Cobalt can be used for many things such as alloys, laundry detergents and can even be found in paint. Cobalt has many different properties that allow it to do many different and interesting things. Cobalt is used for electroplating metals. This means that cobalt has the properties of coating other metals and preventing them from corroding and keeping them shiny and looking brand new. As I said before, cobalt can also be used as a magnet. When Co2+ is mixed with Fe2+, the current loss is reduced allowing it to act like a magnet. This is just one of its interesting properties. Cobalt is also found in laundry detergent. This is partly why laundry detergent gets its blue color. In ancient times, people noticed that if some cobalt minerals were immersed in water, the water would turn blue. People who washed clothes made sure not to have cobalt near their clothes, thinking that it would also turn their clothes blue, but, if linen or linen were soaked and washed in water stained blue with cobalt, then the cloth or linen would appear whiter. Cobalt compounds have been used in “laundry bluing” since the dawn of time. With these methods of washing clothes, people then came up with ideas like bleach, but that's a whole other thing