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Barium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in group 2 and is a soft, silvery alkaline earth metal . Because of its high chemical reactivity , barium is never found in nature as a free element.
Barium is a chemical element with the symbol Ba and atomic number 56. It is the fifth element in Group 2, a soft silvery metallic alkaline earth metal. Barium is never found in nature in its pure form due to its reactivity with air. Its oxide is historically known as baryta but it reacts with water and carbon dioxide and is not found as a mineral.
Barium itself was finally isolated in 1808 when Humphry Davy used electrolysis with molten salts, and Davy named the element barium, after baryta. Later, Robert Bunsen and Augustus Matthiessen isolated pure barium by electrolysis of a mixture of barium chloride and ammonium chloride. [52] [53]
Barium is formed in large amounts by the fission process. A short-lived barium isotope was confused with radium by some early workers. They were bombarding uranium with neutrons in an attempt to form a new element. But instead they caused fission which generated a large amount of radioactivity in the target.
Each chemical element has a unique atomic number (Z— for "Zahl", German for "number") representing the number of protons in its nucleus. [4] Each distinct atomic number therefore corresponds to a class of atom: these classes are called the chemical elements. [5] The chemical elements are what the periodic table classifies and organizes.
In chemistry, a reactivity series (or reactivity series of elements) is an empirical, calculated, and structurally analytical progression [1] ... barium: Ba 2+ + 2 e ...
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Baryte, barite or barytes (/ ˈ b ær aɪ t, ˈ b ɛər-/ BARR-eyet, BAIR-[7] or / b ə ˈ r aɪ t iː z / bə-RYTE-eez [8]) is a mineral consisting of barium sulfate (BaS O 4). [3] Baryte is generally white or colorless, and is the main source of the element barium.