+ What are the chemical properties of bismuth?

Of all the metallic elements, perhaps none is so confounding as bismuth, whose name is believed to come from the German words “weisse masse,” or “white mass.” Bismuth, which appears in the pnictogen group including nitrogen, phosphorus, antimony and arsenic at atomic number 83, is one of the heaviest elements with an atomic mass of 209. Despite its heaviness, it is a very brittle metal that can be broken as easily as throwing it on the ground, although it’s not as soft as lead. It has a low melting point at 271.4°C/520.5°F, and its boiling point is 1564°C/2847°F. It is more resistant to electricity than any metal except mercury, is a poor heat conductor and actively repels magnetic fields, a property known as diamagnetism.

+ What does bismuth look like?

Raw bismuth’s natural form is a white metal with a slight pinkish tinge to it. When bismuth melts, it tends to form iridescent layers of oxidation in different colors as it recrystallizes in a distinctive rectangular pattern. These terraced crystals and the unique rainbow hues they take on are one of bismuth’s most astounding and attractive features. It can be found in nature either in its crystalline form or as the ores bismite and bismuthinite. The world’s largest known deposits of bismuth ore can be found in Bolivia, although bismuth metal is also found all over the planet in gold, silver, copper and iron mines, where its production serves as a profitable sideline for these operations. Bismuth is available from Luciteria Science in both refined and crystalline form, and in formats including spheres, rounds, raw crystals, metal cubes, mirror cubes and of course our signature Lucite acrylic sample cubes, designed to showcase the beauty of bismuth in its raw form!

+ Why do bismuth metal crystals have such pretty colors?

Like niobium, bismuth can display a beautiful rainbow array of colors. Unlike niobium, whose colors are determined by the strength of electrical current passed through it, bismuth’s color palette is dependent upon the thickness of the bismuth (III) oxide layers formed as bismuth cools from a liquid to a solid. The colors and the size of the bismuth crystal metal can be controlled to some degree by how quickly or slowly it is allowed to cool. Faster cooling results in thinner layers and smaller crystal clusters. Thinner layers tend to radiate in the violet end of the spectrum, whereas thicker layers progress through the spectrum to red. Bear in mind, though, that “thickness” is a very relative term here: The average thickness of bismuth’s oxidation layers is only a few microns! Also, bismuth crystals will always cool unevenly outside of a very specially equipped laboratory, which makes it difficult or impossible to completely control the color and crystal size of bismuth.

+ What are some common uses for bismuth?

You may be surprised at just how much bismuth is around you in your own home or office. Bismuth is used in low-temperature metal casting, electrical fuses, fire extinguishers and detectors because of its low melting point, usually as a primary component in fusible alloys (alloy with a low melt point) with another metal like lead or cadmium. Pink bismuth is a well-known treatment for an upset stomach and even some types of ulcers; you probably recognize this as Pepto-Bismol. Bismuth has also been used in small motors because of its diamagnetic properties, which can be used to generate electricity. Even the “lead” in many modern common shotgun and handgun cartridges is not actually lead shot or bullets at all, but bismuth, which is far less toxic! It often appears in cosmetics, where it is used to impart a silvery sheen or a yellow color to makeup. Ships, planes and NASCAR may use bismuth in place of tungsten as ballast.

+ I saw some bismuth crystal in a New Age shop. Do you know why?

Among the New Age crowd, a rainbow bismuth crystal metal mineral specimen is believed to be useful in crystal healing for focus, clarity and energy, to alleviate feelings of loneliness and for physical maladies such as fever. Many people believe that rainbow bismuth found in a geode, especially if it appears alongside rose quartz or another specimen mineral gemstone like amethyst, is imbued with extra healing properties. The rainbow bismuth crystals metal mineral form is very popular among practitioners of certain forms of energy work such as Reiki and other types of New Age energy-based healing.

+ How Can I Tell if Bismuth is Real?

