Tin Facts
Tin Facts
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| Interesting Tin Facts: |
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| Tin has been in use by ancient civilizations for thousands of years. |
| Its presence as a metal is mentioned in the Old Testament. |
| The symbol for tin comes from the Latin word stannum, which was known to be an alloy of lead and silver. |
| It is the 49th most common element in the Earth's crust. |
| The crust contains around two parts per million of tin. |
| Early craftsmen found tin too soft to work with, but when it was alloyed with copper, bronze was formed. |
| The earliest artifacts made from bronze had such a low tin content (less than 2%) that it is believed to have been accidental. |
| Pewter, another alloy made of mostly tin with copper and lead, came into use shortly after the Bronze Age. |
| Tin does not corrode in water. |
| "Tin cry" is the cracking sound that tin makes when it is bent, due to the twinning of its highly crystalline structure. |
| Tin has a fairly low melting point of 232 degrees Celsius, or about 450 degrees Fahrenheit. |
| There are two allotropes of tin, gray tin and white tin, each with very different properties at and above room temperature. |
| White tin is very malleable and stable close to room temperature. |
| Gray tin is stable below fifty degrees Fahrenheit and is very brittle at that temperature. |
| "Tin pest" is the condition in which white tin suddenly transforms into gray tin at very cold temperatures. |
| Tin was one of the first materials ever researched for its superconductor properties. |
| Tin has more stable isotopes than any other element. |
| Of tin's ten stable isotopes, almost all tin is found to be either Sn-120, Sn-118, or Sn-116. |
| Three other isotopes, Sn-119, Sn-117, and Sn-115, are the easiest of all of the elements to detect through spectroscopy. |
| Tin has twenty-eight unstable isotopes, with the most stable possessing a half-life of 230,000 years. |
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