Page 50 - The Periodic Table Book

56
Ba Barium

Discovery: 1808
56 56 81 State: Solid
Alkaline Earth Metals to make ceramic glazes. Witherite used witherite as golden shine.
Forms
This soft metal

has a light,
Farmers
rat poison
This mineral is used
until the
18th century.

A grey layer of
tarnish forms when
the metal comes into
contact with air.
Desert rose

Benitoite

Petal-like shapes These glassy, blue
form in the desert crystals contain
when sand mixes barium and titanium.
with barite
or with gypsum.

Barium is named after the Greek word does not exist in nature. Davy obtained it by
barys, which means “heavy”, because heating the mineral witherite. Today, the main
barium and its minerals are dense. The source of barium is barite, a mineral of sulfur
pure form of this element was first discovered that forms in deserts and in rock deposits that
in 1808 by the English chemist Humphry Davy, come into contact with hot water. A rarer mineral
48 who extracted it from an oxide of barium. This called benitoite also contains barium. The

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