One of the easiest ways to tell if bismuth metal ingots are the real deal, aside from looking for the distinctive rainbow crystal matrix or the eye-catching distinctive sheen and glasslike fracture pattern if they’re in irregular pieces, is to throw a smaller sample on the ground and break it into pieces. Unadulterated, real bismuth will break easily, revealing the beautiful sheen within, and you can melt it with an ordinary blowtorch. Counterfeit bismuth is fairly rare because there are so many legitimate dealers who guarantee the quality and purity of the minerals they sell, including rainbow bismuth ore. Still, especially when dealing in large quantities, it’s worth your while to make sure you know the sales policy and make sure what you receive matches the description. Or—you can simply buy your rainbow bismuth crystal from Luciteria Science and know you’re getting the highest purity and quality around because everything we sell is 100 percent guaranteed!

+ Does bismuth have historical importance or significance?

Bismuth has been known since ancient times, but was often mistaken for lead because of its softness or tin because of its luster in an unoxidized form. It was used in bronze metallurgy and weapons forging by the Incas as recently as the 1500s, or right around the time of the Spanish advent into Peru and Chile. In Europe, bismuth’s properties appear to have first been codified by an anonymous alchemist in the early 1400s, sparking a debate that raged for nearly 350 years about bismuth’s nature, with many arguing it was a subtype of another known metal such as lead, tin or something else while others insisted its properties were sufficiently unusual to warrant consideration as its own substance. This fierce argument amongst alchemists and fledgling chemists did not impede bismuth’s entrée into European manufacturing, however; one variety of movable type for the printing press was created from an alloy of lead and bismuth, and bismuth was used to decorate jewelry boxes, caskets and other containers.

+ Bismuth: A Metal All Its Own

In 1753, a French chemist, Claude Geoffroy the Younger, conclusively demonstrated bismuth was indeed a substance all its own and not a “baser” or adulterated form of some other metal, laying the argument to rest. Experimentation with bismuth’s uses in medicine and industry continued, as it does to this day. Its relative commonality and cheapness made it a desirable component for both real medical treatments and quack patent medical cures, and new uses and applications for bismuth cropped up with surprising regularity.

+ The Great Bismuth “Alchemy” Scam

In the 1860s, a Hungarian immigrant to Great Britain, Nicholas Pappoy, claimed to have mastered an alchemical process for transmuting bismuth and aluminum into silver. Attracted by the inexpensive raw materials and excited by the anticipated return on investment, a large number of investors plied Pappoy with money to back his “process,” even forming a new company and causing a sharp jump in the price of bismuth on the open market. Of course, there was no such process, unless we count “processing” the investors’ money into Pappoy’s own coffers. When Pappoy fled England one step ahead of a group of his exceedingly angry erstwhile marks and the law, he absconded with £40,000 in ill-gotten gains, or between £4.9 and £5.5 million in modern money! (To put this in perspective, 1 pound sterling in 1860 would be worth around £12,139 today.)

+ Bismuth in the Modern World

Of course, the history of bismuth is not all quackery and pseudoscience. Bismuth remains one of the most strikingly beautiful, useful and beneficial elements across a broad spectrum of uses, and most of its history is downright benign compared to elements like radium, lead and mercury. Additionally, its use in low melting alloys and similar metal products such as modified Babbitt bearing alloys is one of the reasons we can have electricity and gas in our homes reasonably safely, and why we can use vehicles, washing machines and dryers, among other applications. Without these low melting alloy types, the quality of life we know today would be virtually impossible!

+ Is bismuth radioactive?

Bismuth is very mildly radioactive. The half-life of bismuth is approximately 20,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. (The universe is only about 14,000,000,000 years old!) According to Chemicool.com, this means if there were exactly 100 grams of bismuth present at the birth of the universe, we would still have 99.9999999 grams of it in the universe today, the remaining .00000001 gram believed to have decayed into a thallium isotope. Although bismuth was long suspected to be radioactive, this was not confirmed until 2003 when a French lab cooled a sample to nearly absolute zero and the lab’s sensors caught a brief flash of heat and light from the sample, signifying a radioactive decay event. Bismuth was believed to be more stable than lead, which made bismuth the known universal champion of elemental stability. In the wake of the confirmation that bismuth is radioactive, lead took the lead (pardon the pun), but bismuth remains the slowest-decaying radioactive element known to modern science. What this means from a practical perspective is, bismuth is less radioactive than the screen you’re reading this on and the air you’re breathing!

