Titanium dioxide is mostly used in paint, but has many other applications. Because it is non-toxic, it is also used as a colouring agent in foods, in cleaning agents and toothpaste has a white colour because of this mineral. It has a very high refractive index, meaning it scatters back most of the light. In fact, only diamond has a higher refractive index. This property gives titanium oxide its most important asset: it has incredible whitening powers.
Romanian Petrache Poenaru designed the first fountain pen, with a barrel made from a large swan quill which was patented in May 1827 by the French Government. In those days, a tiny fragment of ruby was attached to form the wear-point. The pen soon evolved and in the 1830’s iridium was used on the iridium-tipped gold dip pen nibs.Today’s modern fountain pen looks somewhat different and are usually made from stainless steel or gold alloys with the most popular gold content being 14 and 18 carat gold.
Its vast size makes the Palace of the Parliament building in Bucharest an impressive attraction. The massive building hosts not only the two houses of Parliament, but also three museums and an international conference center. With a weight of more than 4 million kilograms, this is the heaviest building in the world, and the floor area is 365,000 square metres. It was designed by a team of 700 architects and constructed almost entirely of Romanian materials, including 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze, 1 million m3 of marble and 3,500 tonnes of crystal.
Romania was an early adopter of fiber optic internet, providing its citizens with some of the fasted internet speeds in Europe. This is one reason why the country is a growing center for tech professionals and startup companies. Such tech-centered developments require the use of raw materials such as silicon of course, but also copper, gold, tin, zinc and nickel among others.