Uses of Iridium (Ir) in Everyday Life
From the Iridium page's study notes: Iridium (Ir) serves in alloys, infrastructure and the technologies of daily life. The full list, with Bangladesh examples, sits below.
Teachers call it "one fact, fully handled" — exactly what this page does for Iridium. The answer sits at the top in bold; scroll for the working, the shell-by-shell breakdown and the two questions students ask most. Need the whole picture instead — history, characteristics, uses, exam questions? The full Iridium page is one click away.
Iridium at work around you
Every use below comes straight from the full Iridium study page, where each point also carries the chemistry behind it and an exam-style question. Skim the list here; open the full page when revision time comes.
Uses of Iridium in the study notes
- Long-life spark plugs for car and CNG engines — an iridium-alloy tip survives tens of millions of ignitions that would burn an ordinary steel electrode away.
- Crucibles, dies and rods for growing single crystals of sapphire for LED lamps, because nothing corrodes iridium even at white heat.
- Geology’s dinosaur-detection kit: the 66-million-year-old K–Pg boundary clay is identified — at Gubbio in Italy and worldwide — by the iridium anomaly the Alvarez team measured in 1980.
- Extreme-duty parts: fountain-pen nib points, electrical contacts, compass bearings and the electrodes of high-performance ignition systems where wear is unforgivable.
Where you meet it
- Many a tuned-up CNG car in Bangladesh rides on iridium spark plugs, whose tips keep sparking cleanly for a hundred thousand kilometres and more.
- The thin dark band in cliff exposures of the 66-million-year-old boundary clay — the famous “dinosaur extinction layer” — is trailed by geologists precisely for its iridium spike.
- The platinum jewellery sold in Dhaka showrooms is routinely hardened with iridium, a platinum-group cousin, so rings keep their polish for a lifetime.
Students also ask
Why is Iridium important in Bangladesh?
The full study page connects Iridium to Bangladeshi life — school labs, local industries, health and the NCTB syllabus. This quick-answer page is the fast summary; the element page is the full story.
Where will I meet Iridium in the NCTB exam?
Questions on Iridium's uses are a recurring pattern in Class 9–10 and HSC chemistry. The element page ends with six exam-style questions in both languages — practise those and this pattern stops costing marks.