Q 01/05

Which chemical symbol stands for platinum, element 78?

A) Pl

B) Pt

C) Pa

D) Pu

Answer · why

B) Pt

Pt is element 78, one place before gold. Europe's chemists only recognised it around 1750, though smiths in the Americas had been working it for centu...

Q 02/05

Platinum's name comes from the Spanish 'platina', which means what?

A) Heavy silver

B) River silver

C) False silver

D) Little silver

Answer · why

D) Little silver

Little silver was a put-down. The Spanish who met it in the rivers of their American colonies rated it a worthless impurity in the metal they were aft...

Q 03/05

Which 1930s Hollywood star was known as the 'Platinum Blonde'?

A) Mae West

B) Greta Garbo

C) Jean Harlow

D) Ginger Rogers

Answer · why

C) Jean Harlow

Jean Harlow insisted the shade was natural, but her hairdresser later revealed it took weekly rounds of ammonia, bleach and soap flakes.

Q 04/05

Which gemstone names the US music award that ranks above multi-platinum?

A) Sapphire

B) Emerald

C) Ruby

D) Diamond

Answer · why

D) Diamond

Diamond has a shortcut: each disc of a multi-disc set counts as a unit, so OutKast's double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below got there with half the ...

Q 05/05

What made platinum so hard for early European metalworkers to use?

A) Their furnaces could not melt it

B) It would not alloy with gold

C) Its ore was poisonous to handle

D) It dissolved in weak acids

Answer · why

A) Their furnaces could not melt it

Their furnaces could not melt it: platinum liquefies near 1,770°C, about 700 degrees above gold. Smiths in the Americas had long got round that by hea...