The chemical element niobium (Nb) is a soft, malleable metal of Group 5 (Vb) of the periodic table. In 1801 the English chemist Charles Hatchett discovered a metal and named it columbium. Some 40 years later another chemist, Heinrich Rose of Germany, rediscovered the metal and named it niobium. Ever since, despite an international agreement among chemists to call it niobium, the metal has had a dual identity.
Niobium looks like steel or, when…
|Group in periodic table||5 (Vb)|
|Boiling point||8,901° F (4,927° C)|
|Melting point||4,474° F (2,468° C)|