Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. It’s a very shiny silver colour and the least reactive metal of all those in the table. Honestly, try and get it to react with something like oxygen and it will take a huge amount of energy to even get it to think about oxidising. It’s also very rare on earth, but this hasn’t stopped it getting into use all around us. For example. the catalytic converter in car exhausts uses platinum as a catalyst to force dangerous carbon monoxide to react with oxygen and produce less toxic pollutants, such as CO2. That doesn’t sound like a much better outcome, but you really don’t want carbon monoxide hanging around. Thanks platinum!
This is a general science zone, where we will meet five scientists from different areas of science.
In this Zone, you will meet scientists changing peoples behaviour towards climate change, researching how we can prevent diseases like cancer and diabetes, and building and testing very tiny and special circuits for very fast and powerful computers. There is also a person protecting companies from stealing other people’s inventions, and another one editing DNA.