Bismuth Research Paper

Words: 792
Pages: 4

Mackenzie Meyers
Mrs. Busuek
Chemistry
5/10/17
Bismuth

The element I chose for this research project was Bismuth. I chose it primarily due to how it looked. Bismuth is a very pretty element with all its colors and shapes. It’s very eye-catching. Within this paper, everything will be talked about. From the discovery to its health effects. Bismuth is a very cool, informational element.
Bismuth was originally discovered in France of 1753. The chemist, Claude François Geoffroy, discovered Bismuth only by being able to figure out it was an element of its own. Bismuth was often confused and considered lead or tin. In theory, they think Bismuth had existed since the beginning of the universe at only 100 grams. Today, they say there is now about 99.9999999 grams exist today. Scientists learned that it is radioactive, but has a very slow decay rate, which preserves it on its own. The name Bismuth comes from the German word, weiße masse, meaning white mass. Bismuth occurs in nature within the Earth’s crust. It is a native metal found in the form of ore and is recognized as bismite or bismuthinite. Bismuth is also twice as abundant as gold. Bismuth occurs naturally as the metal itself but is also found in crystals in different sulphide ores of nickel, cobalt, silver, and tin.
Bismuth belongs to the post transition metals class. Post transition metals are the elements that are metallic elements. They are found right between metalloids and the transition metals. It’s categorized as that due to the
…show more content…
Like mentioned before it has a mass number of 208.9804. There are 83 protons and electrons, but there are 126 neutrons. Bismuth has no stable isotopes but just one stable isotope, Bismuth-209. The abundance of Bismuth-209 is 100% and its half-life is 1.9 x 1019 y. The electron configuration of Bismuth in longhand is: 1s22s22p63s23p63d104s24p64d105s25p64f145d106s26p3 . The electron configuration of Bismuth in shorthand is [Xe] 4f14 5d10 6s2