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Beryllium

Gist

Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It's a relatively rare, hard, and lightweight alkaline earth metal known for its high strength-to-weight ratio and stiffness. Beryllium is used in various applications, including aerospace, nuclear reactors, and precision instruments, due to its unique properties.

Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a hard, strong, lightweight, and brittle alkaline earth metal, typically a steel-gray color. It's known for its high melting point, good electrical and thermal conductivity, and transparency to X-rays. Beryllium is used in a variety of high-tech applications, including aerospace components, nuclear reactors, and electronics.

Summary

Beryllium is a chemical element; it has symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, hard, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form minerals. Gemstones high in beryllium include beryl (aquamarine, emerald, red beryl) and chrysoberyl. It is a relatively rare element in the universe, usually occurring as a product of the spallation of larger atomic nuclei that have collided with cosmic rays. Within the cores of stars, beryllium is depleted as it is fused into heavier elements. Beryllium constitutes about 0.0004 percent by mass of Earth's crust. The world's annual beryllium production of 220 tons is usually manufactured by extraction from the mineral beryl, a difficult process because beryllium bonds strongly to oxygen.

In structural applications, the combination of high flexural rigidity, thermal stability, thermal conductivity and low density (1.85 times that of water) make beryllium a desirable aerospace material for aircraft components, missiles, spacecraft, and satellites. Because of its low density and atomic mass, beryllium is relatively transparent to X-rays and other forms of ionizing radiation; therefore, it is the most common window material for X-ray equipment and components of particle detectors. When added as an alloying element to aluminium, copper (notably the alloy beryllium copper), iron, or nickel, beryllium improves many physical properties. For example, tools and components made of beryllium copper alloys are strong and hard and do not create sparks when they strike a steel surface. In air, the surface of beryllium oxidizes readily at room temperature to form a passivation layer 1–10 nm thick that protects it from further oxidation and corrosion. The metal oxidizes in bulk (beyond the passivation layer) when heated above 500 °C (932 °F), and burns brilliantly when heated to about 2,500 °C (4,530 °F).

The commercial use of beryllium requires the use of appropriate dust control equipment and industrial controls at all times because of the toxicity of inhaled beryllium-containing dusts that can cause a chronic life-threatening allergic disease, berylliosis, in some people. Berylliosis is typically manifested by chronic pulmonary fibrosis and, in severe cases, right sided heart failure and death.

Details

Beryllium (Be), chemical element, the lightest member of the alkaline-earth metals of Group 2 (IIa) of the periodic table, used in metallurgy as a hardening agent and in many outer space and nuclear applications.

Element Properties

atomic number  :  4
atomic weight  :  9.0121831
melting point  :  1,287 °C (2,349 °F)
boiling point  :  2,471 °C (4,480 °F)
specific gravity  :  1.85 at 20 °C (68 °F)
oxidation state  :  +2

Occurrence, properties, and uses

Beryllium is a steel-gray metal that is quite brittle at room temperature, and its chemical properties somewhat resemble those of aluminum. It does not occur free in nature. Beryllium is found in beryl and emerald, minerals that were known to the ancient Egyptians. Although it had long been suspected that the two minerals were similar, chemical confirmation of this did not occur until the late 18th century. Emerald is now known to be a green variety of beryl. Beryllium was discovered (1798) as the oxide by French chemist Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin in beryl and in emeralds and was isolated (1828) as the metal independently by German chemist Friedrich Wöhler and French chemist Antoine A.B. Bussy by the reduction of its chloride with potassium. Beryllium is widely distributed in Earth’s crust and is estimated to occur in Earth’s igneous rocks to the extent of 0.0002 percent. Its cosmic abundance is 20 on the scale in which silicon, the standard, is 1,000,000. The United States has about 60 percent of the world’s beryllium and is by far the largest producer of beryllium; other major producing countries include China, Mozambique, and Brazil.

