Expensive but worth it

Battle of the Titans, attributed to Francesco Allegrini (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

      Cornwall, in the southwest of England, has sandy beaches, complete with surfing and, I was surprised to discover when I visited, palm trees..
      And in that sand, titanium, first noticed by one Rev. William Gregor in 1791, though he wasn't able to identity the black sand he had found, leaving it to a more skilled German scientist, Martin Heinrich Klaproth, who discovered the metal independently in 1795 and named it titanium, after the Titans of Greek mythology because, to him, the name had no meaning and therefore "could give no rise to any erroneous idea."
     If you're wondering what sent me down this particular rabbit hole, blame Jack, a reader—among hundreds who wrote in with their thoughts, experiences and good wishes last week during my three-part series on spine surgery, thank you all very much—who wrote:
      "Who knew element 22 would be your blessing."
      Element 22 is titanium, which I mentioned because it is a cool-sounding, Space Age metal. Which was all I knew about the substance, though that "22" reminded me that titanium, as opposed to, say, steel, is an element, with its own atomic number (any guesses? C'mon. Think hard. You've had a hint. . . Sigh: 22). 
     An atomic number, is you remember your high school physics, is the number of protons at the nucleus of an atom. Hydrogen has one proton, thus its atomic number is 1. And titanium has .... anybody? ... 22, putting it between scandium, 21, and vanadium, 23, on the Periodic Table. 
     It is indeed a cool substance. Stronger than steel but almost 50 percent lighter, titanium is used mostly in airplane parts—a Boeing 747 engine has 9,000 pounds of titanium—both  engines and airframes—about 66 percent of titanium processed—with the rest going into chemical plant pipes and valves, expensive wristwatches and, let's not forget, medical devices. 
      So how come did it come about to be used to shore up balky spines?

     "In the 1950s, surgeons noted that titanium metal was ideal for pinning together broken bones," notes my go-to reference on these matters, John Emsley's excellent, dare I say, invaluable book "Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements" (Oxford: 2001). "It resists corrosion, bonds well to bone and is not rejected by the body. Hip and knee replacements, pace-makers, bone-plates and screws, and cranial plates for skull fractures, can be made of titanium and remain in place for up to 20 years."

     "Up to 20 years?" Sheesh, now they tel me. Nobody mentioned that before. You mean I have to go through this again, and in my late 70s at that? Oh well, I guess I'll worry about it in 2039.

      What else? That black sand that Rev. Gregor discovered wasn't pure titanium, of course, but titanium oxide—TiO2, or one atom of titanium bonded with two of oxygen, which are very useful in covering things up, thus is found in paint (where it replaced lead, fallen from favor after it was discovered to poison people) to lipstick to sunscreen. 
     Not to take anything away from Gregor, an amateur chemist, but someone was bound to find it: titanium is the 9th most common element on earth, making up .44 percent of the crust, and is found in most rocks, sand, clay not to mention most plants, animals and stars in the night sky. 

      Titanium shows up in some odd places: titanium tetrachloride is used in smokescreens and skywriting because it puts out dense smoke when mixed with water. The star in a blue star sapphire is due to titanium. 
    I should wind this up before I go completely into the weeds, but can't before I point out that Frank Gehry's masterwork, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is covered with 33,000 square meters of pure titanium. Local yokel that I am, my immediate thought was to wonder whether that means our own Pritzker Bandshell, also designed by Gehry, is also titanium. No such luck: stainless steel, no doubt as an economy move. And maybe a smart one. While prices vary according to grade, titanium, is very expensive to produce, roughly 100 times the cost of stainless steel. 
     "It's use has been thwarted by its cost," diplomatically noted Michigan's Titanium Processing Center. But not in my case: nothing but the best for my spine.