Raw material lithium

Take a screenshot here!

Interesting facts: Lightweight lithium

✨ With lithium, you’ve discovered the lightest of all solid elements. Its density is only 0.534 grams per cubic centimetre. Lithium is of crucial importance for the economy and for certain industries. You can find it here, among other places:

The future of mobility

Lithium plays a crucial role in the mobility of tomorrow, as electric vehicles are increasingly seen as an eco-friendly alternative to conventional combustion engines. Lithium-ion batteries are the beating hearts of these electric vehicles. Their high energy density improves the vehicles’ range and performance.

The growing demand for electric vehicles also increases the demand for lithium. Research and development is focused on improving lithium-ion batteries and researching new battery technologies.

Lithium mining

But where does lithium actually come from? Lithium has two possible sources: it’s found, for instance, in salt lakes or brines. Some countries have saline lakes with lithium floating in them. In order to extract the lithium, the salt water is pumped out and left to stand in large basins. The sun helps to evaporate the water, leaving behind lithium and salt, which can then be separated.
Sometimes, however, lithium is also extracted from rocks known as pegmatites and spodumene. Lithium is named after the Greek lithos, which means stone. Together with hydrogen and helium, it was one of the three elements created in the Big Bang. Once the stones have been mined, they’re crushed and then subjected to a whole series of complicated physical and chemical processes, before the lithium can be converted into various products.
Lithium is mainly found in Chile, Australia and Argentina and is a so-called critical raw material. In other words, it’s a material whose availability, secure supply and processing pose a challenge.

Numbers games

Did you know that?

Reactivity

In nature, lithium doesn’t occur in elemental form, although it is contained in almost all rocks and mineral springs. The pure element is so reactive that it even interacts with water. In order to slow down oxidation, lithium is therefore stored either in an inert atmosphere (that is, surrounded by gases that are sluggish in reaction) with a minimum oxygen content or in oil.

Red sparks

Lithium burns with a bright red colour. The flame comes about through the light emitted when the lithium atoms are excited in the flame and then return to a lower-energy state. This process is called “luminescence”. Due to this property, the raw material is often added to fireworks to produce red sparks.

Come with us on a treasure hunt!

This is what it’s all about:

Futurium’s current annual theme “Treasures of the Future” is all about raw materials. To celebrate this theme, we’ve joined forces with Berliner Stadtreinigung to transform selected BSR waste bins into “treasure bins”. With the help of our treasure map, you can discover them throughout the Berlin city area. The QR codes on the treasure bins conceal a total of five different raw-material treasures that need to be collected.

This is how you take part:

1. Open the treasure map here to get the GPS coordinates of all the treasure bins in Berlin or to select a prepared route where you are guaranteed to find all five different treasures.
2. Search for treasure bins in the city and scan the QR codes.
3. Take screenshots of the scanned resource treasures.
4. Collect the complete set of five resource treasures. (Here’s a little spoiler: the fifth treasure can only be discovered at Futurium!)
5. Come to Futurium for even more exciting knowledge about raw materials.

What are you waiting for? Grab your smartphones and off you go! Have fun with the “Treasures of the Future”.