thebeakerblog: Yet another week begins, which means it’s time for METAL MONDAY! (Insert g

thebeakerblog:

Yet another week begins, which means it’s time for METAL MONDAY! (Insert guitar solo here.) Today a profile a soft, silvery metal that looks a lot like mercury: gallium (Ga):

• Gallium destroys the structure of aluminum-zinc alloys or steel, by diffusing in between their crystalline boundaries. That’s science speak for “don’t take this on a place, it will eat through the fuselage.”
• The metal melts at about 302 K (29.7646 °C, 85.5763 °F) and boils more than eight times higher at 2673 K. According to Wikipedia (please fact check this for me!), this apparently gives gallium the greatest ratio between melting point and boiling point of any element.
• French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran discovered the element in 1875. It’s said he named the element “gallia” from the Latin Gallia, meaning Gaul.
  
• Gallium is used in many alloys and also has useful applications in semiconductors.

(Image / Source Credit: Wikimedia Commons)