0:04

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's

0:06

Chuck. And let's take it back to Christmas

0:08

Eve. The year's eighteen hundred,

0:11

and I'm an English scientist named William

0:13

Hyde Wallaston. Who are you, Chuck?

0:16

I guess that would make me your colleague

0:19

Smithson Tenant.

0:21

Neil Tennant's great great great great

0:23

grandfather.

0:24

I don't believe you have not falling for anything anymore.

0:27

Okay, so what are we doing on

0:29

this Christmas Eve eighteen hundred.

0:31

Well, we're coming. We're unwrapping a very

0:33

special thing, a precious

0:35

metal platinum

0:38

or that's right. We

0:40

paid got to stop that.

0:41

We paid a pretty penny for it too. It came from what

0:43

we would call Columbia today, what

0:46

Wallaston and Tenant us called

0:48

Nueva Granada, which

0:50

is fancy. But they paid something

0:53

like seven hundred and ninety five pounds

0:55

for it, which in eighteen hundred

0:57

that'd be one thousand dollars and

1:00

today it'd be like twenty three thousand dollars.

1:02

I would have thought inflation would have made that way

1:04

more, but still, that's a decent amount

1:06

of money to pay for a hunk of platinum.

1:09

Even back then, the reason why they paid

1:11

so much for it and why they had to smuggle it out

1:13

is because it was essentially pure

1:16

platinum, which is very, very

1:18

hard to find. And

1:20

one of the reasons that Wallaston wanted

1:22

it was because he was trying to figure out how to create

1:25

a chemical reaction that could make platinum

1:27

malleable and therefore even more

1:29

useful than it already was.

1:31

That's right. He's like, I think I can do it. I'm pretty

1:34

smart, and I think we can get a lot of uses

1:36

out of valuable platinum. And

1:38

so he worked on

1:41

it for a few years, or rather

1:43

you worked on it for a few years.

1:44

And you helped.

1:46

I helped a little bit. I got your tea and stuff

1:48

like that, latch at your jokes, kind

1:50

of like this podcast, Oh

1:53

here's your tea, by the ways. And

1:55

he eventually would or you eventually would get

1:57

that chemical process down pat and

2:00

isolate that platinum, and it was in

2:02

fact malleable. But what he noticed

2:04

was was like, wait a minute, there's something

2:07

left over here, these reddish salts,

2:10

and like, what in the world could this be? And

2:12

it turns out that Wallaston,

2:15

Wallaston and Tenet had also

2:18

discovered not just one

2:20

other precious metal. But two we're

2:22

going to focus on rhodium, but they also discovered

2:24

palladium.

2:25

Yeah, pretty neat stuff.

2:28

That's a big bang for your buck.

2:29

And the reason they called it rodium it

2:31

was after the Greek word for rose, which is rodin,

2:34

right, which sounds like kind of like

2:37

a robot that assembles from different parts

2:39

and fights.

2:40

I was gonna say the same thing.

2:41

So, and the reason why is because those salts

2:44

are kind of like a reddish rose color. Oh

2:46

that's pretty cool. That's a great

2:48

name right off of the bat. But even

2:50

more than that, they figured out that roodium and

2:52

palladium were related to platinum.

2:55

They're part of what's called the platinum group metals.

2:58

I don't know if that's a band or not.

3:01

I was waiting for it, maybe like.

3:02

A prog rock like an all

3:05

star prog rock band. Yeah

3:07

that's not metal, No, not at all.

3:09

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, it's

3:11

one of the noble metals.

3:13

It is. The roodium has a chemical it's

3:15

a chemical element with the symbol r H atomic

3:18

number forty five, and

3:21

it is in the group with iridium and ruthenium

3:23

and platinum pladium.

3:26

What else don't iridium and osmium.

3:28

Yeah, so it's a.

3:30

Pretty big deal that they found this, and

3:34

also obviously gold and silver also

3:36

precious metals, and it turns out that rhodium

3:39

is super valuable

3:41

today and very useful

3:44

today.

