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Tin Tin Biography & Facts

Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn (from Latin stannum) and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, the so-called "tin cry" can be heard as a result of twinning in tin crystals. Tin is a post-transition metal in group 14 of the periodic table of elements. It is obtained chiefly from the mineral cassiterite, which contains stannic oxide, SnO2. Tin shows a chemical similarity to both of its neighbors in group 14, germanium and lead, and has two main oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4. Tin is the 49th-most abundant element on Earth and has, with 10 stable isotopes, the largest number of stable isotopes in the periodic table, due to its magic number of protons. It has two main allotropes: at room temperature, the stable allotrope is β-tin, a silvery-white, malleable metal; at low temperatures it is less dense grey α-tin, which has the diamond cubic structure. Metallic tin does not easily oxidize in air and water. The first tin alloy used on a large scale was bronze, made of 1⁄8 tin and 7⁄8 copper (12.5% and 87.5% respectively), from as early as 3000 BC. After 600 BC, pure metallic tin was produced. Pewter, which is an alloy of 85–90% tin with the remainder commonly consisting of copper, antimony, bismuth, and sometimes lead and silver, has been used for flatware since the Bronze Age. In modern times, tin is used in many alloys, most notably tin-lead soft solders, which are typically 60% or more tin, and in the manufacture of transparent, electrically conducting films of indium tin oxide in optoelectronic applications. Another large application is corrosion-resistant tin plating of steel. Because of the low toxicity of inorganic tin, tin-plated steel is widely used for food packaging as "tin cans". Some organotin compounds can be extremely toxic. Characteristics Physical Tin is a soft, malleable, ductile and highly crystalline silvery-white metal. When a bar of tin is bent a crackling sound known as the "tin cry" can be heard from the twinning of the crystals. This trait is shared by indium, cadmium, zinc, and mercury in its solid state. Tin melts at about 232 °C (450 °F), the lowest in group 14. The melting point is further lowered to 177.3 °C (351.1 °F) for 11 nm particles. β-tin, also called white tin, is the allotrope (structural form) of elemental tin that is stable at and above room temperature. It is metallic and malleable, and has body-centered tetragonal crystal structure. α-tin, or gray tin, is the nonmetallic form. It is stable below 13.2 °C (55.8 °F) and is brittle. α-tin has a diamond cubic crystal structure, as do diamond and silicon. α-tin does not have metallic properties because its atoms form a covalent structure in which electrons cannot move freely. α-tin is a dull-gray powdery material with no common uses other than specialized semiconductor applications. γ-tin and σ-tin exist at temperatures above 161 °C (322 °F)  and pressures above several GPa. In cold conditions β-tin tends to transform spontaneously into α-tin, a phenomenon known as "tin pest" or "tin disease". Some unverifiable sources also say that, during Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812, the temperatures became so cold that the tin buttons on the soldiers' uniforms disintegrated over time, contributing to the defeat of the Grande Armée, a persistent legend. The α-β transformation temperature is 13.2 °C (55.8 °F), but impurities (e.g. Al, Zn, etc.) lower it well below 0 °C (32 °F). With the addition of antimony or bismuth the transformation might not occur at all, increasing durability. Commercial grades of tin (99.8% tin content) resist transformation because of the inhibiting effect of small amounts of bismuth, antimony, lead, and silver present as impurities. Alloying elements such as copper, antimony, bismuth, cadmium, and silver increase the hardness of tin. Tin easily forms hard, brittle intermetallic phases that are typically undesirable. It does not mix into a solution with most metals and elements so tin does not have much solid solubility. Tin mixes well with bismuth, gallium, lead, thallium and zinc, forming simple eutectic systems. Tin becomes a superconductor below 3.72 K and was one of the first superconductors to be studied. The Meissner effect, one of the characteristic features of superconductors, was first discovered in superconducting tin crystals. Chemical Tin resists corrosion from water, but can be corroded by acids and alkalis. Tin can be highly polished and is used as a protective coat for other metals, a protective oxide (passivation) layer prevents further oxidation. Tin acts as a catalyst triggering a chemical reaction of a solution containing oxygen and helps to increase the speed of the chemical reaction that results. Isotopes Tin has ten stable isotopes, the greatest number of any element. Their mass numbers are: 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, and 124. Tin-120 makes up almost a third of all tin. Tin-118 and tin-116 are also common. Tin-115 is the least common stable isotope. The isotopes with even mass numbers have no nuclear spin, while those with odd mass numbers have a nuclear spin of 1/2. It is thought that tin has such a great multitude of stable isotopes because of tin's atomic number being 50, which is a "magic number" in nuclear physics. Tin is one of the easiest elements to detect and analyze by NMR spectroscopy, which relies on molecular weight and its chemical shifts are referenced against tetramethyltin (SnMe4). Of the stable isotopes, tin-115 has a high capture cross section for fast neutron energies, at 30 barns. Tin-117 ranks one below, with a cross section of 2.3 barns, while tin-119 has a slightly smaller cross section of 2.2 barns. Before these cross sections were well known, it was proposed to use tin-lead solder as a reactor coolant for fast reactors because of its low melting point. Current studies are for lead or lead-bismuth reactor coolants because both heavy metals are nearly transparent to fast neutrons, with very low capture cross sections. In order to use a tin or tin-lead coolant the tin would first have to go through isotopes separation to remove the 115, 117 and 119 tin isotopes. Combined, these three isotopes make up about 17% of natural tin but represent nearly all of the capture cross section. Of the remaining seven isotopes tin-112 has a capture cross section of 1 barn. The other six isotopes forming 82.7% of natural tin have capture cross sections of 0.3 barns or less making them effectively transparent to neutrons, like lead and bismuth are. Tin has 31 unstable isotopes, ranging in mass number from 99 to 139. The unstable tin isotopes have half-lives of less than a year except for tin-126, which has a half-life of about 230,000 years. Tin-100 and tin-132 are two of the very few nuclides with a "doubly magic" nucleus which despite being unstable, as t.... Discover the Tin Tin popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Tin Tin books.