By Liz Mill Valley Middle School
"Tungsten never fails to light up your life"
History I Properties I Structure I Uses and Sources I Glossary I Bibliography
History There are a few things that led to the discovery of tungsten. You can view that process in the table below. However, brothers Fausto and Juan Jose de Elhuyar, were the ones who discovered it in the end. In 1783 they found acid in wolframite the same as the acid in tungsten. They then got the element by reducing the acid with charcoal. Peter Woulfe, who first worked on tungsten, was Swedish, so tungsten is from the Swedish word tungs ten, meaning heavy stone. Tungsten is wolfram in German, and that is where its symbol (W) originated. 1779 Peter Woulfe examines wolframite and finds that it must contain a new substance 1781 Karl Scheele finds that an acid can be made from tungsten 1783 de Elhuyar brothers find acid in wolframite identical to that in tungsten and they get the element by reducing the acid with charcoal
Properties Tungsten belongs to the group of metals and is a solid at room temperature. It is the metal with the highest melting point and it has good corrosion resistance. It is, however, brittle and difficult to work with. You can observe a few more of tungsten's physical and chemical properties below. melting point 3683.2 Kelvin boiling point 5773 Kelvin number of isotopes 5 stable and 21 unstable atomic mass 183.8 atomic number 74 color ranges from bluish gray to tin white
Structure Tungsten has six energy levels. In the first level there are two electrons, eight in the second, eighteen in the third, thirty-two in the fourth, twelve in the fifth, and it has two valence electrons. Inside the nucleus, there are seventy-four protons and one hundred ten neutrons.
Uses and Sources Tungsten is widely used in the filaments of light bulbs. It is used in many other things too, though. Those include television tubes, x-ray targets, electrical furnaces, computer monitors, and certain parts in space crafts. Tungsten can be found in California, Colorado, South Korea, Bolivia, Russia, Portugal, and China. Seventy-five percent of it is found in China. It can be extracted from wolframite, scheelite, huebnerite, and ferberite. Tungsten is used in televison tubes, certain parts in space crafts, and computer moniters.
Glossary Kelvin- scientific way of saying the temperature; the zero of Kelvin is equal to -273.15 degrees Celsius isotope- an atom with varying nuetrons in the nucleus valence electrons- electrons that are found in the outer most energy level of an atom nucleus-the center of an atom; is where protons and neutrons are found
Bibliography Chemicool Periodic Table Periodic Table of the Elements Pictoral Periodic Table Web Element Periodic Table Interactive Periodic Table of the Elements Tungsten sun3.lib.uci.edu/~jsisson/ gifs/ship3.gif www.cliffsnotes.com/computer/ Todd, Robert W, Physical Science, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 2001, Austin, TX March 2002