Cadmium (Element of Week 2)

Symbol: Cd
Atomic Number: 48
Atomic Weight: 112.411g

Here is a brief description of cadmium from webelements.com:

Standard state: solid at 298 K
Colour: silvery grey metallic
Classification: Metallic
Availability: cadmium is available in many forms including foil, granules, pellets, sheet, powder, rod, shot, sticks, wire and "mossy cadmium".
Cadmium is a soft, bluish-white metal and is easily cut with a knife. It is similar in many respects to zinc. Interestingly, aa characteristic cadmium "scream" is heard on bending a cadmium bar (such as that illustrated above). Cadmium and its compounds are highly toxic. Silver solder, which contains cadmium, should be handled with care.



So that's how Cadmium looks like?

Frankly, metallic compounds and minerals almost always interest me most as an artist. As a painter, I work with paints. Paint is made from pigment and binder (ideally). Pigments are usually mixtures of chemical compounds. Here is what I can tell you about paint: TITANIUM WHITE is the whitest white, very opaque, almost always used with ZINC WHITE. Though some people prefer LEAD WHITE for skin tone because it's an easy mixer and less pasty. MANGANESE BLUE has an ice-blue undertone unmatcehd by any other pigments (but it's not really made from Manganese). COBALT BLUE is good for skies...



And then there are CADMIUM yellows, oranges, reds...

For painters, CADMIUMs are synthetic organic pigments that are brilliant, opaque and the deeper shades had the greatest tinting strength. They are colors that a lot of painters can't live without. Expensive paints, and toxic too. They are strong colors to use and have good permanance ratings, excepted when mixed with COPPER-based pigments. As paint, CADMIUMs are synthetic organic pigments and they weren't produced until 1840. (the metallic cadmium was discovered in 1817) That means painters before that time never used this paint. Chemistry (and science) has always played an important part in the development of art.

This site can tell you way too much about paint:
www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/pigmt1.html#pigmenttypes