Copper
Copper is a chemical element with symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a soft and ductile metal with high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement. Copper is one of the few metals; this led to early human use in several regions, from c. 8000 BC. Thousands of years it was the first metal to be smelted from sulfide ores, c. 5000 BC, the first metal to be cast into a shape in a mold, c. 4000 BC and the first metal to be purposefully alloyed with another metal, tin, to create bronze, c. 3500 BC. In the Roman era, copper was principally mined on Cyprus, the origin of the name of the metal, from aes сyprium corrupted to сuprum, from which the words derived and copper, first used around 1530.
The encountered compounds are copper salts, which impart blue or green colors to such minerals as azurite and turquoise, have been used and as pigments. Copper used in buildings for roofing, oxidizes to form a green verdigris. Copper is sometimes used in decorative art, both in its elemental metal form and in compounds as pigments. Copper compounds are used as bacteriostatic agents and wood preservatives. Copper is essential to all living organisms as a trace dietary mineral because it is a key constituent of the respiratory enzyme complex cytochrome c oxidase. In molluscs and crustaceans, copper is a constituent of the blood pigment hemocyanin, replaced by the iron-complexed hemoglobin in fish and other vertebrates. In humans, copper is found in the liver and bone; the adult body contains between 2.1 mg of copper per kilogram of body weight. Copper and gold are in group 11 of the periodic table; the filled d-shells in these elements contribute little to interatomic interactions, which are dominated by the s-electrons through metallic bonds.
Unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in copper are lacking a covalent character and are weak. This observation explains the low high ductility of single crystals of copper. At the macroscopic scale, introduction of extended defects to the crystal lattice, such as grain boundaries, hinders flow of the material under applied stress, thereby increasing its hardness. For this reason, copper is supplied in a fine-grained polycrystalline form, which has greater strength than monocrystalline forms; the softness of copper explains its high electrical conductivity and high thermal conductivity, second highest among pure metals at room temperature. This is because the resistivity to electron transport in metals at room temperature originates from scattering of electrons on thermal vibrations of the lattice, which are weak in a soft metal; the maximum permissible current density of copper in open air is 3.1×106 A/m2 of cross-sectional area, above which it begins to heat excessively. Copper is one of a few metallic elements with a natural color other than silver.
Pure copper acquires a reddish tarnish when exposed to air. The characteristic color of copper results from the electronic transitions between the filled 3d and half-empty 4s atomic shells – the energy difference between these shells corresponds to orange light; as with other metals, if copper is put in contact with another metal, galvanic corrosion will occur. Copper does not react with water, but it does react with atmospheric oxygen to form a layer of brown-black copper oxide which, unlike the rust that forms on iron in moist air, protects the underlying metal from further corrosion. A green layer of verdigris can be seen on old copper structures, such as the roofing of many older buildings and the Statue of Liberty. Copper tarnishes when exposed to some sulfur compounds, with which it reacts to form various copper sulfides. There are 29 isotopes of copper. 63Cu and 65Cu are stable, with 63Cu comprising 69% of occurring copper. The other isotopes are radioactive, with the most stable being 67Cu with a half-life of 61.83 hours.
Seven metastable isotopes have been characterized. Isotopes with a mass number above 64 decay by β−, whereas those with a mass number below 64 decay by β+. 64Cu, which has a half-life of 12.7 hours, decays both ways.62Cu and 64Cu have significant applications. 62Cu is used in 62Cu-PTSM as a radioactive tracer for positron emission tomography. Copper is produced in massive stars and is present in the Earth's crust in a proportion of about 50 parts per million. In nature, copper occurs in a variety of minerals, including native copper, copper sulfides such as chalcopyrite, digenite and chalcocite, copper sulfosalts such as tetrahedite-tennantite, enargite, copper carbonates such as azurite and malachite, as copper or copper oxides such as cuprite and tenorite, respectively; the largest mass of elemental copper discovered weighed 420 tonnes and was found in 1857 on the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan, US. Native copper is a polycrystal
Tellurium
Tellurium is a chemical element with symbol Te and atomic number 52. It is a brittle, mildly toxic, silver-white metalloid. Tellurium is chemically related to all three of which are chalcogens, it is found in native form as elemental crystals. Tellurium is far more common in the Universe as a whole than on Earth, its extreme rarity in the Earth's crust, comparable to that of platinum, is due its formation of a volatile hydride that caused tellurium to be lost to space as a gas during the hot nebular formation of Earth, to tellurium’s low affinity for oxygen that causes it to bind preferentially to other chalcophiles in dense minerals that sink into the core. Tellurium-bearing compounds were first discovered in 1782 in a gold mine in Kleinschlatten, Transylvania by Austrian mineralogist Franz-Joseph Müller von Reichenstein, although it was Martin Heinrich Klaproth who named the new element in 1798 after the Latin word for "earth", tellus. Gold telluride minerals are the most notable natural gold compounds.
