silver, Ag for short.
back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, when my great grandfather worked in the silver mines in the mountains of colorado, nobody gave a thought to what that mining was doing to the environment. they did notice that the guys who worked the amalgamation tables, where silver was separated from crushed ore by arsenic or mercury, often lost their hair or teeth or went a bit crazy. oftentimes, too, arsenic, mercury and other mining chemicals would leak from settling ponds or be washed directly into local streams and rivers. these same rivers as recently at the last ten years, were sometimes flowing orange or a deep brown, and the toxic tailing piles "could melt your shoe laces." a whole bunch of human energy, the great cooperation of nature and $30 million later, they're beginning to get a handle on the devastating effects of digging, blasting, hauling and amalgamating this "soft, white, lustrous transition metal", along with lead, zinc, manganese and gold, out of the earth. (and that's just in one small area of colorado!)
ductile and malleable, silver is the most-est in many categories. has the highest electrical conductivity, the highest thermal conductivity, the highest optical reflectivity, and lowest contact resistance of any metal. and it's pretty. no wonder humans have been separating it from lead since 4000 b.c. chemists have given silver the atomic number 47 with an atomic mass of 107.8682. it has one electron in it's outer shell and belongs to group 11. in addition to lovely metalwork, money and jewelry, silver is also used in electronics, photography, optics, nuclear reactors, industrial reactions. it's being used, too, in medicine as colloidal silver, a powerful antibiotic, and in the form of ions and compounds has been useful against viruses, bacteria, fungi, and algae.
link review:
i wasn't able to open some of the links this week - "not found." but, i did like the water concepts page about water molecules and their dance. wondering in what ways humans are like that, since we're about 60% water.
carbon extra:
hmmm. makes me think about everything i don't know about how this computer works and what it's made of. it's really amazing that we're all interested in deeply exploring such completely different areas of life and then again how they all converge into one.
1 comment:
I had no idea silver had such great medicinal properties. In learning Chinese herbs, it's interesting to see some common minerals, plants, shells, seaweeds, etc. and learn about how they can heal the body. Is silver used in vaccinations? I can't think of how else it might be used....maybe a silver band-aid to secure a papercut? That's high class healthcare!
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