#bromine
An addition funnel after a bromination with elemental bromine.
Elemental bromine beside it’s quite toxic it is also volatile, so if you are working with it always wear proper protection and use a fume hood. Interesting that the word bromine is from Greek: βρῶμος, brómos, meaning “strong-smelling” or “stench”.
When the addition funnel looks like this it is recommended to wash it with a proper solvent what dissolves the bromine and could be transferred into the reaction mixture.
Important note: Don’t clean Br2-contaminated glassware with acetone, use alcohol. From the reaction of bromine and acetone bromoacetone is generated what is a potent irritant/lacrymator.
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Bromine is an essential trace element in humans and occurs in a multitude of different organobromine compounds in various other life forms, notably marine organisms.
Elemental bromine, however, is toxic, and must be handled with care. It is often transported in steel tanks lined with lead and the gaseous form smells like bleach.
Discovered independently in 1825 and 1826 by Carl Jacob Löwig and Antoine Balard, bromine was named for the Greek βρωμος, meaning stench. Löwig isolated it from a mineral water spring, while Balard isolated the element from seaweed (originally naming it muride, from the Latin word muria for brine).
Bromine is the thirty fifth element, consisting of thirty five protons and electrons. It is rarer than about three-quarters of elements in the Earth’s crust and cannot be found as the pure element.
On the periodic table, it is classified as a nonmetal. A nonmetal is typically highly volatile, with low elasticity, and good insulation for both heat and electricity. Despite the number of metals versus nonmetals, living organisms are composed almost entirely of nonmetals and nonmetals form more compounds than metals.
It is also classified as a halogen, which forms acids when bonded to hydrogen and typically are produced from minerals or salts.
Bromine is one of two elements to exist as a liquid at room temperature, and one of seven elements that prefers to be diatomic. This means that it usually exists in the form of two bromine atoms bonded together, rather than a single atom on it’s own.
As a liquid, bromine is red-brown, corrosive and toxic. The element has two stable isotopes.
