Crookesite Crookesite Crookesite is a selenide mineral composed of copper and selenium with variable thallium and silver. Its chemical formula is reported either as Cu(Tl,Ag)Se or (Cu,Tl,Ag)Se. It is formed by precipitation from hydrothermal fluids, and contains by mass: 16.3% Tl, 47.3% Cu, 2.9% Ag, and 33.6% Se. Crookesite is an opaque, bluish grey to pink toned brown metallic mineral crystallizing in the tetragonal system. It has a Mohs hardness of 2.5 to 3 and a specific gravity of 6.9. It was discovered in 1866 in Skrikerum, Sweden and named for Sir William Crookes (1832–1919), the discoverer of the element thallium.
Chemical element element cannot be transformed into other chemical elements by chemical processes. Elements during this time were generally distinguished by their atomic weights, a property measurable with fair accuracy by available analytical techniques. The 1913 discovery by English physicist Henry Moseley that the nuclear charge is the physical basis for an atom's atomic number, further refined when the nature of protons and neutrons became appreciated, eventually led to the current definition of an element based on atomic number (number of protons per atomic nucleus). The use of atomic numbers, rather than atomic weights, to distinguish elements has greater predictive value (since