There are about 30 recognized minerals containing beryllium, including beryl (Al2Be3Si6O18, a beryllium aluminum silicate), bertrandite (Be4Si2O7(OH)2, a beryllium silicate), phenakite (Be2SiO4), and chrysoberyl (BeAl2O4). (The precious forms of beryl, emerald and aquamarine, have a composition closely approaching that given above, but industrial ores contain less beryllium; most beryl is obtained as a by-product of other mining operations, with the larger crystals being picked out by hand.) Beryl and bertrandite have been found in sufficient quantities to constitute commercial ores from which beryllium hydroxide or beryllium oxide is industrially produced. The extraction of beryllium is complicated by the fact that beryllium is a minor constituent in most ores (5 percent by mass even in pure beryl, less than 1 percent by mass in bertrandite) and is tightly bound to oxygen. Treatment with acids, roasting with complex fluorides, and liquid-liquid extraction have all been employed to concentrate beryllium in the form of its hydroxide. The hydroxide is converted to fluoride via ammonium beryllium fluoride and then heated with magnesium to form elemental beryllium. Alternatively, the hydroxide can be heated to form the oxide, which in turn can be treated with carbon and chlorine to form beryllium chloride; electrolysis of the molten chloride is then used to produce the metal. The element is purified by vacuum melting.

Beryllium is the only stable light metal with a relatively high melting point. Although it is readily attacked by alkalies and nonoxidizing acids, beryllium rapidly forms an adherent oxide surface film that protects the metal from further air oxidation under normal conditions. These chemical properties, coupled with its excellent electrical conductivity, high heat capacity and conductivity, good mechanical properties at elevated temperatures, and very high modulus of elasticity (one-third greater than that of steel), make it valuable for structural and thermal applications. Beryllium’s dimensional stability and its ability to take a high polish have made it useful for mirrors and camera shutters in space, military, and medical applications and in semiconductor manufacturing. Because of its low atomic weight, beryllium transmits X-rays 17 times as well as aluminum and has been extensively used in making windows for X-ray tubes. Beryllium is fabricated into gyroscopes, accelerometers, and computer parts for inertial guidance instruments and other devices for missiles, aircraft, and space vehicles, and it is used for heavy-duty brake drums and similar applications in which a good heat sink is important. Its ability to slow down fast neutrons has found considerable application in nuclear reactors.

Much beryllium is used as a low-percentage component of hard alloys, especially with copper as the main constituent but also with nickel- and iron-based alloys, for products such as springs. Beryllium-copper (2 percent beryllium) is made into tools for use when sparking might be dangerous, as in powder factories. Beryllium itself does not reduce sparking, but it strengthens the copper (by a factor of 6), which does not form sparks upon impact. Small amounts of beryllium added to oxidizable metals generate protecting surface films, reducing inflammability in magnesium and tarnishing in silver alloys.

Neutrons were discovered (1932) by British physicist Sir James Chadwick as particles ejected from beryllium bombarded by alpha particles from a radium source. Since then beryllium mixed with an alpha emitter such as radium, plutonium, or americium has been used as a neutron source. The alpha particles released by radioactive decay of radium atoms react with atoms of beryllium to give, among the products, neutrons with a wide range of energies—up to about 5 × 106 electron volts (eV). If radium is encapsulated, however, so that none of the alpha particles reach beryllium, neutrons of energy less than 600,000 eV are produced by the more-penetrating gamma radiation from the decay products of radium. Historically important examples of the use of beryllium/radium neutron sources include the bombardment of uranium by German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and Austrian-born physicist Lise Meitner, which led to the discovery of nuclear fission (1939), and the triggering in uranium of the first controlled-fission chain reaction by Italian-born physicist Enrico Fermi (1942).

The only naturally occurring isotope is the stable beryllium-9, although 11 other synthetic isotopes are known. Their half-lives range from 1.5 million years (for beryllium-10, which undergoes beta decay) to {6.7} × {10}^{-17} second for beryllium-8 (which decays by two-proton emission). The decay of beryllium-7 (53.2-day half-life) in the Sun is the source of observed solar neutrinos.

