Today Tin Day

Posted on MetaFilter [here be comments] but you prolly don't read MetaFilter as much as me . . . 19th Feb is the 50th day of the year. If you forget to celebrate DarwinDay, you have a week to gird your loins for TinDay ₅₀Sn being the 50th element; but don't let it go to your head. Tin is one of the metals important for future technologies [MIFT] and the spot price has tripled during Coronarama; so we need to know something about it. Tin Day seven years ago.

• Price: $43/kg; aluminum Al $3/kg; copper Cu $10; Nickel Ni $24; Silver Ag $770/kg
• Density: 7.3g/cm³; more than Al 2.7; same as iron Fe 7.8; less than lead Pb 11.3
• Melts in a pizza oven: 230°C, 445°F
• Kernow: Stannary Charters of 1201 and 1305 granted tinners the right to prospect and mine throughout Cornwall but all the tin had to be sent to Stannary Towns for assay: Lostwithiel, Bodmin, Liskeard, Truro and Helston. Geevor [13m] the last commercial tin mine closed in 1990
• Bronze is 10-12% tin. So Cornish tin was in demand through the Bronze Age
• Bronze medal winners are happier
• Pewter:  is 90% tin with antimony Sb 5%; copper Cu 2% [and formerly Pb]. Plates pots flagons and tankards from the Mary Rose
• Irish travellers no longer ply a trade as tinkers because plastic utensils are brighter cheaper
  
• The Creak. Crank up the volume to hear the cry of tin with Andrea Sella [5m]
• Tin pest [11m] with Cody: white β tin will corrupt to a brittle ceramic allotrope called grey α tin if slowly cooled
• Poliakoff and Barnes show and tell [15m]
  
• ITO: Indium (which also creaks) tin oxide is a transparent conductor for touch screens
• TBT: Tributyl-tin was an anti-fouling paint for ship's hulls. Horribly toxic to marine wildlife: sea snails changing sex, deforming the shells of oysters. Banned since 2008 by the IMO.
• Rin Tin Tin [1m] is not made of tin; Tintin is not made of tin, nor is Milou the dog; tinfoil has been made of aluminum [lighter cheaper] since WWII.
  
• Plate glass [7m] : is made on tin by Pilkington. Needs an atmosphere of nitrogen and hydrogen to prevent the ultra-smooth molten tin from oxidizing.
• Solder: I know nothing about solder except it uses more of the world's remaining tin than any other product
  
• Blood diamonds cassiterite SnO₂ in Congo

Tomorrow Antimony ₅₁Sb !