However, they are not a commercially significant source of tellurium itself, extracted as a by-product of copper and lead production. Commercially, the primary use of tellurium is copper and steel alloys, where it improves machinability. Applications in CdTe solar panels and semiconductors consume a considerable portion of tellurium production. Tellurium is considered a technology-critical element. Tellurium has no biological function, although fungi can use it in place of sulfur and selenium in amino acids such as tellurocysteine and telluromethionine. In humans, tellurium is metabolized into dimethyl telluride, 2Te, a gas with a garlic-like odor exhaled in the breath of victims of tellurium exposure or poisoning. Tellurium has two allotropes and amorphous; when crystalline, tellurium is silvery-white with a metallic luster. It is a brittle and pulverized metalloid. Amorphous tellurium is a black-brown powder prepared by precipitating it from a solution of tellurous acid or telluric acid. Tellurium is a semiconductor that shows a greater electrical conductivity in certain directions depending on atomic alignment.
When molten, tellurium is corrosive to copper and stainless steel. Of the chalcogens, tellurium has the highest melting and boiling points, at 722.66 K and 1,261 K, respectively. Tellurium adopts a polymeric structure consisting of zig-zag chains of Te atoms; this gray material is not volatile. Occurring tellurium has eight isotopes. Six of those isotopes, 120Te, 122Te, 123Te, 124Te, 125Te, 126Te, are stable; the other two, 128Te and 130Te, have been found to be radioactive, with long half-lives, including 2.2 × 1024 years for 128Te. This is the longest known half-life among all radionuclides and is about 160 trillion times the age of the known universe. Stable isotopes comprise only 33.2% of occurring tellurium. A further 30 artificial radioisotopes of tellurium are known, with atomic masses ranging from 105 to 142 and with half-lives of 19 days or less. 17 nuclear isomers are known, with half-lives up to 154 days. Tellurium are among the lightest elements known to undergo alpha decay; the atomic mass of tellurium exceeds that of the next element in the periodic table.
With an abundance in the Earth's crust comparable to that of platinum, tellurium is one of the rarest stable solid elements. In comparison the rarest of the stable lanthanides have crustal abundances of 500 µg/kg; this rarity of tellurium in the Earth's crust is not a reflection of its cosmic abundance. Tellurium is more abundant than rubidium in the cosmos, though rubidium is 10,000 times more abundant in the Earth's crust; the rarity of tellurium on Earth is thought to be caused by conditions during preaccretional sorting in the solar nebula, when the stable form of certain elements, in the absence of oxygen and water, was controlled by the reductive power of free hydrogen. Under this scenario, certain elements that form volatile hydrides, such as tellurium, were depleted through evaporation of these hydrides. Tellurium and selenium are the heavy elements most depleted by this process. Tellurium is sometimes found in its native form, but is more found as the tellurides of gold such as calaverite and krennerite, petzite, Ag3AuTe2, sylvanite, AgAuTe4.
