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Finland

Mobile phone

The idea of a small, ‘pocket-sized’ phone is not so modern as we first perhaps thought. In 1917, Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt, filed a patent for a telephone that could be folded and fit into a pocket with a very thin carbon microphone.

Today, up to 50 different metals are used in very small amounts which enable the user with different functionalities and are small in size in light in weight e.g. loud speaker magnets are made with new technology metals neodymium and dsyprosium. Cobalt and lithium are used for the battery, indium for the LED display, and gallium for the processor.

Sauna (stove)

Finland has a population of 5.3 million and an estimated 2 million saunas. That means that for every 2 people in Finland, there is one sauna.

To heat a sauna, rocks are heated up to 500 - 800 degrees in an open oven. Not all rocks can withstand this heat however, so special rocks are needed, e.g. peridotite which is found at 30 km to 200 km deep in the earth. This rock consists mainly of iron and magnesium which conducts heat well and an ideal sauna rock.