Vanadium is a hard, silvery-grey, ductile and malleable transition metal.
Core Principles & Analysis
Andres Manuel del Rio found vanadium in Mexican lead ore in 1801 but was persuaded he was wrong; Nils Gabriel Sefstroem rediscovered it in 1830 and named it for the Norse goddess Vanadis.
Its solutions cycle through violet, green, blue, and yellow as the metal moves between the +2, +3, +4, and +5 oxidation states.
About 85% of vanadium toughens steel, famously in the Ford Model T chassis, while vanadium redox flow batteries store grid-scale renewable energy.