What Is The Element Sn

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tin (Sn), a chemical element belonging to the carbon family, Group 14 (IVa) of the periodic table. It is a soft, argent white metal with a bluish tinge, known to the ancients in bronze, an alloy with copper. Tin can is widely used for plating steel cans used equally food containers, in metals used for bearings, and in solder.

The origins of tin are lost in antiquity. Bronzes, which are copper–tin alloys, were used by humans in prehistory long before pure tin metal itself was isolated. Bronzes were mutual in early Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, Egypt, Crete, Israel, and Peru. Much of the tin used past the early Mediterranean peoples apparently came from the Scilly Isles and Cornwall in the British Isles, where can mining dates to at least 300–200 bce. Tin mines were operating in both the Inca and Aztec domains of S and Central America before the Spanish conquest. The symbol Sn for tin is an abbreviation of the Latin word for tin, stannum.

Concept artwork on the periodic table of elements.

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Element Properties
atomic number	50
atomic weight	118.69
melting point	231.97 °C (449.54 °F)
boiling point	2,270 °C (four,100 °F)
density
white	vii.28
gray	five.75 grams/cm³
oxidation states	+2, +4
electron configuration	[Kr]4d ¹⁰5south ²5p ^two

Occurrence and distribution

The element is nowadays in the igneous rocks of Earth's crust to the extent of virtually 0.001 pct, which is scarce but not rare; its abundance is of the same gild of magnitude as such technically useful elements as cobalt, nickel, copper, cerium, and lead, and information technology is essentially equal to the abundance of nitrogen. In the creation in that location are 1.33 atoms of can per 1 × 10⁶ atoms of silicon, an affluence roughly equal to that of niobium, ruthenium, neodymium, or platinum. Cosmically, tin is a product of neutron absorption. Its richness in stable isotopes is noteworthy.

Tin occurs in grains of the native metal but importantly equally stannic oxide, SnO₂, in the mineral cassiterite, the merely tin mineral of commercial significance. The metal is obtained from cassiterite by reduction (removal of the oxygen) with coal or coke in smelting furnaces. No high-grade deposits are known. The major sources are alluvial deposits, averaging about 0.01 percent tin. The oldest tin can mines were those in Cornwall, which were worked at least as early on every bit Phoenician times but are no longer of major effect, and Spain. Lode deposits, containing up to four per centum, are found in Bolivia and Cornwall. China led the globe in can product in the early on 21st century, accounting for nearly half of all production; Indonesia, Peru, and Bolivia were as well top producers. Several processes have been devised for reclaiming the metal from scrap tin can or tin-plated manufactures. (For a full handling of tin mining, refining, and recovery, see tin processing.)

Properties of the element

Tin can is nontoxic, ductile, malleable, and adapted to all kinds of common cold-working, such as rolling, spinning, and extrusion. The colour of pure tin is retained during exposure because a sparse, invisible, protective moving picture of stannic oxide is formed spontaneously by reaction with the oxygen of the air. The depression melting betoken of tin can and its house adhesion to clean surfaces of atomic number 26, steel, copper, and copper alloys facilitate its utilise equally an oxidation-resistant coating material. Tin can exists in two different forms, or allotropes: the familiar form, white (or beta) tin, and greyness (or alpha) tin, which is powdery and of little use. The grayness course changes to the white above 13.2 °C (55.8 °F), rapidly at temperatures above 100 °C (212 °F); the reverse transformation, called can pest, occurs at depression temperatures and seriously hampers the use of the metallic in very cold regions. This change is rapid merely beneath −fifty °C (−58 °F), unless catalyzed by gray tin or tin in the +4 oxidation state, simply is prevented by small amounts of antimony, bismuth, copper, lead, silvery, or gold commonly nowadays in commercial grades of can.

White tin has a body-centred tetragonal crystal structure, and gray tin has a face-centred cubic structure. When bent, tin can makes an eerie, crackling "cry" equally its crystals crush each other. Tin is attacked by potent acids and alkalies, but nearly neutral solutions do not affect it appreciably. Chlorine, bromine, and iodine react with tin, just fluorine reacts with it but slowly at room temperature. The relationships among the allotropic modifications of tin tin can exist represented as transformations from one crystal type to some other at specific temperatures: Figure showing the allotropic modifications of tin at different temperatures.

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(The double arrows signify that the transformation occurs in both directions, as tin is heated or every bit information technology is cooled.)

Tin exists in ii oxidation states, +four and +2. Elemental tin is readily oxidized to the dipositive ion in acidic solution, simply this Sn²⁺ ion is converted to the Sn^iv+ ion by many mild oxidizing agents, including elemental oxygen. Oxidation under alkali metal conditions normally gives the tetrapositive (Sn^iv+) state. In an alkaline medium, dipositive tin can (Sn²⁺) disproportionates readily to tetrapositive tin can and the free element.

Tin has 10 stable isotopes, occurring in the following percentages in natural tin: tin can-112, 0.97; tin-114, 0.65; tin can-115, 0.36; can-116, 14.53; tin-117, 7.68; tin-118, 24.22; tin can-119, viii.58; tin-120, 32.59; tin can-122, 4.63; and tin-124, 5.79.

Uses

Tin-plating of iron protects the latter from corrosion; tin pipe and valves maintain purity in water and beverages; molten can is the base for (float) plate-glass production. Because pure tin is relatively weak, it is not put to structural uses unless alloyed with other metals in such materials as bronzes, pewter, bearing metals, blazon metals, lead-based solders, bong metal, babbitt metal, and low-temperature casting alloys. Tin oxide, in which tin is in the +4 oxidation state, is useful in making ceramic bodies opaque, as a mild abrasive, and equally a weighting agent for fabrics. Tin fluoride and tin pyrophosphate, in which can is in the +two oxidation land, are used in dentifrices. Organic tin compounds act as stabilizers in sure plastics and as wood preservatives. A crystalline alloy with niobium is a superconductor at temperatures equally high as 18 M (−427 °F) and retains this belongings in very strong magnetic fields.

Elemental tin is apparently nontoxic, and quantities of tin up to 300 parts per one thousand thousand, as dissolved past foods packaged in tin can-plated containers and cooking utensils, are not harmful. Organic tin compounds normally used equally biocides and fungicides are, still, toxic to human being beings.

Compounds

Tin forms two series of compounds: stannous, in which tin is in the +two oxidation state, and stannic, in which it is in the +4 state. Some of the more commercially important stannous compounds are stannous chloride, SnCl₂, used in can galvanizing and as a reducing amanuensis in the manufacture of polymers and dyes; stannous oxide, SnO, employed in making tin salts for chemic reagents and for plating; and stannous fluoride, SnF₂, an active ingredient in toothpastes. Stannic compounds of significance include stannic chloride, SnCl_four, widely used equally a stabilizer for perfumes and every bit a starting cloth for other tin salts; and stannic oxide, SnO₂, a useful catalyst in sure industrial processes and a polishing pulverization for steel.

Tin can course a bond with carbon, every bit in the more than 500 known organotin compounds. Organotin stabilizers are used to forbid changes in polyvinyl chloride upon exposure to light and heat. A number of organotin compounds are major ingredients in biocides and fungicides.

This commodity was about recently revised and updated past Adam Augustyn.