+ Is bismuth valuable?

To put it bluntly, no. On one website we viewed, you can buy bismuth in a pallet of 1000 pounds of chunk bismuth metal ingot for $5.99 a pound. (We’ll get to reasons why someone might want a large amount such as half a ton of bismuth ingots in the next question!) Dealers worldwide from Chenzhou, China to Casablanca to California sell this metal for use in low melting alloys and jewelry alongside items like zinc sheets. Pure bismuth metal is not particularly rare; it is produced readily nearly everywhere in the world.

+ Of course, it is important to make sure the bismuth you buy is sourced and is produced in a country with exacting purity standards.

Many people have been duped by low-quality specimens such as “ethically” sourced bismuth alloys which have not been recycled to separate out the bismuth from the other metals. This is a particularly common dodge when it comes to tin alloys, although having unscrupulous dealers swap high purity bismuth metal crystal with leftover titanium bismuth chunk alloys is not unheard of either.

+ Why would you need to buy a bunch of bismuth?

Because bismuth melts at 521 degrees Fahrenheit, this metal can be easily worked, extruded and incorporated into just about any shape you can imagine. Lead-free pewter is often made with bismuth, such as for drinking cups, plates like the ones you might eat off at a medieval jousting show or pewter miniatures such as what tabletop gamers use. It’s also great for hobbies such as jewelry-making and creating other craft objects to sell. Some artists incorporate rainbow bismuth into gift items such as wire necklaces or solder it onto stone and wood for accent or to add a little bit of flair to a large gallery mural. And of course, there are educational applications like the crystals, metal cubes, rounds, bullion and signature Lucite acrylic cubes offered by Luciteria Science for the laboratory, classroom or the hobbyist element collector!

+ What weighs more, a kilogram of bismuth or a kilogram of feathers?

This question is based on an old question about lead or gold vs. feathers. The surprising answer at one time would have been feathers! This is because people used to use troy weights to measure the weight of metals and avoirdupois weights to measure other substances like flour or feathers. Because of this difference, 2 lbs, 5 lbs or 50 pounds of feathers weighed a little more than 50 pounds of lead, even though they were both measured in “pounds.” Today, because of standardization brought on by the metric system and international agreements regarding the Imperial system which includes the pounds, feet and miles in common use in America, a pound is 16 ounces regardless of where you go. But a pound is a measure of gravitational force being exerted on an object, making it useless for determining the actual mass! You may have heard the old chestnut that you weigh 1/6 as much on the moon, because of the lower gravity. The kilogram, as a measure of density rather than weight, is much more practical for this purpose. 70g, 128g, 2kg or one metric ton are 70g, 128g, 2kg or one metric ton regardless of the substance being measured. There’s no such thing as a “XXL kilogram,” for example, the way there was in the old-style Imperial system. Even better, science buffs the world over, whether they speak Swedish, Swahili, Maori or Spanish, know and understand metric. So while you may weigh less on the moon, you, and bismuth, and feathers, will all have the same mass as you do on Earth.

+ What does bismuth subgallate do?

Bismuth subgallate is one of the bismuth group of substances used in medicine, specifically to treat stomach complaints. It’s believed it may kill harmful bacteria in the stomach and digestive system such as H. pylori, the microbe responsible for certain types of ulcers, and forms a soothing barrier which helps minimize acid impact on your stomach lining. If you’re not sure what kind of bismuth compound is in your “pink stuff,” take a look at the label or look it up online.

+ Where can I buy high-purity bismuth online?

Where can I buy high-purity bismuth online? Because bismuth is so readily available, it’s easy to find a high-purity bismuth mineral specimen. If you just want something pretty, a few seconds’ navigation on Etsy or eBay can take you to a dozen different vendors.