Discovery date approx Discovered by - Origin of the name The name come from the German 'Bisemutum' a corruption of 'Weisse Masse' meaning white mass. Glossary Group A vertical column in the periodic table. Fact box. Group 15 Melting point Glossary Image explanation Murray Robertson is the artist behind the images which make up Visual Elements. Appearance The description of the element in its natural form.
Biological role The role of the element in humans, animals and plants. Natural abundance Where the element is most commonly found in nature, and how it is sourced commercially.
Uses and properties. Image explanation. The image includes an alchemical symbol used to represent the element. In the background are drawings of ancient chemistry apparatus. Bismuth is a high-density, silvery, pink-tinged metal. Bismuth metal is brittle and so it is usually mixed with other metals to make it useful. Its alloys with tin or cadmium have low melting points and are used in fire detectors and extinguishers, electric fuses and solders. Bismuth oxide is used as a yellow pigment for cosmetics and paints, while bismuth III chloride oxide BiClO gives a pearly effect to cosmetics.
Biological role. Bismuth has no known biological role, and is non-toxic. Natural abundance. Bismuth occurs as the native metal, and in ores such as bismuthinite and bismite. The major commercial source of bismuth is as a by-product of refining lead, copper, tin, silver and gold ores.
Help text not available for this section currently. Elements and Periodic Table History. Bismuth was discovered by an unknown alchemist around AD. Later that century it was alloyed with lead to make cast type for printers and decorated caskets were being crafted in the metal.
Bismuth was often confused with lead; it was likewise a heavy metal and melted at a relatively low temperature making it easy to work. Bismuth was not mined as ore but appears to have occurred as the native metal. Atomic data. Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom.
Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey. Relative supply risk An integrated supply risk index from 1 very low risk to 10 very high risk. Recycling rate The percentage of a commodity which is recycled. Substitutability The availability of suitable substitutes for a given commodity.
Reserve distribution The percentage of the world reserves located in the country with the largest reserves. Political stability of top producer A percentile rank for the political stability of the top producing country, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Political stability of top reserve holder A percentile rank for the political stability of the country with the largest reserves, derived from World Bank governance indicators. Supply risk. Relative supply risk 9 Crustal abundance ppm 0.
Young's modulus A measure of the stiffness of a substance. Shear modulus A measure of how difficult it is to deform a material. Bulk modulus A measure of how difficult it is to compress a substance. Vapour pressure A measure of the propensity of a substance to evaporate.
Pressure and temperature data — advanced. Listen to Bismuth Podcast Transcript :. You're listening to Chemistry in its element brought to you by Chemistry World , the magazine of the Royal Society of Chemistry. This time we're turning to the tale of the element that held the key to masking a sun tan, provided engineers with safety valves for their boilers, could make spoons vanish in a hot cup of Victorian tea and continues to cure stomach upsets today.
With the story of this remarkable metal, here is Andrea Sella. Bismuth, A few months ago I was struck by a mad but irresistible impulse to cast a bell. A friend of mine lent me a template and I headed out to Tiranti, one of the best sculpting supply shops in London. With an inviting blue entrance, the shelves are cramped with bottles and tins of resins, polymers and initiators.
There are tubs of clay anatomical models, trays of weird implements and books that explain how to make silicon moulds of your extremities. I explained to the young woman behind the counter what I wanted to do and she took me to the silicon resin section where she selected some bottles. I was about to pay for my goodies when my eye was drawn to the next shelf. Stacked in neat piles were clear plastic bags of shiny metal slabs. I picked up a pack and was immediately struck by the weight.
Bismuth, the woman said, it casts really well and it's a lot less toxic than lead. I left the shop with a bag of that as well. Bismuth is without doubt a heavy metal; It occurs so low in the periodic table many were puzzled by the fact that it didn't seem radioactive. In fact its major isotope bismuth was predicted to be so back in But it wasn't until 55 years later, when the French physicists finally observed its decay. It has a half of life of 2x10 19 years, I would round off as the same as eternity so.
The density of the metal is 9. It can melt quite easily and it can grow stunning little ziggurat like crystals by cooling it slowly from melt. It is easy. Heat some bismuth in an iron ladle or porcelain bowl using a sand bath and a Bunsen burner until it melts.
This happens at just degree Celsius. Then turn off the burner so that the metal cools very slowly and when the metal freezes over at the top poke two holes in the solid surface and then pour out the remaining liquid and then leave everything to cool at room temperature. If you now break open the metal mass you will find gorgeous stepped cubes of bismuth with a faintly pink iridescent sheen to them, a colour which arises from the thin layer of oxide that coats the metal.
Just be careful, the metal is quite brittle and your precious cubes will shatter if dropped. Bismuth itself is not very reactive; it is sometime found in ore deposits as the native metal. But surprisingly there is little evidence that it was known to the ancients. Aristotle doesn't list it among his seven metals and Pliny is silent on the matter. Only the Incas seem to be aware of it. Reliable description of bismuth only appeared in Europe in the 15 th Century. It began to be mined in Schneeberg around and the metal soon started to be used as a kind of silvery ink or pigment which gave rise to a craze called Wismuth Malerei, bismuth painting.
Painters in Italy including Raphael used both bismuth metal and bismuthinite, bismuth trisulphide in their work. But what was it the alchemist Basil Valentine rather confused things by calling it Wismut, White lead. Eventually however the mists cleared. And by early 19 th century, John Dalton listed it amongst his atomic symbols as a circle around a capital letter B.
