rock occurring as a natural glass formed by the rapid cooling of viscous lava from volcanoes. Obsidian is extremely rich in silica (about 65 to 80 percent), is low in water, and has a chemical composition similar to rhyolite.

The sharpest object ever made is a tungsten needle that tapers down to the thickness of a single atom. It was manufactured by placing a narrow tungsten wire in an atmosphere of nitrogen and exposing it to a strong electric field in a device called a field ion microscope.

The finding of this study, conducted by an independent testing laboratory in accordance with applicable standard good laboratory practices, is that Terumo needles, on average, are by far the sharpest overall, compared with those of the major competitors.