Display with 27 boxes of Bismuth. (Manmade from Bolivia)

Bismuth is a chemical element with symbol Bi and atomic number 83. It is a red-white main group metal. In the past, bismuth was often confused with tin or lead because it shares many properties with them. In 1753, the French scientist Claude François Geoffroy succeeded in separating bismuth from lead. The name comes from the German Wismut, which is probably a corruption of white mass. Bismuth is often used in the production of cosmetics and medicines. In addition, there are other industrial applications: Bismanol (an alloy of manganese and bismuth) can be used to make strong permanent magnets. The low melting point of many bismuth alloys makes it suitable for use in fire alarms. It is therefore used in the Wood's metal alloy. Bismuth is used as a catalyst in the plastics industry. In nuclear installations, bismuth can be used as a carrier of 233U and 235U. Bismuth is used with a tin alloy for a coating on dovetail blades of jet engines. Bismuth is used in soldering. The property that it expands when cooled makes bismuth very suitable for this in some cases. Fireworks are sometimes enriched with bismuth to create beautiful colour effects. In a eutectic mixture with lead as coolant in a lead-cooled reactor. Since the early nineties, research has been conducted into the extent to which bismuth can be used as a non-toxic replacement for lead in various industrial processes, such as the shot in a shotgun cartridge, which is already in use. Bismuth is a fragile heavy metal that is the only one of that group that is non-toxic. In addition, bismuth is the heaviest heavy metal and also the most diamagnetic. It has a very low electrical conductivity and of all metals shows the highest Hall effect. Bismuth burns to form a bright blue/green flame. Bismuth is one of the few substances that expands when frozen; a property that the metal shares with water and gallium.