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Structure: fcc: face-centered cubic
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Color: silver
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Harmful Effects: Silver is considered to be non-toxic.
However, most silver salts are poisonous and some may be carcinogenic.
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Hardness: 2.5 mohs
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Characteristics: Silver is a soft, ductile, malleable, lustrous metal.
It has the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of all metals, and has the lowest contact resistance.
Silver is stable in oxygen and water, but tarnishes when exposed to sulfur compounds in air or water to form a black sulfide layer.
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Uses: Sterling silver is used for jewelry, silverware, etc. where appearance is important.
This alloy contains 92.5% silver, the remainder being copper or another metal.
Silver is used as a food additive/coloring and is given the E number E174.
About 30% of silver produced is used in the photographic industry, mostly as silver nitrate.
Silver is used in making solder and brazing alloys, dental alloys, electrical contacts, and high capacity silver-zinc and silver-cadmium batteries.
Silver paints are used for making printed circuits.
It is used in superior mirror production, as silver is the best reflector of visible light known, although it does tarnish over time.
Silver iodide is used in seeding clouds to produce rain.
Silver compounds were used successfully to prevent infection in World War 1.
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Abundance earth's crust: 80 parts per billion by weight, 20 parts per billion by moles
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Abundance solar system: 1 part per billion by weight, 10 parts per trillion by moles
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Cost, pure: 120 $/100g
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Cost, bulk: 14 $/100g
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Source: Silver is found in elemental form and also in various ores such as
argentite (silver sulfide, Ag2S) and horn silver (silver chloride, AgCl).
Commercially, the main sources of silver are copper, copper-nickel, gold, lead, and lead-zinc ores.
Silver is also recovered during electrolytic refining of copper.
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Isotopes: Silver has 35 isotopes whose half-lives are known, with mass numbers 94 to 128.
Of these, two are stable, 107Ag and 109Ag.
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