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Bismuth [Bi] locate me
CAS-ID: 7440-69-9
An: 83 N: 126
Am: 208.98038 (2) g/mol
Group No: 15
Group Name: Pnictogen
Block: p-block  Period: 6
State: solid
Colour: lustrous reddish white Classification: Metallic
Boiling Point: 1837K (1564°C)
Melting Point: 544.4K (271.3°C)
Density: 9.78g/cm3
Discovery Information
Who: Known to the ancients. Bismuth was also known to the Incas and used (along with the usual copper and tin) in a special bronze alloy for knives.
Name Origin
German: wissmuth (white mass).
 "Bismuth" in different languages.
Sources
It can be found free in nature and in minerals like bismuthine (Bi2O3) and in bismuth ochre (Bi2O3). Canada, Bolivia, Japan, Mexico and Peru are major producers.
World production is around 3000 tons annually.
Abundance
 Universe: 0.0007 ppm (by weight)
 Sun: 0.01 ppm (by weight)
 Carbonaceous meteorite: 0.07 ppm
 Earth's Crust: 0.048 ppm
 Seawater:
   Atlantic surface: 5.1 x 10-8 ppm
   Atlantic deep: ppm
   Pacific surface: 4 x 10-8 ppm
   Pacific deep: 4 x 10-9 ppm
Uses
Main use is in pharmaceuticals, low melting point alloys, fuses, sprinklers, glass, ceramics and as a catalyst in rubber production. Strong permanent magnets can be made from the alloy "bismanol" (MnBi). In the early 1990s, research began to evaluate bismuth as a nontoxic replacement for lead in various applications.
Bismuth is sometimes used in the production of shot and shotgun slugs. Its advantage over lead in this respect is that it is non-toxic and therefore legal in the UK for the shooting of wetland birds.
Bismuth has also been used in solders. The fact that bismuth and many of its alloys expand slightly when they solidify make them ideal for this purpose.
History
Bismuth was confused in early times with tin and lead due to its resemblance to those elements. Basilius Valentinus described some of its uses in 1450. Claude Francois Geoffroy showed in 1753 that this metal is distinct from lead.
Bismuth was also known to the Incas and used (along with the usual copper and tin) in a special bronze alloy for knives.
Notes
While bismuth was traditionally regarded as the element with the heaviest stable isotope, it had long been thought to be unstable on theoretical grounds. Not until 2003 was this demonstrated when researchers at the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, measured the alpha emission half-life of 209Bi to be 1.9 x 1019 years, meaning that bismuth is very slightly radioactive, with a half-life over a billion times longer than the current estimated age of the universe. Due to its extraordinarily long half-life, for nearly all applications bismuth can be treated as if it is stable and non-radioactive. However, the radioactivity is of academic interest because bismuth is one of few elements whose radioactivity was suspected, and indeed theoretically predicted, before being detected in the laboratory.
Elemental bismuth is one of very few substances of which the liquid phase is denser than its solid phase (water being the best-known example). Because bismuth expands on freezing, it was long an important component of low-melting typesetting alloys which needed to expand to fill printing molds.
In the early 1990s, research began to evaluate bismuth as a nontoxic replacement for lead in various applications.
Hazards
Among the heavy metals, bismuth is unusual in that its toxicity is much lower than that of its neighbours in the periodic table such as lead, thallium and antimony.
Finely divided powder is highly flammable.