on Titania

Here's a quick quiz:  What substance makes your smile brighter, your skin clearer, your paintings more colorful, your memory larger, and your air less polluted?  The answer is Titania!

Titania is actually Titanium Dioxide.  Titanium is a very tough metal that can withstand extreme heat and abuse, which is why it is the metal of choice for the space shuttle.  The human body doesn't seem to reject Titanium very often which is why it is also the metal of choice for joint replacements.  Titanium Dioxide is a very special substance that can be produced in eight different variables, some by adding immense pressure and some in more synthetic ways.  However it is created, Titania is all around us, in most of the products we use.

Pigment White number 6 is called Titanium White, and what any painter will tell you is indespensible when creating a masterpiece.  In any food where the manufacturer wants the color to really stand out, or wants white, the color is called E171, or Titanium Food Color.  It is used to make plastics white, which was a huge breakthrough, allowing labels and logos to be printed directly onto plastic containers instead of making paper labels.

The sunscreen we apply to our skins, to protect us from UV light, has some zinc oxide in it which reflects the sun's rays, but mostly it utilizes Titania to block the absorption of the UV rays into the skin.

The toothpaste we use is typically white.  Now this makes intuitive sense in a psychological way because who wants to brush their teeth with something black, green, or brown? However, Titania has a really wonderful quality humans have been taking advantage of a lot lately.  It can take UV light and convert it to oxygen!  Yep, it's an oxygen generator.  This is how it turns your teeth white, as long as you can somehow guarantee your teeth are exposed to UV rays.

Oxygena is an Italian produced ceramic floor (and wall) tile that utilizes Titania in its glazing.  The tiles can actually produce oxygen, making the air a bit fresher around them, again as long as they are exposed to UV light.  In fact, because they produce oxygen, any pollution that has accumulated on them will easily wash away because the oxygen doesn't allow the pollution to stick.  In this way Titania has been dubbed a "pollution scrubber".  There's even a brand of stucco, the exterior cementitious coating building material, that utilizes Titania to "self clean" its surface.  Imagine, buildings that self clean themselves, remove pollution buildup and add oxygen back into the air!

The Japanese have successfully used Titania to trap electrical impulses and create computer data memory at an extremely high efficiency level.  Is there anything this substance can't be used for?

Titania uses a process called PhotoCatalysm, in other words, it uses the light energy to break apart air molecules to produce oxygen.  This process of light energy conversion is being looked at by inventors as a possible source for energy production.

Titania, the miracle metal!