Additional Information:

Appearance

Beryllium is a silvery-white metal. It is relatively soft and has a low density.

Uses

Beryllium is used in alloys with copper or nickel to make gyroscopes, springs, electrical contacts, spot-welding electrodes and non-sparking tools. Mixing beryllium with these metals increases their electrical and thermal conductivity.

Other beryllium alloys are used as structural materials for high-speed aircraft, missiles, spacecraft and communication satellites.

Beryllium is relatively transparent to X-rays so ultra-thin beryllium foil is finding use in X-ray lithography. Beryllium is also used in nuclear reactors as a reflector or moderator of neutrons.

The oxide has a very high melting point making it useful in nuclear work as well as having ceramic applications.

Biological role

Beryllium and its compounds are toxic and carcinogenic. If beryllium dust or fumes are inhaled, it can lead to an incurable inflammation of the lungs called berylliosis.

Natural abundance

Beryllium is found in about 30 different mineral species. The most important are beryl (beryllium aluminium silicate) and bertrandite (beryllium silicate). Emerald and aquamarine are precious forms of beryl.

The metal is usually prepared by reducing beryllium fluoride with magnesium metal.

Subatomic particle

Gist

Subatomic particles are particles smaller than an atom. They include protons, neutrons, and electrons, which are the fundamental building blocks of atoms. Additionally, there are other subatomic particles like quarks, leptons (including electrons, muons, and neutrinos), and bosons, some of which are fundamental and others are composite particles.

Summary

A subatomic particle is any of various self-contained units of matter or energy that are the fundamental constituents of all matter. Subatomic particles include electrons, the negatively charged, almost massless particles that nevertheless account for most of the size of the atom, and they include the heavier building blocks of the small but very dense nucleus of the atom, the positively charged protons and the electrically neutral neutrons. But these basic atomic components are by no means the only known subatomic particles. Protons and neutrons, for instance, are themselves made up of elementary particles called quarks, and the electron is only one member of a class of elementary particles that also includes the muon and the neutrino. More-unusual subatomic particles—such as the positron, the antimatter counterpart of the electron—have been detected and characterized in cosmic ray interactions in Earth’s atmosphere. The field of subatomic particles has expanded dramatically with the construction of powerful particle accelerators to study high-energy collisions of electrons, protons, and other particles with matter. As particles collide at high energy, the collision energy becomes available for the creation of subatomic particles such as mesons and hyperons. Finally, completing the revolution that began in the early 20th century with theories of the equivalence of matter and energy, the study of subatomic particles has been transformed by the discovery that the actions of forces are due to the exchange of “force” particles such as photons and gluons. More than 200 subatomic particles have been detected—most of them highly unstable, existing for less than a millionth of a second—as a result of collisions produced in cosmic ray reactions or particle accelerator experiments. Theoretical and experimental research in particle physics, the study of subatomic particles and their properties, has given scientists a clearer understanding of the nature of matter and energy and of the origin of the universe.

The current understanding of the state of particle physics is integrated within a conceptual framework known as the Standard Model. The Standard Model provides a classification scheme for all the known subatomic particles based on theoretical descriptions of the basic forces of matter.

Details

In physics, a subatomic particle is a particle smaller than an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a composite particle, which is composed of other particles (for example, a baryon, like a proton or a neutron, composed of three quarks; or a meson, composed of two quarks), or an elementary particle, which is not composed of other particles (for example, quarks; or electrons, muons, and tau particles, which are called leptons). Particle physics and nuclear physics study these particles and how they interact. Most force-carrying particles like photons or gluons are called bosons and, although they have quanta of energy, do not have rest mass or discrete diameters (other than pure energy wavelength) and are unlike the former particles that have rest mass and cannot overlap or combine which are called fermions. The W and Z bosons, however, are an exception to this rule and have relatively large rest masses at approximately 80 GeV/c^2 and 90 GeV/c^2 respectively.

