Did you know that tin has a dark secret?

Tin is an ordinary metal familiar to just about everyone (lead free solder being a great example). It is soft, white, easy to melt and non-toxic. Being plentiful in nature, it has found many uses throughout history. But for a long time there were rumors that objects made from tin could all of a sudden just crumble into a pile of dust for no reason. Tin pest they called it. The only clue was that it seemed to happen in the coldest of winters. Scandinavian metalsmiths might have guessed their stock cursed by the unseen gremlins of the mines where they got it from.

The real reason is more pedestrian. Like many of its neighbors in this particular area of the Periodic Table, tin has more than one form, or allotrope. Carbon is the best known of this as most people learn at some point that diamonds and a lump of coal are chemically identical. Tin’s secondary persona was much less known as this type is rather shy (and actively avoided in industry). While technically speaking putting some soldering wire in the fridge will kick in the pest, you’d grow gray hairs while waiting for anything to happen. Tin doesn’t give it up that easily. To really get it going you need it frozen with dry ice or liquid nitrogen. And then…. and then tin cries uncle! You take a cube, freeze it waaaay below zero then you could almost swear it’s groaning in pain as the surface creases and dimples and buckles. The whole thing shakes like it ate bad Chinese. Then cracks. Cracks turn to fissures then canyons. And then, well, right at that point and just before it completely goes “>poof< I’m dead!” you mercifully raise the temperature to lock in the damage done in the name of science!

To be sure, locking the tin in this state is not an easy task. Bringing the thermostat to room temperature again tin just wants to be its old self. You know, the boring type. In the long run it will revert come hell or high water but the lab has imparted a little secret sauce to delay the inevitable that you can enjoy your greatly distressed tin-that-was-once-a-cube for years to come!