The city of Telluride, was named in hope of a strike of gold telluride. Gold itself is found uncombined, but when found as a chemical compound, it is most combined with tellurium. Although tellurium is found with gold more than in uncombined form, it is found more combined as tellurides of more common metals. Natural tellurite and tellurate minerals occur, formed by oxidation of tellurides near the Earth's surface. In contrast to selenium, tellurium does not replace sulfur in minerals because of the great difference in ion radii. Thus, many common sulfide minerals contain substantial quantities of selenium and only traces of tellurium. In the gold rush of 1893, miners in Kalgoorlie discarded a pyritic material as they searched for pure gold, it was used to fill in potholes and build sidewalks. In 1896, that tailing was discovered to be calaverite, a telluride of gold, it sparked a second gold rush that included mining the streets. Tellurium w
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with symbol Au and atomic number 79, making it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. In its purest form, it is a bright reddish yellow, soft and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a group 11 element, it is solid under standard conditions. Gold occurs in free elemental form, as nuggets or grains, in rocks, in veins, in alluvial deposits, it occurs in a solid solution series with the native element silver and naturally alloyed with copper and palladium. Less it occurs in minerals as gold compounds with tellurium. Gold is resistant to most acids, though it does dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid, which forms a soluble tetrachloroaurate anion. Gold is insoluble in nitric acid, which dissolves silver and base metals, a property that has long been used to refine gold and to confirm the presence of gold in metallic objects, giving rise to the term acid test. Gold dissolves in alkaline solutions of cyanide, which are used in mining and electroplating.
Gold dissolves in mercury, forming amalgam alloys. A rare element, gold is a precious metal, used for coinage and other arts throughout recorded history. In the past, a gold standard was implemented as a monetary policy, but gold coins ceased to be minted as a circulating currency in the 1930s, the world gold standard was abandoned for a fiat currency system after 1971. A total of 186,700 tonnes of gold exists above ground, as of 2015; the world consumption of new gold produced is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, 10% in industry. Gold's high malleability, resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions, conductivity of electricity have led to its continued use in corrosion resistant electrical connectors in all types of computerized devices. Gold is used in infrared shielding, colored-glass production, gold leafing, tooth restoration. Certain gold salts are still used as anti-inflammatories in medicine; as of 2017, the world's largest gold producer by far was China with 440 tonnes per year.
Gold is the most malleable of all metals. It can be drawn into a monoatomic wire, stretched about twice before it breaks; such nanowires distort via formation and migration of dislocations and crystal twins without noticeable hardening. A single gram of gold can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, an avoirdupois ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become semi-transparent; the transmitted light appears greenish blue, because gold reflects yellow and red. Such semi-transparent sheets strongly reflect infrared light, making them useful as infrared shields in visors of heat-resistant suits, in sun-visors for spacesuits. Gold is a good conductor of electricity. Gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm3 identical to that of tungsten at 19.25 g/cm3. By comparison, the density of lead is 11.34 g/cm3, that of the densest element, osmium, is 22.588±0.015 g/cm3. Whereas most metals are gray or silvery white, gold is reddish-yellow; this color is determined by the frequency of plasma oscillations among the metal's valence electrons, in the ultraviolet range for most metals but in the visible range for gold due to relativistic effects affecting the orbitals around gold atoms.
Similar effects impart a golden hue to metallic caesium. Common colored gold alloys include the distinctive eighteen-karat rose gold created by the addition of copper. Alloys containing palladium or nickel are important in commercial jewelry as these produce white gold alloys. Fourteen-karat gold-copper alloy is nearly identical in color to certain bronze alloys, both may be used to produce police and other badges. White gold alloys can be made with nickel. Fourteen- and eighteen-karat gold alloys with silver alone appear greenish-yellow and are referred to as green gold. Blue gold can be made by alloying with iron, purple gold can be made by alloying with aluminium. Less addition of manganese, aluminium and other elements can produce more unusual colors of gold for various applications. Colloidal gold, used by electron-microscopists, is red. Gold has only one stable isotope, 197Au, its only occurring isotope, so gold is both a mononuclidic and monoisotopic element. Thirty-six radioisotopes have been synthesized, ranging in atomic mass from 169 to 205.
The most stable of these is 195Au with a half-life of 186.1 days. The least stable is 171Au. Most of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses below 197 decay by some combination of proton emission, α decay, β+ decay; the exceptions are 195Au, which decays by electron capture, 196Au, which decays most by electron capture with a minor β− decay path. All of gold's radioisotopes with atomic masses above 197 decay by β− decay. At least 32 nuclear isomers have been characterized, ranging in atomic mass from 170 to 200. Within that range, only 178Au, 180Au, 181Au, 182Au, 188Au do not have isomers. Gold's most stable isomer is 198m2Au with a half-life of 2.27 days. Gold's least stable isomer is 177m2Au with a half-life of only 7 ns. 184m1Au has three decay paths: β+ decay, isomeric
Aluminium
Aluminium or aluminum is a chemical element with symbol Al and atomic number 13. It is a silvery-white, soft and ductile metal in the boron group. By mass, aluminium makes up about 8% of the Earth's crust; the chief ore of aluminium is bauxite. Aluminium metal is so chemically reactive that native specimens are rare and limited to extreme reducing environments. Instead, it is found combined in over 270 different minerals. Aluminium is remarkable for its low density and its ability to resist corrosion through the phenomenon of passivation. Aluminium and its alloys are vital to the aerospace industry and important in transportation and building industries, such as building facades and window frames; the oxides and sulfates are the most useful compounds of aluminium. Despite its prevalence in the environment, no known form of life uses aluminium salts metabolically, but aluminium is well tolerated by plants and animals; because of these salts' abundance, the potential for a biological role for them is of continuing interest, studies continue.
