Cameras, horseshoes, baseball catchers' masks and snowshoes are other items that are made from magnesium alloys. Magnesium oxide MgO , also known as magnesia, is the second most abundant compound in the earth's crust. Magnesium oxide is used in some antacids, in making crucibles and insulating materials, in refining some metals from their ores and in some types of cements. When combined with water H 2 O , magnesia forms magnesium hydroxide Mg OH 2 , better known as milk of magnesia, which is commonly used as an antacid and as a laxative.
He tasted the water and found that it tasted very bitter. He also noticed that it helped heal scratches and rashes on his skin. Epsom salt is still used today to treat minor skin abrasions. It wasn't until , though, that an electrolysis method, developed by Robert Bunsen inventor of the Bunsen burner , made industrial production possible. Magnesium burns too easily to be used widely for building, according to the Jefferson Lab, but when mixed with aluminum, it creates an alloy that is strong, light and easy to work with.
Magnesium also has biological uses. It's part of chlorophyll, the green pigment that plants use to extract energy from sunlight. The element is also crucial to more than biological processes in the human body, according to the U.
National Library of Medicine. Adult women should take in about milligrams of magnesium a day, and adult men milligrams, according to the NLM. Fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes and whole grains are good sources.
Doctors sometime recommend magnesium supplements for a variety of medical conditions, including high blood pressure, premenstrual syndrome and diabetes.
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Jump to main content. Periodic Table. Glossary Allotropes Some elements exist in several different structural forms, called allotropes. Glossary Group A vertical column in the periodic table. Fact box. Glossary Image explanation Murray Robertson is the artist behind the images which make up Visual Elements.
Appearance The description of the element in its natural form. Biological role The role of the element in humans, animals and plants. Natural abundance Where the element is most commonly found in nature, and how it is sourced commercially. Uses and properties. Image explanation. The image is inspired by chlorophyll, the molecule contained in green plants that enables them to photosynthesise. Chlorophyll contains a single atom of magnesium at its centre.
A silvery-white metal that ignites easily in air and burns with a bright light. Magnesium is one-third less dense than aluminium. It improves the mechanical, fabrication and welding characteristics of aluminium when used as an alloying agent. These alloys are useful in aeroplane and car construction. Magnesium is used in products that benefit from being lightweight, such as car seats, luggage, laptops, cameras and power tools.
It is also added to molten iron and steel to remove sulfur. Magnesium sulfate is sometimes used as a mordant for dyes. Magnesium hydroxide is added to plastics to make them fire retardant. Magnesium oxide is used to make heat-resistant bricks for fireplaces and furnaces.
It is also added to cattle feed and fertilisers. Magnesium hydroxide milk of magnesia , sulfate Epsom salts , chloride and citrate are all used in medicine. Grignard reagents are organic magnesium compounds that are important for the chemical industry. Biological role. Magnesium is an essential element in both plant and animal life. Chlorophyll is the chemical that allows plants to capture sunlight, and photosynthesis to take place.
Chlorophyll is a magnesium-centred porphyrin complex. Without magnesium photosynthesis could not take place, and life as we know it would not exist. In humans, magnesium is essential to the working of hundreds of enzymes. Humans take in about — milligrams of magnesium each day. We each store about 20 grams in our bodies, mainly in the bones.
Natural abundance. It is found in large deposits in minerals such as magnesite and dolomite. The sea contains trillions of tonnes of magnesium, and this is the source of much of the , tonnes now produced each year. It is prepared by reducing magnesium oxide with silicon, or by the electrolysis of molten magnesium chloride. Help text not available for this section currently. Elements and Periodic Table History. The first person to recognise that magnesium was an element was Joseph Black at Edinburgh in He distinguished magnesia magnesium oxide, MgO from lime calcium oxide, CaO although both were produced by heating similar kinds of carbonate rocks, magnesite and limestone respectively.
Another magnesium mineral called meerschaum magnesium silicate was reported by Thomas Henry in , who said that it was much used in Turkey to make pipes for smoking tobacco. An impure form of metallic magnesium was first produced in by Anton Rupprecht who heated magnesia with charcoal.
A pure, but tiny, amount of the metal was isolated in by Humphry Davy by the electrolysis of magnesium oxide. However, it was the French scientist, Antoine-Alexandre-Brutus Bussy who made a sizeable amount of the metal in by reacting magnesium chloride with potassium, and he then studied its properties.
Atomic data. Glossary Common oxidation states The oxidation state of an atom is a measure of the degree of oxidation of an atom. Oxidation states and isotopes. Glossary Data for this section been provided by the British Geological Survey.
Its name derives from the Magnesia district of Thessaly, where the soft white mineral steatite talc — a hydrated magnesium silicate — was found in ancient Greece. Elemental magnesium is a fairly strong, silvery white, light-weight metal. It tarnishes slightly in air, and is thus protected against further oxidation by a thin impermeable layer of oxide. Magnesium reacts exothermically with most acids, and with water at room temperature to give magnesium hydroxide and hydrogen.
It is a very flammable metal, able to burn in both nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and famously creates a brilliant white light on burning in air. This resulted in its use as a source of illumination in early photography. It is still employed in flash bulbs, and in fireworks to produce brighter sparks. Its very low density 1. Magnesium ions are also widely present in the basic nucleic acid chemistry of life. It is vital to the cells or enzymes of living organisms for synthesizing adenosine triphosphate, DNA and RNA, as well as to green plants — chlorophylls, which are responsible for photosynthesis, are magnesium-centred porphyrins.
This also means that it is a common additive in fertilizers, and is used in medicine. For example 'milk of magnesia', a white aqueous solution of magnesium hydroxide, is commonly used as a laxative and an antacid. Magnesium also has a central position in organic and organometallic chemistry. Although organomagnesium compounds have been known since the last decades of the nineteenth century, their insolubility initially precluded general applications.
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