Despite its relative geographic scarcity, the fiftieth element has been used in metalworking for millennia, especially when it is combined with copper to make the alloy known as bronze or antimony to make pewter. This element is known for its low melting point, corrosion resistance, and malleability.
The Latin word stannum was originally used to refer to a silver-lead alloy, but the word was later used to describe this element, whose symbol is Sn in honor of stannum. The English name for this metal is germanic in origin; because of this germanic root, German calls the metal Zinn, Dutch calls it tin, and Old English called it tin, which, unsurprisingly, caused Modern English to call it tin.
Due to some of tin’s historical uses, some people still use tin to describe some objects that are usually no longer tin. For instance, the expression tin can dates back to when steel cans were plated with tin to prevent them from rusting (which is also why generic metal containers are sometimes called tins) and tin foil is sometimes used to describe the foil we cook with even though it is now aluminum.
Properties of Tin
Tin is a post transition metal that is in the same column as the nonmetal carbon, the semimetals silicon and germanium, and the post transition metals lead and flerovium.
Most pure elements only exist in one form, however, several elements can exist in more than one structure (known as an allotrope) under normal conditions. Most of these elements are nonmetals, but one of those elements is tin.
Tin is most often found in the form known as beta-tin or white tin. While in the beta-tin allotrope, tin is a soft, silvery-white metal that is malleable.
Once pure tin is exposed to temperatures below 56ºF, a small portion of the tin can spontaneously switch its crystal structure to the allotrope that is known as alpha-tin or gray tin. This alpha-tin is sometimes called tin disease, tin blight, tin plague, and even tin leprosy. As the name might suggest, alpha-tin is contagious — however, only pure tin can catch it. Once beta-tin converts to alpha-tin, it expands and becomes the brittle, nonmetallic form of tin — it’s quite strange to think that pure tin (an element conventionally thought of as a metal) could be a nonmetal! Because of its brittleness and expansion, alpha-tin usually crumbles into a powder, rendering the former metal object obliterated, and to make things worse, if any pure metallic tin comes into contact with this nonmetallic tin, the metallic tin will eventually crumble into nonmetallic tin. This is why alpha-tin is associated with a disease.
The only cure is to melt the alpha-tin and it will immediately convert back to beta-tin. The easiest way to prevent tin objects from switching allotropes and therefore disintegrating is to include a small amount of another metal, which causes the tin to no longer be pure enough to exist as alpha-tin.
Some tin compounds are supposed to produce a blue flame in a flame test. When I performed a flame test, I didn’t manage to color the flame when I used elemental tin, and when I tried using a stannous chloride solution, it only produced a tiny indigo flame that surrounded the tip of the nail I dipped in the solution, which you can see in this post’s featured image.
What do you like most about tin?
Onward American 