Chemistry Elements Research Essay - Gallium

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Gallium- Element Project I

Gallium was first said to exist by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1871 due to the gaps and spaces in his Periodic Table, and he named it Ekaaluminum2. This element was discovered in 1875 by the French chemist Paul-Emilie Lecoq de Boisbaudran while he was trying to find new elements with spectroscope techniques. The name for this element is derived from the Latin word, Gallia, which means France4.

This element is a silvery and soft metal that is solid at room temperature, but if heated slightly it becomes liquid. It is soft enough to be able to be cut with a normal knife. Gallium’s melting point is at 29.8ºC and its boiling point is at 2,204ºC5. The number of valence electrons it has is three and its atomic number is thirty-one3. Gallium is located in row 4 and column 13 on the Periodic Table.

Gallium is used to dope semiconductors, and helps produce solid-state items like transistors and L.E.D lights.

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It is also used to wet glass and porcelain in its liquid form to create a very shiny surface on the object, and also joins with another metal to make an alloy that stabilizes the allotropes of Plutonium from its pits in a nuclear weapon5. In addition, radioactive gallium can be injected into a human to test whether the test subject has inflammation in the lungs called sarcoidosis6.

This element is obtained from other ores that are ...