Lead

Lead: It’s Not All About Poison

Hey! I’m Z7, and I’m writing this wiki to tell you all about [|lead]. Lead is the 82nd element in the periodic table of the elements, the first of which was written by Dimitri Mendeleev. The periodic table has evolved a lot since then, and I hope this wiki can clear things up for you.

The origin is unknown because lead was discovered before there was adequate documentation for us to know where it was found. Everyday uses include batteries, bullets or shot and radiation shields, where lead is used to protect against harmful electro-magnetic radiation such as X-rays used in medicine. Lead can also be used in weights, solder, pewter and different fusible alloys. [|Alchemists], although outlawed in their time, were very popular among kings who believed that they could turn cheap metals, especially lead, into gold, which could be extremely valuable.

No one knows who really discovered my element since it dates back to before the Bible was written, and is even mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, so it is mentioned in both the Bible and the Torah. We don’t know when lead was discovered because writings about it date back to before there was adequate documentation. However, we do know that the ancient Egyptians used lead dating back to at least 3800 B.C. Lead was also discovered before there was enough documentation to keep track of where it was found.

In ancient Rome, they had amazing advancements in technology, including their use of plumbing, which we still use. To irrigate the cities, they used an underground system of pipes, all made of pewter. Pewter is an alloy that includes lead, which we now know to be poisonous when ingested. The lead was passed throughout cities in the pipes and everyone drank it. They all had the same pipes providing them with water and they were all slowly being poisoned to death. Many historians now think that the pewter pipes have seriously contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire. In ancient Rome, a very popular thing to do, especially for the wealthy, was to paint your walls a color called Pompeian Red. The color was very bold and also smelled very good. Unfortunately, the alluring smell was attributed to the high levels of lead and mercury in the paint. In ancient Rome, wine was very important and a great status symbol. The rich especially liked to preserve their wine for as long as possible while retaining the amazing taste. They found that putting in a concentrated grape syrup that they called sapa sweetened the wine while preserving it for longer than normal. This all seemed wonderful to them, but all this sapa was boiled in lead pots, and was essentially poisoning the rich and the upper middle class. Characteristics of my element split into two different groups, chemical and physical. Chemical characteristics include it being a poor conductor of electricity, toxic in its pure form and not being flammable. Physical characteristics, however, include it being bluish-white in color, solid in its standard state, melting at 600.61, boiling at 2022 K being soft, malleable and corrosion resistant with a density of 11.342 g/cm^3.

Lead has an atomic mass of 207.2 and an atomic number of 82, which is the number of positively charged particles in the atom. In terms of protons, neutrons, and electrons, it has 82 protons, which are positively charged particles, 126 neutrons, or non charged particles, and 82 electrons, which are negatively charged particles. The common lead atom has six electron bands. On band one there are two electrons. On band two, there are eight electrons. There are eighteen electrons on the third band, and thirty-two on band four. The fifth band has eighteen electrons, and there are four valence electrons, or outside electrons, on the sixth band.

If you want to see the poster I made so you can see some information in a more graphic format, click here. If you want to see the web I created with Inspiration, click here.