What is tungsten history?

Tungsten facts is a silvery-white, hard and strong metal that lives in group 6 (VIb) of the Periodic Table. Like chromium, copper, and iron, it's a transition metal (also called a transition element). In continental Europe, tungsten is often referred to by the alternative name of wolfram. Several hundred years ago, German smelters decided this was a good name because tungsten reacted voraciously with tin-rich oxides "like a wolf." That's why its chemical symbol is W and not T or Tu.

Pure tungsten is a light gray or whitish metal that is soft enough to be cut with a hacksaw and ductile enough to be drawn into wire or extruded into various shapes. If contaminated with other materials, tungsten becomes brittle and difficult to work with. Tungsten has the highest melting point of all metallic elements and is used to make filaments for incandescent light bulbs, fluorescent light bulbs and television tubes. Tungsten expands at nearly the same rate as borosilicate glass and is used to make metal to glass seals. Tungsten is also used as a target for X-ray production, as heating elements in electric furnaces and for parts of spacecraft and missiles which must withstand high temperatures.
Tungsten is alloyed with steel to form tough metals that are stable at high temperatures. Tungsten-steel alloys are used to make such things as high speed cutting tools and rocket engine nozzles.
Tungsten carbide (WC) is an extremely hard tungsten compound. It is used in the tips of drill bits, high speed cutting tools and in mining machinery. Tungsten disulfide (WS2) is a dry lubricant that can be used to temperatures as high as 500°C. Tungsten forms compounds with calcium and magnesium that have phosphorescent properties and are used in fluorescent light bulbs.

In its raw state, tungsten history is brittle and difficult to utilize. The pure form of tungsten history is used mainly in electrical components. Tungsten history is extracted from the crushed ore and then consolidated into a solid form.
Tungsten history's many composites and alloys are used in diverse applications and industries that range from aerospace and automotive to homeland security and sports and leisure. Tungsten facts specific applications are almost endless and include weights and counterbalances, rotor blades, guidance platforms, vibration governors, radiation shielding, industrial instrumentation, gyro rotors and fly wheels, ordnance components, armor penetrating applications, boring bars, grinding quills, die cast tooling and many others.

Where does tungsten come from?

Tungsten facts are moderately common in Earth's crust: it's the 57th most common chemical element out of the 92 that are found in nature—so roughly in the middle of the list. In practice, you'd need to dig up about 1.5 tones of rock to get about 1 gram (0.04 ounces) of tungsten, so you can see mining the stuff is pretty hard work! What makes it harder is that tungsten doesn't occur naturally in its pure state but only combined with other metals, mostly in two minerals called sheltie (a compound of calcium, tungsten, and oxygen with the chemical formula CaWO4) and wolfram (an intermediate compound that includes either iron or manganese plus tungsten and oxygen).
Traditionally, tungsten is extracted from its minerals by a multi-stage process:
The minerals are reacted with sodium carbonate or sodium hydroxide to produce sodium tungsten.
The sodium tungsten is washed with water and reacted with hydrochloric acid to make tungsten acid (H2WO4).
The tungsten acid is washed and dried to produce tungsten trioxide (WO3).
The tungsten trioxide is heated in a furnace with hydrogen. The hydrogen reduces the oxide (removes its oxygen atoms) leaving pure tungsten metal, which can then be worked and shaped (pressed, hammered, or pulled) into bars, wires, or whatever form is needed.

Tungsten

Tungsten facts have a patchwork history, dating back to medieval German and Swedish smelters. The name tungsten is derived from the Swedish words "tung sten," meaning "heavy stone." Its chemical symbol, W, is derived from the German wolfram, the old name of the tungsten mineral wolfram.
One theory behind the name wolfram was that it was named from wolf ram (wolf froth or cream), a reference to the large amount of tin that was devoured when the tungsten was smelted.
In 1781, a self-made chemist and scientist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, and Torbern Bergman, a Swedish chemist and mineralogist, suggested it might be possible to obtain a new metal buy reducing tungsten acid. Two years later, in 1783, Jose and Fausto Elhuyar were the first to isolate tungsten through the reduction of this acid with charcoal. For this reason, they are credited with the discovery of this element.

Tungsten was identified as a new element in 1781, and first isolated as a metal in 1783. Its important ores include wolfram and sheltie. The free element is remarkable for its robustness, especially the fact that it has the highest melting point of all the non-alloyed metals and the second highest of all the elements after carbon. Also remarkable is its high density of 19.3 times that of water, comparable to that of uranium and gold, and much higher (about 1.7 times) than that of lead. Tungsten facts with minor amounts of impurities are often brittle and hard, making it difficult to work. However, very pure tungsten, though still hard, is more ductile, and can be cut with a hard-steel hacksaw.

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