40 Fun Facts About Titanium

Which singer co-wrote David Guetta's dance anthem 'Titanium' and provided the vocals on the hit single?

Sia recorded her vocal only as a demo for other artists. Katy Perry, who had turned the song down, advised David Guetta to keep Sia on the track.

Which Cold War spy plane, able to cruise beyond Mach 3, had a structure that was 85% titanium?

The SR-71 Blackbird needed titanium because its skin heated well beyond 260 °C at cruising speed. Even factory tools mattered: cadmium-plated ones were banned for corroding the metal.

Which Spanish city is home to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum, famous for its shimmering skin of titanium plates?

Bilbao's museum wears titanium plates arranged like scales. Architect Philip Johnson called it the greatest building of our time.

Trace amounts of titanium, paired with iron, give which precious gemstone its characteristic blue color?

Sapphire owes its star effect to titanium as well. Fine needles of rutile, a titanium mineral, scatter light into the six-rayed star of a star sapphire.

Titanium dioxide and zinc oxide are the two mineral active ingredients used in which everyday beach-bag product?

Sunscreen sold as 'mineral' uses only these two compounds as active ingredients. They work by reflecting, scattering and absorbing ultraviolet light.

Far from rare, titanium ranks as the ninth most abundant element in which part of the natural world?

Earth's crust is about 0.63% titanium by mass. A US Geological Survey analysis found the metal in 784 of the 801 types of igneous rock it tested.

Which Apple smartphone, launched with a USB-C port instead of Lightning, was the first with a titanium frame?

The iPhone 15 Pro has an enclosure of grade 5 titanium, the aerospace alloy that is also a common material for artificial joints.

Titanium's lack of magnetism matters most for implant patients who need which type of medical imaging?

An MRI scan surrounds the body with a powerful magnetic field. Titanium is non-ferromagnetic, so people with titanium hips or dental implants can be examined safely.

About 95% of refined titanium ends up as titanium dioxide, a paint and paper pigment of which color?

White titanium dioxide is chemically inert, very opaque and resists fading in sunlight. As a food coloring it carries the code E171.

Unalloyed titanium is as strong under tension as some grades of which common building metal, yet far less dense?

Steel is the usual yardstick because titanium has the highest tensile-strength-to-density ratio of any metallic element. It is 60% denser than aluminum but more than twice as strong as the commonest aluminum alloy.

The Titans who gave titanium its name were, in Hesiod's Theogony, the children of the sky god and which goddess?

Gaia was the mother of twelve Titans in Hesiod's account. Chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth borrowed their name for the metal in 1795.

In which English county did the Reverend William Gregor discover titanium in black sand from a stream?

Cornwall's black sand stuck to a magnet because of the iron in it. Analyzing it in 1791, Gregor also found an oxide of a metal that matched no known element.

Martin Klaproth, the chemist who named titanium, had earlier discovered which element and named it after a planet?

Uranium came first, in 1789, honoring the planet William Herschel had discovered eight years earlier. Titanium got its mythological name six years after that.

Titanium, element 22, belongs to which large family in the central block of the periodic table?

Transition metals often form compounds in more than one oxidation state. Titanium favors +4, as in its dioxide, but many +3 compounds exist too.

NASA's Juno probe shields its electronics inside a vault with titanium walls to survive radiation at which planet?

Jupiter's radiation would fry unshielded electronics on the first close pass. The vault's titanium walls are about 1 cm thick, chosen partly because they handle launch stresses well.

The submersible Limiting Factor carried explorers inside a titanium sphere to which deepest known point in the ocean?

Challenger Deep was visited by more than 21 people in that one sub. Its crew sphere of 90 mm thick titanium was machined to within 99.933% of perfectly round.

Which Mars candy lost its titanium dioxide coloring in 2025, after a lawsuit over the additive was dismissed?

Skittles faced a class-action suit over the additive in 2022. That same year the EU banned titanium dioxide in food after its safety agency raised concerns.

Paint manufacturers adopted titanium dioxide as a less toxic substitute for a pigment based on which heavy metal?

Lead-based paint was used from antiquity despite its toxicity. Its titanium replacement is considered safe enough for toothpaste.

Synthetic rutile, a form of titanium dioxide, was sold under the name Titania as a substitute for which gemstone?

Diamond actually has less fire than the imitation. Synthetic rutile splits light into colors so strongly that cut stones look almost opal-like.

A 42.5-meter titanium monument built in Moscow for the 1980 Olympic Games honors which space pioneer?