Of aluminium isotopes, only 27Al is stable. This is consistent with aluminium having an odd atomic number, it is the only aluminium isotope that has existed on Earth in its current form since the creation of the planet. Nearly all the element on Earth is present as this isotope, which makes aluminium a mononuclidic element and means that its standard atomic weight equates to that of the isotope; the standard atomic weight of aluminium is low in comparison with many other metals, which has consequences for the element's properties. All other isotopes of aluminium are radioactive; the most stable of these is 26Al and therefore could not have survived since the formation of the planet. However, 26Al is produced from argon in the atmosphere by spallation caused by cosmic ray protons; the ratio of 26Al to 10Be has been used for radiodating of geological processes over 105 to 106 year time scales, in particular transport, sediment storage, burial times, erosion. Most meteorite scientists believe that the energy released by the decay of 26Al was responsible for the melting and differentiation of some asteroids after their formation 4.55 billion years ago.
The remaining isotopes of aluminium, with mass numbers ranging from 21 to 43, all have half-lives well under an hour. Three metastable states are known, all with half-lives under a minute. An aluminium atom has 13 electrons, arranged in an electron configuration of 3s23p1, with three electrons beyond a stable noble gas configuration. Accordingly, the combined first three ionization energies of aluminium are far lower than the fourth ionization energy alone. Aluminium can easily surrender its three outermost electrons in many chemical reactions; the electronegativity of aluminium is 1.61. A free aluminium atom has a radius of 143 pm. With the three outermost electrons removed, the radius shrinks to 39 pm for a 4-coordinated atom or 53.5 pm for a 6-coordinated atom. At standard temperature and pressure, aluminium atoms form a face-centered cubic crystal system bound by metallic bonding provided by atoms' outermost electrons; this crystal system is shared by some other metals, such as copper. Aluminium metal, when in quantity, is shiny and resembles silver because it preferentially absorbs far ultraviolet radiation while reflecting all visible light so it does not impart any color to reflected light, unlike the reflectance spectra of copper and gold.
Another important characteristic of aluminium is its low density, 2.70 g/cm3. Aluminium is a soft, lightweight and malleable with appearance ranging from silvery to dull gray, depending on the surface roughness, it is nonmagnetic and does not ignite. A fresh film of aluminium serves as a good reflector of visible light and an excellent reflector of medium and far infrared radiation; the yield strength of pure aluminium is 7–11 MPa, while aluminium alloys have yield strengths ranging from 200 MPa to 600 MPa. Aluminium has stiffness of steel, it is machined, cast and extruded. Aluminium atoms are arranged in a face-centered cubic structure. Aluminium has a stacking-fault energy of 200 mJ/m2. Aluminium is a good thermal and electrical conductor, having 59% the conductivity of copper, both thermal and electrical, while having only 30% of copper's density. Aluminium is capable of superconductivity, with a superconducting critical temperature of 1.2 kelvin and a critical magnetic field of about 100 gauss.
