You may have noticed that Zinc is one of the main roofing materials we work with. So what do we know about this useful substance?
Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a blue-silvery appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. It is the 24th most abundant element in Earth’s crust.
Zinc metal was not produced on a large scale until the 12th century in India, though it was known to the ancient Romans and Greeks. The mines of Rajasthan have given definite evidence of zinc production going back to the 6th century BC. To date, the oldest evidence of pure zinc comes from Zawar, in Rajasthan, as early as the 9th century AD when a distillation process was employed to make pure zinc.
Alchemists burned zinc in air to form what they called “philosopher’s wool” or “white snow”.
The element was probably named by the alchemist Paracelsus after the German word Zinke (prong, tooth).
German chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf is credited with discovering pure metallic zinc in 1746. Work by Luigi Galvani and Alessandro Volta uncovered the electrochemical properties of zinc by 1800.
Corrosion-resistant zinc plating of iron (hot-dip galvanizing) is the major application for zinc