Experiments show that light could behave like a stream of particles (called photons) as well as exhibiting wave-like properties. This led to the concept of wave–particle duality to reflect that quantum-scale particles behave both like particles and like waves; they are occasionally called wavicles to reflect this.

Another concept, the uncertainty principle, states that some of their properties taken together, such as their simultaneous position and momentum, cannot be measured exactly. Interactions of particles in the framework of quantum field theory are understood as creation and annihilation of quanta of corresponding fundamental interactions. This blends particle physics with field theory.

Even among particle physicists, the exact definition of a particle has diverse descriptions. These professional attempts at the definition of a particle include:

* A particle is a collapsed wave function
* A particle is an excitation of a quantum field
* A particle is an irreducible representation of the Poincaré group
* A particle is an observed thing.

Additional Information

Subatomic Particles are the particles inside an atom. They are self-contained units of matter or energy and are the fundamental constituents of all matter. Initially, the atom was considered to be the fundamental particle which constitutes all the matter. However, with later experiments and discoveries, it was revealed that the atom is itself constituted of several particles such as Electrons, Protons and Neutrons. Further research in particle physics revealed that even protons and neutrons are composite particles, made up of some other subatomic elementary particles.

Types of Subatomic Particles

Atoms are considered the basic building blocks of matter. It was John Dalton who in 1803 postulated that an atom is indestructible and is the fundamental unit of matter. This was proved wrong by J.J. Thomson in 1897.

Electrons

Electrons were discovered by J.J Thomson after many experiments involving cathode rays. He demonstrated the ratio of mass to electric charge of cathode rays. He confirmed that cathode rays are fundamental particles that are negatively charged; these cathode rays became known as electrons.... Read more at: https://vajiramandravi.com/upsc-exam/subatomic-particles/

Protons

Eugene Goldstein in 1886 showed the existence of a positively charged particle in an atom. However, the actual discovery of protons is credited to Ernest Rutherford during his experiment on the scattering of α-particles.

Neutrons

It was inevitable from Rutherford’s experiment that there must be a neutral, sub-nuclear particle with a mass closely equal to protons. James Chadwick in 1932 discovered the neutrons.

Fundamental Particles

Subatomic particles can be further divided into elementary (fundamental) particles and composite particles (made up of elementary particles).

Barium

Gist

Barium is a chemical element with the symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is a soft, silvery-white alkaline earth metal that is highly reactive. Due to its reactivity, it is never found as a free element in nature. Barium is commonly used in diagnostic X-ray procedures (barium swallows and enemas) to visualize the gastrointestinal tract.

Summary

Barium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in group 2; and is a soft, silvery alkaline earth metal. Because of its high chemical reactivity, barium is never found in nature as a free element.

The most common minerals of barium are barite (barium sulfate, BaSO4) and witherite (barium carbonate, BaCO3). The name barium originates from the alchemical derivative "baryta" from Greek  (barys), meaning 'heavy'. Baric is the adjectival form of barium. Barium was identified as a new element in 1772, but not reduced to a metal until 1808 with the advent of electrolysis.

Barium has few industrial applications. Historically, it was used as a getter for vacuum tubes and in oxide form as the emissive coating on indirectly heated cathodes. It is a component of YBCO (high-temperature superconductors) and electroceramics, and is added to steel and cast iron to reduce the size of carbon grains within the microstructure. Barium compounds are added to fireworks to impart a green color. Barium sulfate is used as an insoluble additive to oil well drilling fluid. In a purer form it is used as X-ray radiocontrast agents for imaging the human gastrointestinal tract. Water-soluble barium compounds are poisonous and have been used as rodenticides.

Details

Barium (Ba), chemical element, one of the alkaline-earth metals of Group 2 (IIa) of the periodic table. The element is used in metallurgy, and its compounds are used in pyrotechnics, petroleum production, and radiology.