3:45

Yeah, one of them be rare. It

3:47

is rare. It's incredibly

3:49

rare. Actually, it's I guess almost

3:51

never found or never found in pure

3:53

form. It's found in alloys with other stuff,

3:57

and it's usually found in just minuscule

4:00

So it's rare. It's scarce, and

4:03

it's it was until

4:05

very recently in really high

4:08

demand, so much so that

4:10

the price of an ounce of rhodium

4:13

in April of twenty twenty one was

4:16

approaching thirty thousand

4:18

dollars in ounce.

4:20

Yeah, that was the peak, that rodium

4:22

peak.

4:23

That's one of the most expensive like

4:26

commodities on the planet, if not the most

4:28

expensive. I'm not sure. What's interesting,

4:31

Chuck, though, is that it's now

4:33

down to about four thousand

4:35

dollars an ounce. And I say, we

4:37

don't tell anybody why until

4:39

we come back from a message break.

4:42

Sounds good, all

5:00

right, So we left quite a cliffhanger. Rodium

5:03

peaked at about close to thirty

5:06

thousand dollars not too long ago,

5:08

and just march in April of twenty twenty

5:10

one. Now it's abound down to

5:12

about four grand I saw like thirty

5:15

nine today forty two hundred yesterday

5:18

in that area, and the forecast is for it

5:20

to be about the same, which is

5:22

still one of the most valuable medals.

5:25

In the world, more than gold for sure.

5:27

Yeah, I mean it's like still twice as much

5:29

as gold, so it's still very, very valuable.

5:31

But like anything, it's

5:33

all about supply and demand. And

5:36

while the supply is still low

5:38

because it's still rare, it's not like they found

5:40

some huge supply of it somewhere. The

5:43

demand has gone way down for

5:45

a lot of reasons that are pretty

5:47

boring. If

5:49

you're someone who talks about things like financial

5:52

instruments, then you might

5:54

really enjoy hearing about like the twelve

5:56

reasons that I found that it's not

5:58

a demand. But one of the big

6:00

reasons that everyone can understand is

6:02

that rodium is one of the biggest

6:05

uses is that it's used in catalytic converters,

6:08

which is one reason why catalytic converters

6:10

are stolen because they contain palladium,

6:13

platinum, and rodium, and people can

6:15

cut them off very easily and sell them for a lot of money.

6:18

But catalytic converters are

6:20

on the decline because of the rise of electric

6:23

vehicles, so thus rodium the

6:25

demand is down.

6:26

Isn't that interesting? Like just

6:28

the price of rodium indicates

6:31

that the world turned a corner and it's

6:33

like, yeap, electric vehicles are here

6:35

to stay and we don't really need catalytic

6:37

converters like we used to.

6:39

Yeah, it'll go back up though, because the other

6:41

eleven reasons are much more volatile

6:43

and not as locked in.

6:44

Okay, but still it's

6:47

just not in demand. I think something like eighty

6:49

percent of the use

6:51

or the demand for rodium

6:54

was with the automotive industry, largely

6:56

for catalytic converters. The reason why

6:58

they use it for catalytic converts because it is just

7:00

aces at converting nitrous

7:04

oxide emissions. Yeah,

7:06

which it's crazy there, well, some that

7:08

comes out of your tailpipe, but nothing

7:10

like it would without a catalytic converter.

7:13

Like we would not be breathing basically

7:15

right now with all the cars on the road if

7:18

there weren't catalytic converters featuring rodium.

7:20

And the solution to that is not more rodium,

7:23

it's fewer catalytic converters.

7:24

Turns out. Yeah, I wrote the catalytic

7:27

converter article years ago at how stuff works.

7:29

How was it?

7:31

It was a slog my friend, Yeah,

7:34

as someone you know, I think for both of us were

7:36

not super car guys so or

7:38

at least how cars work, so it was tough.

7:40

Well, can you take ten minutes and explain how they work

7:43

real quick?

