#metalloids

[ravings-of-a-mad-scientist]

Organic Chemist: Everything left of the staircase on the periodic table is metal.

Inorganic Chemist: Actually, boron, carbon, aluminum, silicon, arsenic, tellurium, and astatine are metalloids

Astronomer: Everything but hydrogen and helium are metals.

Physicist: all nonmetals become metallic under very high pressure and low temperature.

Biologist: I think there's like one type of snail that has some metal in their shells 🤷

[loafthecat]

TW. Metal gore))

UMMMM- guess who made angst for @toxsradioactivelocks ‘s Metalloid Au-

A-HA-

Evil charl is fun-

[er-cryptid]

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[vygramul]

Best Palindrome

satan oscillate my metallic sonatas

[elements-and-minerals]

Silicon

Silicon (Si) is the fourteenth element on the periodic table and it is a brittle metalloid. It is the second-most occurring element in the Earth's crust and silicate minerals make up the majority of minerals found in the Earth's crust. It is also a solid-state conductor.

The first form of silicon used by humans is flint, which is silica, SiO2. And while we don't use flint today, silicon is still very important to our society today, being one of the main conducting components of solid-state computing and electronics. It is also used in pottery and ceramics, lasers, steel and metallurgy, soaps, desiccants, adhesives, lubricants, implants, granite, concrete and cement. 

While silicon was first isolated in 1811 by Joseph Gay Lussac and Louis Jacques Thénard by reacting silicon tetrachloride with potassium, the resulting product was very impure, and so the credit for discovering silicon goes to Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who heated potassium fluorosilicate with potassium in 1824, and reacted the remaining potassium silicide with water, obtaining a relatively pure powder.

Silicon is named after the latin word for flint, silex, and modern industrial extraction processes heat sand with carbon in tempertaures above 2000°C. It has two allotropes that exist at room temperature, crystalline and amorphous. Amorphous is brown while crystalline is a grey colour.

Sources:

http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele014.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pertab/si.html

http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/14/silicon

http://www2.uncp.edu/home/mcclurem/ptable/silicon/si.htm

[elements-and-minerals]

Antimony

Antimony (Sb) is has an atomic number of 51 and is classed as a non-metal/metalloid from the nitrogen group. Because it expands upon freezing, its main application is in alloys, mainly intended for use in batteries and bearings. It is also used in casting moulds, since it expands to fill all the fine details when solidifying.

Antimony and its compounds are also used as mordants in dyes, the production of Kohl, red pigment and cable sheathing. The element itself, and some of its compounds, is poisonous, and  0.5 mg/m3 is considered a safe limit. However, antimony compounds are still used in the treatment of parasitic diseases, like schistosoma. Before the nineteenth century, it was used for a wide array of medicinal purposes - it is even suggested that Mozart died from an over-use of antimony remedies.

The name antimony comes from the latin word  anthemonium, which probably comes from an even older arabic word,  al ithymid, which was their word for antimony's principal ore, stibnite, which they used in mascara. The symbol is derived from the latin word stibium, which means "a mark".

Antimony is found in many minerals, but is also one of the few elements that can be, rarely, found pure in nature. It was recognised by ancients, and Basilium Valentinus is said to have first separated it from stibnite, but this is doubted. 1707 was the first time the element was accurately described, by Lemery.

Sources:

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pertab/sb.html

https://www.chem.wisc.edu/deptfiles/genchem/lab/ptl/Elements/Sb/Sb.html

http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Inorganic_Chemistry/Descriptive_Chemistry/Main_Group_Elements/Group_15%3A_The_Nitrogen_Family

http://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/51/antimony