How to Use iridium in a Sentence

iridium

noun

• When the Earth was forming, most iridium sank below the molten crust.
  — Michael Ordoña, San Francisco Chronicle, 2 Nov. 2017
• Dunn and Currano spent a month in the field looking for rocks bearing the telltale stripe of iridium deposits the asteroid strike left on Earth.
  — Corinne Purtill, Los Angeles Times, 31 May 2023
• The official object that defines the mass of a kilogram is a tiny, 139-year-old cylinder of platinum and iridium that resides in a triple-locked vault near Paris.
  — Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 1 Nov. 2018
• What's more, the fish were found just beneath a layer of rock known as the iridium anomaly, which is rich in a dense element common in asteroids and rare on Earth.
  — Katie Hunt, CNN, 23 Feb. 2022
• Supplies of copper, lithium, cobalt, iridium, and tin also may be crimped.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 5 July 2023
• These include a layer of iridium from the asteroid, droplets of molten rock that rained down after the impact, wave deposits as far away as North Dakota and the charred remains of forest burned by the heat of the blast.
  — Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 16 July 2021
• Rhodium, iridium and ruthenium count among the precious metals that are more rare than gold, according to the U.K.’s Royal Mint.
  — Victor Reklaitis, WSJ, 4 May 2017
• First the outer shield, then the aluminum components and finally the parts made out of iridium will burn away, all vaporizing in perhaps a minute.
  — Traci Watson, USA TODAY, 29 Aug. 2017
• Here’s the research setup: A woman speaks Dutch into a microphone, while 11 tiny needles made of platinum and iridium record her brain waves.
  — Adam Rogers, Wired, 9 Nov. 2021
• The Big K is a polished block of platinum-iridium used to define the kilogram, against which all kilogram weights are ultimately measured.
  — David Brynn Hibbert, Discover Magazine, 20 May 2019
• Rather than basing the kilogram off of an object—a platinum-iridium alloy cylinder about the size of a golf ball—the new definition uses a constant of nature to set the unit of mass.
  — Jay Bennett, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 May 2012
• The core helped to precisely date the sediments containing iridium-rich dust.
  — David Bressan, Forbes, 24 Feb. 2021
• There is reason to believe that some asteroids are rich in valuable metals, such as platinum and iridium.
  — The Economist, 21 Sep. 2017
• The rock layer marking the end of the Cretaceous period was rich in iridium, a metal that is rare in Earth’s crust but more common in meteorites and asteroids.
  — National Geographic, 18 Apr. 2016
• To increase their stability, the prototypes were reforged in 1889 out of a platinum-iridium alloy and stowed under lock and key.
  — Robert Rathe, National Geographic, 20 May 2019
• The last fragments to survive will be its plutonium power supplies, still wrapped in the iridium and shielding meant to reduce risk to Earth during its launch nearly two decades ago.
  — Mika McKinnon, Discover Magazine, 14 Sep. 2017
• The dangerous substance was encased in super-dense iridium as a safeguard for Cassini’s 1997 launch and has been used for electric power to run its instruments.
  — Washington Post, 12 Sep. 2017
• Ni says the company is looking for cheaper options to replace iridium, a rare and expensive metal.
  — Robert Service, Science | AAAS, 1 Sep. 2017
• Project officials said once the iridium melts, the plutonium will be dispersed into the atmosphere.
  — Washington Post, 12 Sep. 2017
• Across the globe, a thin layer of iridium — a chemical element that’s rare on Earth but common in extraterrestrial objects — entombs the dinosaurs like a coffin lid.
  — Cody Cottier, Discover Magazine, 7 Apr. 2021
• Researchers determined the samples to be 99.5 percent carbon with inclusions of other trace elements such as troilite and iridium.
  — Breanna Draxler, Discover Magazine, 1 July 2013
• Within seconds the gas streaming around the plummeting probe will reach temperatures hot enough to melt its aluminum chassis, followed by the iridium cladding that shields its plutonium power source.
  — Lee Billings, Scientific American, 14 Sep. 2017
• Geologists soon found a similar iridium layer at the same geological strata in other parts of the world.
  — Nina Burleigh, Newsweek, 11 June 2015
• Paleontologists tell us of five major extinctions, the last of which was brought to a head, in theory, by a mischievous asteroid that did in the dinosaurs and coated the world in a thin layer of iridium-rich sediment 66 million years ago.
  — Christian Lorentzen, New York Times, 6 Apr. 2017
• To make a truly large-scale impact, the company may need to find cheaper electrode catalysts than silver and iridium oxide, says Haotian Wang, a chemist at Harvard University.
  — Robert Service, Science | AAAS, 1 Sep. 2017
• Their key piece of evidence is an oddly high amount of the metal iridium in what’s known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, layer—the geologic boundary zone that seems to cap any known rock layers containing dinosaur fossils.
  — Victoria Jaggard, National Geographic, 31 July 2019
• According to National Geographic, scientists developed this idea due to high amounts of iridium in the K-Pg layer of the geological boundary zone where many fossils were found.
  — Evan Hecht, USA TODAY, 17 Sep. 2022
• The Census Bureau’s count for other precious metals includes silver, platinum, palladium and more obscure sources such as ruthenium and iridium.
  — Dian Zhang, USA TODAY, 3 Mar. 2021
• Rare in the crust of the Earth, iridium is common in meteorites, suggesting that this layer was deposited after a major impact about 65 million years ago at the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary geologic periods.
  — Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, 22 Apr. 2020
• With its standard-setting platinum-iridium meter bars and kilogram nuggets stored in safes, this institution worships accuracy.
  — Brian Alexander, WIRED, 1 June 2001

Last Updated: 6 Nov 2024