Gallium Project Essay (very short)

Before the discovery of gallium, its existence and properties were predicted by the Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. He named the supposed element eka-aluminum as he predicted the element would be below aluminum in the periodic table of elements. In the year of 1875, the element Gallium was discovered by French chemist Paul E. Lecoq de Boisbaudran through a spectroscope in Paris. De Boisbaudran extracted gallium from a zinc blende ore from the Pyrenees and obtained .65 grams from 430 kilograms of ore. He isolated gallium by electrolysis of its hydroxide in potassium hydroxide solution. The origin of the name comes from the Latin word ‘Gallia’, which means France. Gallium is a chemical element with symbol Ga and atomic number 31. Gallium does not occur in free form in nature. Gallium is a brittle solid at a low temperature, and is a soft silver metal. If Gallium is held in someone’s hand log enough, it will melt. Gallium will melt at a temperature of 85 degrees, which is slightly above room temperature. Through the era of semiconductors, gallium was used as an agent to make allots that melt at a low temperature.
The element gallium is a byproduct of the production of aluminum and zinc. Most gallium is extracted from the crude aluminum hydroxide solution of the Bayer process. Gallium easily bonds with most metals and is often added to low melting alloys. Gallium has the second largest liquid range of any element and is one of the few materials that are near liquid form. Gallium also expands as it freezes.