The element zinc was discovered in Germany in by Andreas Marggraf. However, zinc ores were commonly used to make brass as early as to B. Alaska mines the most zinc in the U. Ogdensburg, New Jersey, was once a large producer of zinc, but these mines are now closed. The U. Zinc has many uses.
Primarily used in a variety of coating processes in order to protect other metals from the elements, it is also commonly used in powder and dust form, as an oxide, and for medical purposes. Zinc is found in dry batteries and hardens the brass that coats the U.
Zinc alloys are often combined with other metals in order to strengthen and harden them. Zinc is non-toxic. However, some zinc salts may cause cancer. Sphalerite ore is mined in Australia and many other countries.
Roasting heating the sphalerite separates zinc from the other components. We use a lot of zinc — it is the fourth most widely used metal after iron, aluminium and copper. In , worldwide use was over 14 million metric tons. For 2, years, humans have mixed zinc with copper to make brass, an alloy. The ancient Romans and others in Middle Eastern regions used brass to make coins and ornamental items. The zinc they used was impure mixed with other substances. Marggraf received credit for the discovery because he published the distillation process in careful detail.
Zinc is still used in the production of brass and bronze, just like it was thousands of years ago. A more modern use is in electrical batteries. Alkaline batteries have zinc powder inside them. More than half of the zinc used today is to galvanise coat other metals like iron and steel. The protective zinc coating slows the metals from rusting or corroding. If you look closely at metal poles used in a chain-link fence or an outdoor handrail, you can see the protective coating.
Zinc compounds have a variety of uses. Zinc chloride is often added to timber as a chemical fire retardant. Zinc sulfide is used in fluorescent bulbs — it converts ultraviolet light to visible light. Zinc oxide is used as a white pigment in paint. If you have a set of oil paints, check to see if your tube of white paint has the word zinc in its name. Zinc also has a role in health. It's an essential mineral that keeps the body's enzymes humming.
Zinc deficiency can slow growth and hamper the immune system, according to the National Institutes of Health. Some of the weirdest side effects of zinc deficiency involve abnormalities of smell and taste, because the metal is crucial to these processes. Zinc's role in life can't be understated. In fact, the element appears to be a crucial component of the meeting between sperm and egg.
A December video , published alongside a study in the journal Nature Chemistry, shows the fireworks of fertilization as an egg releases "sparks" of zinc after enveloping a sperm. Researchers are still exploring this phenomenon, but they have discovered that without the zinc eruptions, the egg cannot develop.
Zinc "might even be working as a master switch to tell the cell when to divide," study co-author Thomas O'Halloran, a chemist at Northwestern University in Chicago, told Live Science. Cells typically concentrate zinc until there are about as many zinc atoms in the cell as there are base pairs in the organisms' genome, O'Halloran said.
But some cells concentrate more than that. In its last hours before full maturation, the egg cell starts taking in zinc, O'Halloran and his colleagues have found, going from about 40 billion zinc atoms to about 60 billion. About 15 percent of the total zinc ends up in vesicles, little packets squirreled away right under the cell's surface. When the sperm and egg meet, these packets get ejected.
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