Platinum

Due to its rarity, platinum is a highly priced metal, more so than gold or silver. Laudomia Pucci continues to serve as the Image Director. It was the first British Crown to be made of that metal. Designers who have worked under the Pucci brand include Julio Espada and Christian LaCroix. The frame of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, manufactured for her Coronation as Consort of King George VI is made of platinum. The Pucci brand was revived by the French firm Louis Vuitton-Moet-Hennessy Group, who acquired the rights in 2000. Platinum is considered a precious metal, although its use as such is much more rare than the use of gold or silver. After his death in 1992 his daughter, Laudomia Pucci, continued to design under the Pucci name.

And some products, such as blenders and vehicles, with a silvery-white colour are identified as "platinum". Pucci incorporated Alexander Girard's "BI" logo into some of his prints. For example, a musical album that has sold more than 1,000,000 copies, will be credited as "platinum". Pucci would end up designing seven complete outfits for Braniff hostesses, pilots and ground crew between 1965 and 1977. "Platinum awards" are the highest possible, ranking above gold, silver and bronze. While a member of parliment, Pucci was hired by New York ad agency Jack Tinker and Associates to re-design the hostess wardrobes for Braniff International Airways. "Platinum" credit cards have greater privileges than do "gold" ones. In 1965 he was elected to the Italian parliament.

Platinum's rarity as a metal has caused advertisers to associate it with exclusivity and wealth. In addition to his life of fashion, Pucci was a respected and well-known fascist, having written often in support of the subject. Certain platinum complexes (cis-platin) have been used in chemotherapy, as they have very good anti-tumor activity, though they do unfortunately cause cumulative irreversible kidney damage. Popular early creations were a line of wrinkle-free printed silk dresses and the still popular Capri pants. Platinum compounds rarely occur in nature. Pucci became well known for his signature use of bright colors and bold patterns, which often clashed. This metal doesn't normally cause health problems due to its unreactive nature. The exposure encouraged him to create and sell clothes for women, and he opened a couture house in 1950 on the Isle of Capri.

There are also many other radioisotopes with the most stable being Pt-193 with a half-life of 50 years. Upon learning this, Frissel's editor asked Pucci to design skiwear for a story on European Winter Fashion, which ran in the winter 1948 issue of the Bazaar. Naturally occurring platinum is composed of five stable isotopes and one radioisotope, Pt-190, which has a very long half-life (over 6 billion years or 190 Ps). In 1947 he was photographed by Toni Frissel, a photographer working for Harper's Bazaar, wearing skiwear Pucci had designed himself. The huge quantities of nickel ore processed makes up for the fact that platinum is present as only 0.5 ppm in the ore. He first ventured into clothing design at Reed by creating the ski team's uniforms. Platinum is produced commercially as a by-product of nickel ore processing in the Sudbury deposit. Pucci was a member of the Italian olympic ski team of 1934, and in 1935 won a skiing scholarship to Reed College in Oregon.

Platinum, often accompanied by small amounts of other platinum family metals, occurs in alluvial placer deposits in the Witwatersrand of South Africa, Colombia, Ontario, the Ural Mountains, and in certain western American states. Born in Naples, Italy, the son of an Italian noble, Pucci studied in both Italy and the USA, eventually gaining a doctorate in political science in 1941. Cooperite occurs in the Merensky Reef within the Bushveld complex, Transvaal, South Africa. Marchese di Basento Emilio Pucci ( November 20, 1914 - 1992) was an Italian fashion designer. The rare sulfide mineral cooperite, (Pt,Pd,Ni)S, contains platinum along with palladium and nickel. The platinum arsenide, sperrylite, is a major source of platinum associated with nickel ores in the Sudbury Basin deposit.

Platinum is often found as native platinum and alloyed with iridium as platiniridium. Platinum is also used in the definition of the Standard hydrogen electrode. A platinum-iridium cylinder serves to this day as the standard of the kilogram and is housed in the same facility as the metre bar. The definition of a metre for a long time was based on the distance between two marks on a bar of a platinum-iridium alloy housed at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures in Sèvres, France.

The alchemical symbol for platinum (shown below) was made by joining the symbols of silver and gold. Before that could happen Charles Wood independently isolated the element in 1741. Though he was well-treated in England, and even made a member of the Royal Society he was prevented from publishing a reference to the unknown metal until 1748. British privateers intercepted Ulloa's ship on the return voyage.

Among other things, Ulloa observed the platina del pinto, the unworkable metal found with gold in New Granada (Colombia). Platinum was discovered by astronomer Antonio de Ulloa and Don Jorge Juan y Santacilia (1713-1773), both appointed by King Philip V to join a geographical expedition in Peru that lasted from 1735 to 1745. They regarded platinum as an unwanted impurity in the silver they were mining, and often discarded it. The Spaniards named the metal "platina," or little silver, when they first encountered it in Colombia.

Though the metal was used by pre-Columbian Native Americans, the first European reference to platinum appears in 1557 in the writings of the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558) as a description of a mysterious metal found in Central American mines between Darién (Panama) and Mexico ("up until now impossible to melt by any of the Spanish arts"). Naturally-occurring platinum and platinum-rich alloys have been known for a long time. Common oxidation states of platinum include +2, +3, and +4. This metal is insoluble in hydrochloric and nitric acid, but does dissolve in the mixture known as aqua regia (forming chloroplatinic acid).

Platinum does not oxidise in air at any temperature, but can be corroded by cyanides, halogens, sulfur, and caustic alkalis. All these properties have been exploited for industrial applications. Platinum possesses remarkable resistance to chemical attack, excellent high-temperature characteristics, and stable electrical properties. In the 18th century, platinum's rarity made King Louis XV of France declare it the only metal fit for a king.

The price of platinum changes along with its availability, but it normally costs about twice as much as gold. Platinum is more precious than gold. Platinum's wear- and tarnish-resistance characteristics are well suited for making fine jewelry. For this catalytic property, platinum is used in catalytic converters, incorporated in automobile exhaust systems, as well as tips of spark plugs.

The catalytic properties of the six platinum family metals are outstanding (a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen explodes in the presence of platinum). The metal is corrosion-resistant. The metal appears silvery-white when pure, and firm. .

Platinum is used in jewellery, laboratory equipment, electrical contacts, dentistry, and automobile emissions control devices. A heavy, malleable, ductile, precious, grey-white transition metal, platinum is resistant to corrosion and occurs in some nickel and copper ores along with some native deposits. Platinum is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. Nuclides and Isotopes Fourteenth Edition: Chart of the Nuclides, General Electric Company, 1989.

Los Alamos National Laboratory - Platinum. electrodes for use in electrolysis. platinum resistance thermometers,. For example, cisplatin, carboplatin and oxaliplatin belong to this class of drugs,.

certain platinum-containing compounds are capable of intercalating into DNA and are chemotherapeutic agents owing to this capability. catalyst utilized in the catalytic converter, an optional component of the gasoline-fuelled automobile exhaust system (see "Notable characteristics" in this article),.