Are there any chemical elements with no practical applications?

Answer 1

No.

The question is misdirected. Is there any physical object which has no practical application? The answer of course is that everything has a practical application just because of its very existence (its practical purpose is being itself).

If you are speaking anthropically and desire a purpose within human meaning, then given that human beings are as apt to find a purpose for negative consequences (such as poisoning) as they are for positive consequences (such as healing), then again, everything has a practical purpose, even a rock.

Answer 2

You have probably seen a periodic table that shows pictures of alot of the elements and how they are used, you know the one where it shows noble gases as a picture of a light bulb.

You can look at it this way, there are so many elements, so many of which only exist in a dying capacity, i.e. they exist one second and are gone the next, (atomic degradtion) so really they cant have a useful application, but the method we use to see them give pretty diagrams lol.

One other major thing to remember is that isotopes of the same element, these are basically a different form of one element can have very different applications.

For example carbon... used in pencils, or as a lubricant for high temperature applications, can also exist as diamond, the hardest substance known to man. (Not much use as a lubricant and makes for a useless very expensive pencil)

Answer 3

No, all elements can have a practical application, even if they are just a mass for a doorstop.

I know a lot of COMPLETELY useless people though.

Answer 4

Francium Fr for instance does not last long enough to do anything with it,same goes for most of the artificially produced elements like Ununnullium Uun and Unununium Uuu.

Answer 5

My chemistry teacher says sthat some haven't even been discovered yet and have only been predicted by the trends in the periosic table but so far theyve all proved right

Answer 6

Loads!
No idea what anyone would use Neptunium for.
Ununseptium (element 117) is the greatest impractical element, it has yet to be found or created yet it's place in the periodic table has already been created for when it can be found! Utterly impractical!

Answer 7

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.

There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium.

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard,
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discavard.