| Description | Element |
| Soft, reactive metal; Its chloride can be found on most kitchen tables | |
| Low-melting point alloys; thin-film LCDs; Isotope used to in labeled white blood cell scans | |
| Additive to high-strength steels; Superconducting alloys | |
| Discovered 1899; Highly radioactive extremely rare; found in minute quantities in Uranium ore | |
| Has fissile isotope; neutron detector; one of the densest of elements | |
| Primary component of all steel alloys | |
| Lanthanide; lasers, strain gauges, portable gamma ray sources | |
| Named for 1921 Nobel Prize winner (for his work on photoelectric effect) | |
| Optical fiber; improved workability of Vanadium; pink color for ceramics | |
| Malleable, conductive, dense, coveted | |
| Transuranic metal named for branch of U of Calif where first synthesized | |
| Its carbide has a hardness and melting point exceeded only by diamond | |
| Wrap your left-overs with this metal | |
| Light bulb filament; X-ray tubes | |
| It's a noble gas, not a superhero's home planet | |
| Component, with Fe & B of most powerful permanent magnets | |
| Adds strength to aluminum baseball bats | |
| Radioactive, naturally-occurring metal; more common than uranium; high-quality lenses, arc-lights | |
| A salt, 'LSO', is in detectors for PET scanners | |
| Lanthanide metal; MRI contrast agents | |
| Explodes on contact with water; fourth lowest melting point of metals | |
| Despite its name, it makes up only 25% of a U.S. five-cent piece | |
| Most common constituent of cigarette lighter 'flints' | |
| Transuranic element; highly radioactive neutron emitter; has been used for radiotherapy and portable detector for petroleum and precious metals | |
| Named for 1951 Nobel Prize winner, discoverer of many actinide elements | |
| Fuel used in first successful A-bomb test | |
| Named for 1938 Nobel Prize winner, led team that created first nuclear reactor | |
| Lightweight metal; Surgical implants | |
| Among the rarest of naturally occurring elements, its name is derived from fact that it decays to actinium | |
| Toxic metal formerly widely used in rechargeable batteries | |
| Catalytic converters; electrodes; precious jewelry | |
| Named for Danish physicist, 1922 Nobel Prize winner | |
| Corrosion-resistant alloys; nuclear power plants; one form of its oxide used as would-be cheap diamond substitute | |
| Additive to strengthen steel and titanium alloys; Named for Scandinavian goddess | |
| The only nonmetal liquid at room temperature | |
| Highest magnetic susceptibility of non-ferromagnetic elements | |