Aluminium is the most common material for the fabrication of superconducting qubits. Aluminium's corrosion resistance can be excellent due to a thin surface layer of aluminium oxide that forms when the bare metal is exposed to air preventing further oxidation, in a process termed passivation; the strongest aluminium alloys are less corrosion resistant due to galvanic reactions with alloyed copper. This corrosion resistance is reduced by aqueous salts in the presence of dissimilar metals. In acidic solutions, aluminium reacts with water to form hydrogen, in alkaline ones to form aluminates—protective passivation under these conditions is negligible; because it is corroded by dissolved chlorides, such as common sodium chloride, household plumbing is never made from aluminium. However, because
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6, it is a steely-grey, lustrous and brittle transition metal. Chromium boasts a high usage rate as a metal, able to be polished while resisting tarnishing. Chromium is the main additive in stainless steel, a popular steel alloy due to its uncommonly high specular reflection. Simple polished chromium reflects 70% of the visible spectrum, with 90% of infrared light being reflected; the name of the element is derived from the Greek word χρῶμα, chrōma, meaning color, because many chromium compounds are intensely colored. Ferrochromium alloy is commercially produced from chromite by silicothermic or aluminothermic reactions and chromium metal by roasting and leaching processes followed by reduction with carbon and aluminium. Chromium metal is of high value for hardness. A major development in steel production was the discovery that steel could be made resistant to corrosion and discoloration by adding metallic chromium to form stainless steel.
Stainless steel and chrome plating together comprise 85% of the commercial use. In the United States, trivalent chromium ion is considered an essential nutrient in humans for insulin and lipid metabolism. However, in 2014, the European Food Safety Authority, acting for the European Union, concluded that there was not sufficient evidence for chromium to be recognized as essential. While chromium metal and Cr ions are not considered toxic, hexavalent chromium is both toxic and carcinogenic. Abandoned chromium production sites require environmental cleanup. Chromium is the fourth transition metal found on the periodic table, has an electron configuration of 3d5 4s1, it is the first element in the periodic table whose ground-state electron configuration violates the Aufbau principle. This occurs again in the periodic table with other elements and their electron configurations, such as copper and molybdenum; this occurs. In the previous elements, the energetic cost of promoting an electron to the next higher energy level is too great to compensate for that released by lessening inter-electronic repulsion.
However, in the 3d transition metals, the energy gap between the 3d and the next-higher 4s subshell is small, because the 3d subshell is more compact than the 4s subshell, inter-electron repulsion is smaller between 4s electrons than between 3d electrons. This lowers the energetic cost of promotion and increases the energy released by it, so that the promotion becomes energetically feasible and one or two electrons are always promoted to the 4s subshell. Chromium is the first element in the 3d series where the 3d electrons start to sink into the inert core. Chromium is a strong oxidising agent in contrast to the tungsten oxides. Chromium is hard, is the third hardest element behind carbon and boron, its Mohs hardness is 8.5, which means that it can scratch samples of quartz and topaz, but can be scratched by corundum. Chromium is resistant to tarnishing, which makes it useful as a metal that preserves its outermost layer from corroding, unlike other metals such as copper and aluminium. Chromium has a melting point of 1907 °C, low compared to the majority of transition metals.
However, it still has the second highest melting point out of all the Period 4 elements, being topped by vanadium by 3 °C at 1910 °C. The boiling point of 2671 °C, however, is comparatively lower, having the third lowest boiling point out of the Period 4 transition metals alone behind manganese and zinc. Chromium has an unusually high specular reflection in comparison to that of other transition metals. At 425 μm, chromium was found to have a relative maximum reflection of about 72% reflectance, before entering a depression in reflectivity, reaching a minimum of 62% reflectance at 750 μm before rising again to reflecting 90% of 4000 μm of infrared waves.. When chromium is formed into a stainless steel alloy and polished, the specular reflection decreases with the inclusion of additional metals, yet is still rather high in comparison with other alloys. Between 40% and 60% of the visible spectrum is reflected from polished stainless steel; the explanation on why chromium displays such a high turnout of reflected photon waves in general the 90% of infrared waves that were reflected, can be attributed to chromium's magnetic properties.
