Boron Facts
Boron Facts
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| Interesting Boron Facts: |
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| Sir Humphry Davy, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, and Louis Jaques Thenard isolated the boron element by creating a reaction of boric acid with potassium in 1808. |
| Boron is fairly rare in the solar system and makes up only 0.001% of the Earth's crust, but its naturally occurring compounds are quite common. |
| Some common compounds of boron are borax, boric acid, colemanite, kernite, ulexite, and borates. |
| Pure boron is extremely difficult to produce, even in laboratory conditions, because of its propensity to join with carbon. |
| Historically, borax glazes have been used by far-reaching cultures as early as AD300. |
| Eighteenth century Florentines used it for medical purposes as sal sedativum. |
| Boron is fairly hard, and together with carbon and nitrogen forms a superhard and highly heat-resistant compound commonly called heterodiamond. |
| Boron has two naturally occurring stable isotopes, 11B (80.1%) and 10B (19.9%), which are commonly used in a number of industries. |
| Both 10B and 11B possess nuclear spin, with the spin of 10B being 3 and that of 11B being 3/2. |
| Boron is present in over 100 minerals on Earth but is difficult to prepare or study. |
| Biologically, boron is present in the cell walls of plants and is therefore present in all foods made from plants. |
| There is a boron-based natural antibiotic called boromycin, a derivative of streptomyces. |
| Boron is used in a number of well-known cleaning agents in the compound form borax. |
| Another compound, boric acid, is lethal to insects but not harmful to mammals, and is therefore used in pesticides. |
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