Platinum

Raw Platinum Sample

Platinum has an atomic number of 78, it is in group 10 period 6. It has an atomic mass of 195.08 and an electron configuration of [Xe]4f145d96s1. It is a solid at room temperature it has a melting point of 1768.2 degrees Celsius it has a boiling point of 3825 degrees Celsius. Visually it is a silvery-white colored metal. It has an electronegativity of 2.2 by the Pauling scale. Platinum is regularly used in jeweling, mostly in alloys with gold. It was discovered some time ago by in
native South America. The Maya found it while they mined for gold and used platinum in many of their beautiful jewelry, but since they Maya had no established writing system the dates of discovery are unknown to the world.The earliest known account recording the existence of Platinum was written by Julius Caesar Scaliger, an Italian scholar of several trades. He wrote that on his ventures in Central America in 1557, the natives there were working with a metal the Europeans had never heard of, he called it Platina meaning little silver. He also recorded that no fire or Spanish art could ever hope to melt this metal.

The Maya, discoverers or Platinum

Though it was obviously the Native South Americans who discovered Platinum, the official credit was giving to Don Antonio De Ulloa. While serving in South America he collected samples of Platinum and wrote a full report on its properties and how it was mined. In 1783 the French chemist Francois Chabaneaus had invented and patented a way of working with Platinum, the problem was that each batch was inconstant with is properties anda there were other elements in the mix so it wasn’t truly pure Platinum. Then in the early 19th century the English chemist William H. Wollaston made a commercial for of mining Platinum. In his works with the Platinum ore he discovered several metals, they were: osmium, iridium,
rhodium and palladium. Those metals were what altered the properties of the Platinum produced by Chabaneaus’s method.Platinum cost about 13000 dollars every 100 grams, there aren’t many uses for it. Mainly it was used for jewelry; it is basically a silvery gold. It shares many propertied why gold such as being resistant to corrosion or being soft and malleable. One of the uses for Platinum it as a catalyst, a catalyst is a substance used to speed up or slow down a chemical reaction without the substance itself actually changing. About 50% of all the platinum that is produced is used for catalytic converters in cars. This device is very important, it helps the gasoline in cars, trucks, and other devices that use petroleum as a fuel, burn cleaner. This way these devices are doing less harm on the environment.