Yuri Gagarin's statue was assembled from 238 cast titanium segments and weighs 12 tons. Titanium is a metal often used in spacecraft.

Which country built the Alfa class, fast attack submarines whose hulls were made of titanium alloy?

The Soviet Union's Alfa boats could exceed 40 knots underwater. American intelligence confirmed the hull metal by retrieving shavings that fell from a truck leaving the shipyard.

Spectacle frames that spring back into shape after bending use a 'memory' alloy of titanium and which other metal?

Nickel and titanium make nitinol, named for the two metals plus the Naval Ordnance Laboratory, where it emerged from a 1959 search for missile nose cone alloys.

The hard, gold-colored coating seen on many drill bits is a compound of titanium and which other element?

Nitrogen and titanium form titanium nitride, which looks like gold and can triple the working life of a cutting tool. Titanium will even burn in the pure gas.

Armalcolite, a titanium-rich mineral first found on the Moon, takes its name from the crew of which mission?

Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins each lent letters to the name. The mineral turned up in samples from Tranquility Base in 1969.

Titanium dental implants can last for decades because which tissue bonds directly to the metal?

Bone fused so firmly to titanium chambers placed in rabbits' legs that researcher Per-Ingvar Brånemark could not remove them. He named the bond osseointegration.

Which implanted heart device is usually sealed inside a titanium case, because the metal is inert in the body?

Pacemaker makers began sealing the generator in a metal case in 1969, and titanium had become the standard casing by the mid-1970s.

Which electrical surface treatment gives titanium jewelry and wedding rings an array of bright colors without any dye?

Anodizing thickens the oxide film on the metal, and light interference in that film creates the color. The shade depends on the voltage used.

Titanium resists which fuming mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids, famous for being able to dissolve gold?

Aqua regia is stopped by the oxide film that forms on titanium the instant it meets air. That protective layer starts out only 1 to 2 nanometers thick.

Titanium-based catalysts that won Ziegler and Natta the 1963 Nobel Prize are used to mass-produce which materials?

Plastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene, the world's largest-volume commodity polymers, are made with catalysts built around titanium chlorides.

Titanium tetrachloride, nicknamed 'tickle', was once used on film sets to create which special effect?

Smoke pours off the liquid when it meets humid air. The clouds also carry hydrochloric acid, which is harsh on the lungs, so film crews gave it up.

The Kroll process, the main commercial source of titanium metal, reduces titanium tetrachloride with which metal?

Magnesium strips away the chlorine at around 800 °C. The slow batch method is the reason titanium costs so much despite being a common element.

Porous raw titanium fresh from a Kroll reactor, before it is melted into ingots, goes by which everyday name?

Sponge titanium was stockpiled by the US government as a strategic material throughout the Cold War. The reserve was only dispersed in the 2000s.

Grade 5, the most commonly used titanium alloy, contains 6% aluminum and 4% of which other metal?

Vanadium is titanium's next-door neighbor in the periodic table. The alloy is widely used in aerospace and is also a common material for artificial joints.

Which metal sits directly below titanium in group 4 of the periodic table and shares its usual +4 oxidation state?

Zirconium was identified by Martin Heinrich Klaproth, the same chemist who named titanium. Hafnium and rutherfordium complete the group.

Which British overseas territory marked the millennium by issuing the world's first titanium coin?

Gibraltar's coin was struck in 1999 by the Pobjoy Mint, a British mint that went on making titanium coins until it closed in 2023.

Rutile, one of the two main ores of titanium, takes its name from the Latin word for which color?

Red is the color some rutile crystals show when light shines through them. The name comes from the Latin rutilus.

William Kroll, who devised the main industrial process for making titanium, came from which small European country?

Luxembourg is where Kroll set up a private laboratory in 1923, and titanium was machined for the first time there in 1938.

Most plants hold about one part per million of titanium, but which common weed can contain up to 80?

Nettle and horsetail both concentrate the metal. Plants may use titanium to stimulate carbohydrate production and growth, though nobody yet knows how.

Hot titanium absorbs gases from the air, so welders must shield it with helium or which other noble gas?

Argon keeps the air away from the weld. Without it the hot metal absorbs atmospheric gases and turns brittle, and the joint can fail.

A thin titanium dioxide coating lets which self-cleaning material, announced by Pilkington in 2001, break down dirt?

Glass coated this way breaks down dirt chemically in sunlight. Rain then sheets across the surface and carries the residue away.