Chromium has unique magnetic properties in the sense that chromium is the only elemental solid which shows antiferromagnetic ordering at room temperature. Above 38 °C, its magnetic ordering changes to paramagnetic.. The antiferromagnetic properties, which cause the chromium atoms to temporarily ionize and bond with themselves, are present because the body-centric cubic's magnetic properties are disproportionate to the lattice periodicity; this is due to the fact that the magnetic moments at the cube's corners and the cube centers are not equal, but are still antiparallel. From here, the frequency-dependent relative permittivity of chromium, deriving from Maxwell's equations in conjunction with chromium's antiferromagnetivity, leaves chromium with a high infrared and visible light reflectance. Chromium metal left standing in air is passivated by oxidation, forming a th
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals in combination with sulfur and metals, but as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid, it has various allotropes, but only the gray form, which has a metallic appearance, is important to industry. The primary use of arsenic is in alloys of lead. Arsenic is a common n-type dopant in semiconductor electronic devices, the optoelectronic compound gallium arsenide is the second most used semiconductor after doped silicon. Arsenic and its compounds the trioxide, are used in the production of pesticides, treated wood products and insecticides; these applications are declining due to the toxicity of its compounds. A few species of bacteria are able to use arsenic compounds as respiratory metabolites. Trace quantities of arsenic are an essential dietary element in rats, goats and other species. A role in human metabolism is not known. However, arsenic poisoning occurs in multicellular life. Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a problem.
The United States' Environmental Protection Agency states that all forms of arsenic are a serious risk to human health. The United States' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ranked arsenic as number 1 in its 2001 Priority List of Hazardous Substances at Superfund sites. Arsenic is classified as a Group-A carcinogen; the three most common arsenic allotropes are gray and black arsenic, with gray being the most common. Gray arsenic adopts a double-layered structure consisting of many interlocked, six-membered rings; because of weak bonding between the layers, gray arsenic is brittle and has a low Mohs hardness of 3.5. Nearest and next-nearest neighbors form a distorted octahedral complex, with the three atoms in the same double-layer being closer than the three atoms in the next; this close packing leads to a high density of 5.73 g/cm3. Gray arsenic becomes a semiconductor with a bandgap of 1.2 -- 1.4 eV if amorphized. Gray arsenic is the most stable form. Yellow arsenic is soft and waxy, somewhat similar to tetraphosphorus.
Both have four atoms arranged in a tetrahedral structure in which each atom is bound to each of the other three atoms by a single bond. This unstable allotrope, being molecular, is the most volatile, least dense, most toxic. Solid yellow arsenic is produced by rapid cooling of arsenic vapor, As4, it is transformed into gray arsenic by light. The yellow form has a density of 1.97 g/cm3. Black arsenic is similar in structure to black phosphorus. Black arsenic can be formed by cooling vapor at around 100–220 °C, it is brittle. It is a poor electrical conductor. Arsenic occurs in nature as a monoisotopic element, composed of 75As; as of 2003, at least 33 radioisotopes have been synthesized, ranging in atomic mass from 60 to 92. The most stable of these is 73As with a half-life of 80.30 days. All other isotopes have half-lives of under one day, with the exception of 71As, 72As, 74As, 76As, 77As. Isotopes that are lighter than the stable 75As tend to decay by β+ decay, those that are heavier tend to decay by β− decay, with some exceptions.
At least 10 nuclear isomers have been described, ranging in atomic mass from 66 to 84. The most stable of arsenic's isomers is 68mAs with a half-life of 111 seconds. Arsenic has a similar electronegativity and ionization energies to its lighter congener phosphorus and as such forms covalent molecules with most of the nonmetals. Though stable in dry air, arsenic forms a golden-bronze tarnish upon exposure to humidity which becomes a black surface layer; when heated in air, arsenic oxidizes to arsenic trioxide. This odor can be detected on striking arsenide minerals such as arsenopyrite with a hammer, it burns in oxygen to form arsenic trioxide and arsenic pentoxide, which have the same structure as the more well-known phosphorus compounds, in fluorine to give arsenic pentafluoride. Arsenic sublimes upon heating at atmospheric pressure, converting directly to a gaseous form without an intervening liquid state at 887 K; the triple point is 3.63 MPa and 1,090 K. Arsenic makes arsenic acid with concentrated nitric acid, arsenous acid with dilute nitric acid, arsenic trioxide with concentrated sulfuric acid.
