Gallium
| Gallium | |||||
| |||||
| Physical Properties | |||||
| Atomic symbol: | Ga | ||||
| Atomic number: | 31 | ||||
| Melting point: | Room temperature + 1 | ||||
| Boiling point: | Room temperature + 1000 | ||||
| Isotopes: | At least 70Ga | ||||
| Electronegativity: | Do you think I know? | ||||
Gallium is a radioactive bluish-grey element with atomic number 31 and an extremely low melting point. Put a fire next to it and its scared ass will melt into a liquid. People regard gallium to be the metal with the lowest melting point above room temperature. Overall, gallium is just a knockoff of mercury.
History[edit | edit source]
Gallium was one of those elements who were predicted by a guy named Dmitri Mendeleev. Hence, it's part of the cool-kids club, alongside germanium, scandium, and yattayattium. Gallium is named after the country of Gaul because Gaul was a boiling mess during those times. Recent claims have come to light concerning the truth of this statement. Some claim that the discoverer, Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, in fact named it after his birthplace just to honour all of the great things coming out of it. These were quickly debunked and it has since been rigorously proved that it was named after how horrible of a place France is. I can't believe they made an entire band to honour the country.
Physical properties[edit | edit source]
Gallium has an atomic mass of 69.723. This should be obvious because its most stable isotope is 70Ga. Oh, have you heard about how gallium has an extremely low melting point? In fact, if you put gallium and mercury in your hands, you would die of mercury poisoning, but you wouldn't know which hand was infected. Isn't that cool? The reason you can't do this with caesium or rubidium is because caesium is a pale golden colour whereas rubidium is used in fireworks.
Chemical properties[edit | edit source]
Gallium is a basic metal like aluminium and possibly polonium. It especially shares characteristics with its group, the boron group. The elements in the zinc group, including the aforementioned mercury, are sometimes also considered to be basic metals. Like all elements in the boron group, gallium has a +3 oxidation state. This means you must shoot 3 oxygen molecules at it in order for it to become reactive. If it were -3, you would have to take away 3 oxygen molecules. This means that when you name compounds with gallium and a nonmetal, it's just gallium <element>ide. This conveys no information of how much of that element exists within the compound. All it conveys is that this is not a covalent bond.
The Great Atomic War[edit | edit source]
Being radioactive, by the time 21 minutes have passed, half of your gallium would have turned into germanium through β− decay. This is a dark reference to when France became a part of Germany during WWII. The name WWII is a reference to when the French say "Oui." That is a reference to the French uniting against the king and queen and participating in La Revolution. One of those people was Antoine Lavoisier. He was a famous chemist...oh wait. Let's get back on topic. Gallium beta- decays into germanium. Now what? Well, then the allied forces of americium, moscovium, and britaine all invade germanium and split it into 3 sections; one for americium and britaine, one for moscovium, and one for gallium and francium. These eventually get merged until we have east and west germanium. They are separated by a large sheet of foil known as the Berlinium Wall. However, it's not made out of berlinium, rather, it's made out of aluminium. Eventually, after moscovium β+ decays into nihonium, the Berlinium Wall is broken and the two sides of the germanium atom finally fuse into full germanium. It proceeds to create the Europium Union with francium, europium, strontium, lutetium, hafnium, rhenium, britaine, fellow german elements hassium, meitnerium, and darmstadtium, and most importantly, gallium. Britaine soon voted to brexit their way out of the Union, whereas scandium, yttrium, ytterbium, terbium, erbium, and holmium joined in 2023 due to Finnium's concerns over ruthenium's invasion of ukrainium.
See also[edit | edit source]
Make sure you memorize these for the test!
*Technically an atom of Cheesium has an atomic number of four (4), but that's only for the idiotic table.