The greatest inventor of ancient Greece, Daedalus, who had once fled the island of Crete from the irate King Minos on homemade wings, had to pay with the life of his son Icarus for his innovative idea. No one knows how this sad story would have ended if the Greek scientist had fastened the wings with titanium threads instead of wax, which instantly melted from the rays of the scorching sun.
Unfortunately, the creator of the Minoan Labyrinth, Ariadne's thread and Pasiphea's wooden cow knew nothing about titanite, a stone rich in the metal of the same name.
The name titanite is associated with the famous characters of ancient Greek mythology, children of the Earth goddess Gaia, the Titans. In many dictionaries, the word "Titan" often means "mountain" or "force" and is associated with the notion of something gigantic. One of the most famous examples of this is the famous large British passenger liner Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. Probably the creators of the liner didn't know mythology well enough, since they named the ship after the lost super gods. According to legend, there were several generations of gods. The Titans were the second generation and from them came the more famous heroes of the myths, such as Prometheus, Atlanteus and Zeus, who rebelled against the Titans and eventually won.
However, this fact in no way diminishes the fact that the mythical creatures possessed tremendous strength and resilience. This is how the confrontation between the gods is described in the myth of the Titans:
"For ten years this terrible and cruel battle of the gods lasted. No one was victorious, but no one wanted to surrender.
The German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaprota, known as the discoverer of several chemical elements, first gave the new metal he discovered, titanium, a name consonant with mythical characters, and then the mineral titanite that contained it.
It is quite possible that with this name the scientist was trying to emphasize the features of titanium, which practically does not suffer from corrosion and with the strength approximately equal to that of steel, despite the fact that it is 45% lighter. For this reason alloys on its basis in the XXI century are the most important construction material in aircraft and rocket engineering as well as in shipbuilding.
In addition, Klaprota decided to name it after titanium, as opposed to the French school of chemistry, where they tried to name the element according to its chemical properties. Since the researcher could not determine such parameters at once, he chose a nickname for it from mythology, by analogy with the uranium he had discovered earlier.
On the territory of the Russian Empire, titanite was first discovered in the Ilmensky mountains, in the Urals, and in 1842 it was described by the German mineralogist and geologist Gustav Rose. Other well-known deposits of titanium are connected with the Khibiny massif of the Kola Peninsula.
It is because of its high titanium content that the mineral titanite is so sought after nowadays. Titanium is used in a wide variety of industries, from the military industry, where it is used to make armor for tanks and submarine hulls, body armor, aircraft manufacturing; to medicine, where it is found in dentures and dental implants.
Titanite mined from deposits is used not only for titanium extraction, but also for jewelry purposes. The dispersion of titanite, or its ability to "play" in the light, exceeds that of diamonds. This mineral is also capable of changing its color depending on the position of the crystal axes. The color can change from colorless to green or pinkish-yellow, or from yellow to green or brown.
Translated by Diego Monterrey, for Northwest Forpost.