Element Properties

atomic number  :  56
atomic weight  :  137.327
melting point  :  727 °C (1,341 °F)
boiling point  :  1,805 °C (3,281 °F)
specific gravity:  3.51 (at 20 °C, or 68 °F)

Occurrence, properties, and uses

Barium, which is slightly harder than lead, has a silvery white luster when freshly cut. It readily oxidizes when exposed to air and must be protected from oxygen during storage. In nature it is always found combined with other elements. The Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered (1774) a new base (baryta, or barium oxide, BaO) as a minor constituent in pyrolusite, and from that base he prepared some crystals of barium sulfate, which he sent to Johan Gottlieb Gahn, the discoverer of manganese. A month later Gahn found that the mineral barite is also composed of barium sulfate, BaSO4. A particular crystalline form of barite found near Bologna, Italy, in the early 17th century, after being heated strongly with charcoal, glowed for a time after exposure to bright light. The phosphorescence of “Bologna stones” was so unusual that it attracted the attention of many scientists of the day, including Galileo. Only after the electric battery became available could Sir Humphry Davy finally isolate (1808) the element itself by electrolysis.

Barium minerals are dense (e.g., BaSO4, 4.5 grams per cubic centimetre; BaO, 5.7 grams per cubic centimeter), a property that was the source of many of their names and of the name of the element itself (from the Greek barys, “heavy”). Ironically, metallic barium is comparatively light, only 30 percent denser than aluminum. Its cosmic abundance is estimated as 3.7 atoms (on a scale where the abundance of silicon = {10}^{6}
atoms). Barium constitutes about 0.03 percent of Earth’s crust, chiefly as the minerals barite (also called barytes or heavy spar) and witherite. Between six and eight million tons of barite are mined every year, more than half of it in China. Lesser amounts are mined in India, the United States, and Morocco. Commercial production of barium depends upon the electrolysis of fused barium chloride, but the most effective method is the reduction of the oxide by heating with aluminum or silicon in a high vacuum. A mixture of barium monoxide and peroxide can also be used in the reduction. Only a few tons of barium are produced each year.

The metal is used as a getter in electron tubes to perfect the vacuum by combining with final traces of gases, as a deoxidizer in copper refining, and as a constituent in certain alloys. The alloy with nickel readily emits electrons when heated and is used for this reason in electron tubes and in spark plug electrodes. The detection of barium (atomic number 56) after uranium (atomic number 92) had been bombarded by neutrons was the clue that led to the recognition of nuclear fission in 1939.

Naturally occurring barium is a mixture of six stable isotopes: barium-138 (71.7 percent), barium-137 (11.2 percent), barium-136 (7.8 percent), barium-135 (6.6 percent), barium-134 (2.4 percent), and barium-132 (0.10 percent). Barium-130 (0.11 percent) is also naturally occurring but undergoes decay by double electron capture with an extremely long half-life (more than 4 × {10}^{21} years). More than 30 radioactive isotopes of barium are known, with mass numbers ranging from 114 to 153. The isotope with the longest half-life (barium-133, 10.5 years) is used as a gamma-ray reference source.

Additional Information:

Appearance

Barium is a soft, silvery metal that rapidly tarnishes in air and reacts with water.

Uses

Barium is not an extensively used element. Most is used in drilling fluids for oil and gas wells. It is also used in paint and in glassmaking.

All barium compounds are toxic; however, barium sulfate is insoluble and so can be safely swallowed. A suspension of barium sulfate is sometimes given to patients suffering from digestive disorders. This is a ‘barium meal’ or ‘barium enema’. Barium is a heavy element and scatters X-rays, so as it passes through the body the stomach and intestines can be distinguished on an X-ray.

Barium carbonate has been used in the past as a rat poison. Barium nitrate gives fireworks a green colour.

Biological role

Barium has no known biological role, although barium sulfate has been found in one particular type of algae. Barium is toxic, as are its water- or acid-soluble compounds.

Natural abundance

Barium occurs only in combination with other elements. The major ores are barite (barium sulfate) and witherite (barium carbonate). Barium metal can be prepared by electrolysis of molten barium chloride, or by heating barium oxide with aluminium powder.

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