Apothecaries' system measure precious metals and stones. (The troy pound was already declared illegal for most other uses by the Weights and Measures Act of 1878.) In the US, the metric system replaced the apothecaries' system in the United States Pharmacopoeia of 1971. Apothecaries' system The apothecaries' system or apothecaries' weights and measures is a historical system of mass and volume units that were used by physicians and apothecaries for medical recipes, and also sometimes by scientists. The English version of the system is closely related to the English troy system of weights, the pound and grain being exactly the same in
Heavy metals of elements heavier than helium in the interstellar medium. When gravitational attraction causes this matter to coalesce and collapse new stars and planets are formed. The Earth's crust is made of approximately 5% of heavy metals by weight, with iron comprising 95% of this quantity. Light metals (~20%) and nonmetals (~75%) make up the other 95% of the crust. Despite their overall scarcity, heavy metals can become concentrated in economically extractable quantities as a result of mountain building, erosion, or other geological processes. Heavy metals are primarily found as lithophiles (rock-loving) or chalcophiles (ore-loving). Lithophile heavy metals are mainly f-block