7:44

I have no memory of it, but what

7:46

I do remember is you said eighty percent as

7:49

far as their use in catalytic converters,

7:52

also, eighty percent. That's how much

7:54

rodium South Africa is putting

7:56

out, about eighty percent of

7:58

the world supplies coming from South Africa. Russia

8:02

is number two on that list, Zimbabwe is

8:04

number three, and there's also a

8:06

and again, these aren't rhodium mines. I think

8:09

they're generally platinum mines for the most

8:11

part, right, but there's a platinum

8:13

mine in Montana that is producing some rodium

8:15

as well.

8:15

Pretty neat, not bad. One of

8:17

the cool things about rodium is that it's

8:20

super shiny. It's got a beautiful,

8:23

silvery white sheen to it,

8:25

so it makes it very alluring, like

8:27

momo. Yeah, exactly. It

8:31

has like a lot of attractiveness.

8:33

It also is very hard, which

8:36

is a double edged sword for jewelers.

8:38

It makes it really hard to make jewelry out

8:40

of. But if you can figure

8:42

out how to plate rodium

8:44

onto other kinds of jewelry, it

8:47

will make it super shiny and super hard

8:49

and durable. And that's one way

8:51

that they have figured out how to use rhodium is they

8:54

plate it. And to plate it you actually

8:56

have to dissolve it in certain kinds of

8:58

acids, and that causes

9:00

fumes, and you do not want to breathe

9:02

those fumes. But if you can successfully

9:04

avoid breathing the fumes, you can plate

9:07

jewelry with roodium and you'll

9:09

be pretty happy with the result afterwards.

9:11

I hear.

9:13

Yeah, it is actually one of

9:15

the least toxic of

9:17

those precious metals, but

9:20

it is that the fumes that are harmful

9:22

for sure, So they have found

9:24

ways to work on it as jewelers to

9:26

avoid those fumes. Another

9:29

great part about rhodium on jewelry is that it's

9:31

hyper hypoallergenic, so

9:34

you're not you know, sometimes if you wear bracelets

9:36

and rings and things that will

9:39

turn your skin a different color. This

9:42

avoids that that plating of rodium

9:44

will not turn your skin different colors, so that's

9:46

another big plus. And

9:49

it's also because it's hard. It's very

9:52

scratch resistant, it's corrosion

9:54

resistant. It's

9:56

pretty hardy. But

9:58

they have to do it in such a then layers

10:01

it will wear down. So they say if you

10:04

do have a rodium plated piece

10:06

of jewelry or something, they say

10:08

that you should probably not do it on like a

10:10

ring. You should probably do it for like ear rings or a

10:12

necklace or something that doesn't get rubbed around

10:14

a lot in your skin. And you might want to think

10:17

about getting it replated every few years.

10:20

And it sounds like, oh my gosh, it's the most expensive

10:22

thing in the world. Why would I do that.

10:24

They need so little of it to

10:27

plate your jewelry that apparently

10:30

isn't that much money. No, I'm

10:32

sure that's relative, but it's not like

10:34

you would think like, oh, it costs like ten grand to get this

10:36

thing replated.

10:37

Right, because you don't need an ounce of this stuff.

10:40

No, you don't need a little tiny bit.

10:42

And that's all it takes. All

10:44

it takes one other use for it that I think we should

10:46

end on. Not only

10:48

does it catalyze nitrous oxide

10:50

into less harmful stuff, it

10:53

is the catalyst for the reaction that produces

10:55

menthol. Yeah, so

10:58

if you like chewing gum or you

11:01

can thank roodium for that.

11:04

Aren't they getting rid of mental cigarettes?

11:06

They should?

11:07

I thought I just saw something about that recently.

11:09

I don't know, but I could. I could definitely

11:11

see us reaching that point.

11:12

Finally, I'm not sure why

11:15

I would have dreamed that up, even

11:17

though I had the weirdest dream ever last night, so you

11:19

never know, but

11:22

I thought I saw something. So anyway, I'm

11:24

sure we'll figure that out.

11:26

You're not going to share last night's stream.

11:28

Oh no, no, no no, but it involved Michael Douglas

11:30

and Catherine Zada Jones.

11:31

Awesome. So if

11:34

you want to know more about this wonderful

11:37

topic, Rodium, you can go on to how Stuff

11:39

Works, because that's where we got this article, and

11:42

that means short stuff is out.

11:47

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