Arsenic reacts with metals to form arsenides, though these are not ionic compounds containing the As3− ion as the formation of such an anion would be endothermic and the group 1 arsenides have properties of intermetallic compounds. Like germanium and bromine, which like arsenic succeed the 3d transition series, arsenic is much less stable in the group oxidation state of +5 than its vertical neighbors phosphorus and antimony, hence arsenic pentoxide and arsenic acid are potent oxidizers. Compounds of arsenic resemble in some respects those of phosphorus which occupies the same group of the periodic table; the most common oxidation states for arsenic are: −3 in the arsenides, which are alloy-like intermetallic compounds, +3 in the arsenites, +5 in the arsenates and most organoarsenic compounds. Arsenic bonds to itself as seen in the square As3−4 ions in the mineral skutterudite. In the +3 oxidation state, arsenic is pyramidal owing to the i
Metal
A metal is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, conducts electricity and heat well. Metals are malleable or ductile. A metal may be an alloy such as stainless steel. In physics, a metal is regarded as any substance capable of conducting electricity at a temperature of absolute zero. Many elements and compounds that are not classified as metals become metallic under high pressures. For example, the nonmetal iodine becomes a metal at a pressure of between 40 and 170 thousand times atmospheric pressure; some materials regarded as metals can become nonmetals. Sodium, for example, becomes a nonmetal at pressure of just under two million times atmospheric pressure. In chemistry, two elements that would otherwise qualify as brittle metals—arsenic and antimony—are instead recognised as metalloids, on account of their predominately non-metallic chemistry. Around 95 of the 118 elements in the periodic table are metals; the number is inexact as the boundaries between metals and metalloids fluctuate due to a lack of universally accepted definitions of the categories involved.
In astrophysics the term "metal" is cast more to refer to all chemical elements in a star that are heavier than the lightest two and helium, not just traditional metals. A star fuses lighter atoms hydrogen and helium, into heavier atoms over its lifetime. Used in that sense, the metallicity of an astronomical object is the proportion of its matter made up of the heavier chemical elements. Metals are present in many aspects of modern life; the strength and resilience of some metals has led to their frequent use in, for example, high-rise building and bridge construction, as well as most vehicles, many home appliances, tools and railroad tracks. Precious metals were used as coinage, but in the modern era, coinage metals have extended to at least 23 of the chemical elements; the history of metals is thought to begin with the use of copper about 11,000 years ago. Gold, iron and brass were in use before the first known appearance of bronze in the 5th millennium BCE. Subsequent developments include the production of early forms of steel.
Metals are lustrous, at least when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured. Sheets of metal thicker than a few micrometres appear opaque; the solid or liquid state of metals originates in the capacity of the metal atoms involved to lose their outer shell electrons. Broadly, the forces holding an individual atom’s outer shell electrons in place are weaker than the attractive forces on the same electrons arising from interactions between the atoms in the solid or liquid metal; the electrons involved become delocalised and the atomic structure of a metal can be visualised as a collection of atoms embedded in a cloud of mobile electrons. This type of interaction is called a metallic bond; the strength of metallic bonds for different elemental metals reaches a maximum around the center of the transition metal series, as these elements have large numbers of delocalized electrons. Although most elemental metals have higher densities than most nonmetals, there is a wide variation in their densities, lithium being the least dense and osmium the most dense.
Magnesium and titanium are light metals of significant commercial importance. Their respective densities of 1.7, 2.7 and 4.5 g/cm3 can be compared to those of the older structural metals, like iron at 7.9 and copper at 8.9 g/cm3. An iron ball would thus weigh about as much as three aluminium balls. Metals are malleable and ductile, deforming under stress without cleaving; the nondirectional nature of metallic bonding is thought to contribute to the ductility of most metallic solids. In contrast, in an ionic compound like table salt, when the planes of an ionic bond slide past one another, the resultant change in location shifts ions of the same charge into close proximity, resulting in the cleavage of the crystal; such a shift is not observed in a covalently bonded crystal, such as a diamond, where fracture and crystal fragmentation occurs. Reversible elastic deformation in metals can be described by Hooke's Law for restoring forces, where the stress is linearly proportional to the strain. Heat or forces larger than a metal's elastic limit may cause a permanent deformation, known as plastic deformation or plasticity.
An applied force may be a compressive force, or a shear, bending or torsion force. A temperature change may affect the movement or displacement of structural defects in the metal such as grain boundaries, point vacancies and screw dislocations, stacking faults and twins in both crystalline and non-crystalline metals. Internal slip and metal fatigue may ensue; the atoms of metallic substances are arranged in one of three common crystal structures, namely body-centered cubic, face-centered cubic, hexagonal close-packed. In bcc, each atom is positioned at the center of a cube of eight others. In fcc and hcp, each atom is surrounded by twelve others; some metals adopt different structures depending on the temperature. The
