miscellaneous thoughts ✔

Nickel

Rough Draft of my Chemistry Paper (extremely slight edits after my teacher looked over it)

Prompt: The entire universe is composed of about 115 elements. Some are found naturally all around us while others are man-made. Yet many people know very little about these building blocks of matter. Your assignment for this project is to become the element. How does one do this? It actually requires very little... you will not morph into a little chunk of gold or vaporize into chlorine gas. Though that would be very cool! You simply need to write an autobiography and create a mini square about your chosen element. You are the element, telling your life history to the average person walking down the street. This means you will write in the first person.

Song: Shape of You - Ed Sheeran

P.s. Be honest, how many of you actually read that? ;)

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Elemental Facts: An Autobiography of Nickel

     Hallå, (that means hello in Swedish), my name is Kupfernickel, but I am more commonly known as Nickel, or Ni. I am a transition metal, which means that I am one of 38 elements found in groups three through twelve on the periodic table (Bentor). The periodic table apartment complex is pretty congenial; in fact, you should come visit me sometime. I live in group ten, period four, letter block d ("Nickel"). You may see some of my neighbors and friends, Copper, Zinc, Cobalt, Mercury, Palladium, Iron, Magnesium, Silver, and Gold. They are all transition metals that share many similar interests with me such as ductility and malleability, conducting electricity and heat, and having valence electrons, or electrons used to combine with other elements, that are present in more than one shell (Bentor). Well enough of that, let me inform you of my appearance. I am a solid (at room temperature) that takes on a silver-like luster, well; more of a silvery-white with a trivial golden tint, but you understand what I am saying (Smith). So basically, I am extremely pretty, if I do say so myself, which I do. That said, as a neutral atom my atomic number is 28, which means that I carry 28 protons and electrons and my atomic mass is about 58.69 AMU (Lenntech).

     Axel Fredrik Cronstedt discovered me in 1751 while working at a place called Stockholm, researching a new mineral — now called nickeline — that originated from a mine located in Los, Hälsingland, Sweden ("Nickel"). Unfortunately, my adoptive father ended up dying eventually because he is human, but I still appreciate him finding me. He gave me my name, Nickel, in 1754, but it was not until 1775 that my pure form was produced by Tobern Bergman, the guy who confirmed my elemental nature ("Nickel"). Great scientists, those men were. I really like them, especially considering the fact that they are the reason the world knows about me. Although these two men are attributed to helping unearth me, there is a belief that during medieval times in Germany, miners tried to extract Copper from a red mineral with the look of Copper one (rock), but could not, so they named the mineral Nickel after a mischievous sprite of German mythology and Kupfer because it was the German word for Copper (Smith). Together, the two words form Kupfernickel, my full name. As cool as that all sounds, it gets even cooler. I came crashing down to earth with meteorites, one of which landed near Ontario, Canada, millions of years ago, making the region responsible for about 15% of me ("Nickel"). Now that is what I call making an entrance. Boo yah!

       Anyway, enough about scientists and history and whatnot, I want to talk a little more about myself. I have a density of about 8.9g/cm3, a melting point of about 2651° Fahrenheit, and a boiling point of about 5275° Fahrenheit ("Nickel"). I have other pretty cool properties too. I form a multitude of complex compounds, which are mostly blue or green, dissolve slowly in dilute acids, become passive when treated with nitric acid, and if I am finely divided I can absorb, get this, Hydrogen (Lenntech). Not only that, but I have many uses in everyday life, but ordinary people do not know.