Only then was its chemistry systematically explored particularly by the Swedish chemist Berzelius. Nitrogen is a colorless, odorless gas; in its elemental form, nitrogen is found as the diatomic molecule N 2 , in which the two nitrogen atoms are held together by a triple bond.
The name of the element is derived from the Latin words nitron and genes , for "nitre potassium nitrate forming. It is found in the ground primarily in the form of ores containing the nitrate NO 3 - anion, such as nitratine [also known as Chile saltpeter, sodium nitrate, NaNO 3 ], nitrobarite [barium nitrate, Ba NO 3 2 ], and nitrocalcite [calcium nitrate, Ca NO 3 2 ].
The nitrogen-nitrogen triple bond is very strong and very difficult to break, so elemental nitrogen is a fairly inert substance. Since nitrogen is fairly inert, it is used in some environments where it is desirable to exclude oxygen or water vapor. Elemental nitrogen is nonpolar, and has a very low boiling point Liquid nitrogen , which is obtained by fractional distillation from liquefied air, is used in the frozen food industry to freeze foods very quickly; it is also used to freeze blood and genetic material.
Nitrogen from the air is converted by some organisms to ammonia, NH 3 , in a process called nitrogen fixation. Chemists who study nitrogen obsessively might also be said to have a "nitrogen fixation," but that's not the same thing! Some species of bacteria form nodules on the roots of legumes beans , alfalfa, and clover, providing them with nitrogen in exchange for carbohydrates. The nitrogenase enzyme in these bacteria reduces N 2 from the atmosphere into ammonia, which can then be converted into nitrate NO 3 - , which becomes incorporated into a wide variety of biologically important molecules.
The ammonia that produced is removed by refrigerating it until it liquefies at The name "ammonia" is derived from the name sal ammoniac , a white powder produced in kilns used for burning camel dung outside the Temple of Ammon in Ancient Egypt.
This substance is what we now know as ammonium chloride, NH 4 Cl. Nitrogen is found in a wide variety of organic compounds. Compounds which contain carbon-nitrogen single bonds are called amines , and may be thought of as organic derivatives of ammonia with carbon groups replacing the hydrogen atoms.
Amines are weakly basic, and are present in many pharmaceutical compounds, often referred to as alkaloids because of their basicity. If the nitrogen is connected to a carbon which is double-bonded to an oxygen atom, the functional group is called an amide ; amino acids are connected together to form proteins by amide linkages.
Carbon-nitrogen double bonds, called imines , are also very common. Nitrogen is incorporated into a large number of organic compounds of tremendous biological importance, such as the amino acids, nucleic acids, ATP, proteins, DNA, RNA, etc. Green plants contain a molecule called chlorophyll , which consists of a flat ring of carbon and nitrogen atoms with a large open space in the middle, in which a magnesium ion is bound, held in place by the nitrogen atoms.
The hemoglobin molecule contains a similar ring structure, which an iron ion bound in the cavity; this molecule is incorporated into a protein called hemoglobin, which is responsible for transporting oxygen in the bloodstream. Nitrogen forms many compounds with oxygen. One of the most important of these is nitric oxide, NO, also known as nitrogen monoxide, which is produced in the body from the amino acid arginine; it acts as a vasodilator, causing blood vessels to relax and increasing blood flow.
Some heart medications, such as nitroglycerin and amyl nitrate, increase the amount of nitric oxide in the blood, allowing the delivery of more blood to the heart during an episode of heart pain angina or heart attack. The drug Viagra works by a similar mechanism, except that the blood is delivered elsewhere. Nitric oxide also acts as a neurotransmitter. In the atmosphere, nitric oxide is a pollutant, produced in automobile exhaust and power plants; it can be converted into nitrogen dioxide and nitric acid, HNO 3 , which leads to increased acidity levels in rain.
Nitrous oxide, N 2 O, also known as dinitrogen monoxide or laughing gas, is a mild anesthetic used in dentistry and surgery; it is also used as an aerosol propellant in cans of whipped cream. Nitrogen dioxide, NO 2 , is produced in the exhaust from motor vehicles, and reacts with hydrocarbons in the air to produce photochemical smog. Nitrogen is also found in a number of explosives. Post-transition metals share some characteristics of transition metals but are softer and conduct more poorly.
In fact, bismuth's electric and thermal conductivity is unusually low for a metal. It also has a particularly low melting point, which enables it to form alloys that can be used for molds, fire detectors and fire extinguishers.
Until recently, bismuth was considered the heaviest element that still had a stable nucleus. However, in , researchers at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, found that bismuth does decay into thallium, but it has an extremely long half-life: about 20 billion billion years That's 20 followed by 18 zeroes. Put another way, if grams of bismuth the natural isotope had been present at the beginning of the universe more than 14 billion years ago, about Lead is now the heaviest stable element, according to Science magazine.
Though bismuth had been known as early as , it was frequently confused with lead because it was similarly a heavy metal with a low melting point, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry. French chemist Claude Geoffroy the Younger was the first to prove that bismuth was distinct from lead in The word "bismuth" is a Latinized version of an Old German word, "weissmuth" or "white substance," possibly named after the element's white oxide, according to Chemicool.
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