Boron element where is it found

It is commonly used in the household as aluminum foil, in crafts such as dyeing and pottery, and also in construction to make alloys. In its purest form the metal is bluish-white and very ductile. It is an excellent conductor of heat and electricity and finds use in some wiring.

Boron is used in pyrotechnics and flares to produce a green color. Boron has also been used in some rockets as an ignition source. Boron, one of the naturally occurring isotopes of boron, is a good absorber of neutrons and is used in the control rods of nuclear reactors, as a radiation shield and as a neutron detector.

Boron filaments are used in the aerospace industry because of their high-strength and lightweight. Boron forms several commercially important compounds.

The key to this process is balancing it so that every fission event triggers just one more fission event; otherwise, the reactions speed up like a runaway train and the reactor is said to go supercritical. Bad news all around. To keep nuclear reactions in balance, reactors are equipped with devices called control rods, often made of boron or other elements, according to the U.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Boron absorbs excess neutrons, preventing them from zinging into too many uranium atoms. Boron doesn't have a lot of pop-culture cachet, but science has a lot to say about this surprisingly intriguing element. For example, plant biologists have long known that without boron, plants don't grow. The element is an essential nutrient. But why? No one knew until August , when researchers at the University of Missouri ferreted out the answer.

Boron, they found, is crucial to the stem cells of plants. Portions of the plant called meristems are made of stem cells, which themselves are capable of giving rise to all the different cells that make up a plant. Without boron, these meristems wither , the researchers reported in the journal Plant Cell. In the eastern United States, farmers have to supplement their soil with boron in order to boost crop yields.

It is found in the Earth's crust at a concentration of 10 ppm, making it the 38th most abundant element. Boron is classified as a metalloid , having properties of both metals and nonmetals: it and conducts electricity at high temperatures; but at room temperature, is it an insulator. Many boron salts emit a green color when heated.

Borate salts are used in the refining of metals, in the manufacture of glass, in fertilizers boron is necessary for plant growth , and in detergents. Pyrex glassware is a borosilicate glass introduced by Corning Glass Works in ; it is widely used in laboratories because it does not expand on heating as much as ordinary glass, and it is much more resistant to breaking. Boric acid is used in many insecticides. Boron can also form extremely hard materials with nitrogen and carbon; boron nitride, BN, is similar in strength and appearance to diamond, and is used as an abrasive.

Aluminum is a relatively soft, silvery, malleable metal. The name of the element is derived from the Latin word for alum, alumen. In Europe, the name is spelled "aluminium," while in the United States, it is spelled "aluminum.

Despite its ubiquity, it was a valuable substance for a long time because of the extreme difficulty of obtaining it in its elemental, metallic form. Aluminum can be obtained from bauxite ore by heating, but this requires such high temperatures that this is a very inefficient — and expensive — process.