Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag (Greek: άργυρος <árgyros>, Latin: argentum, both from the Indo-European root *arg- for "grey" or "shining") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal. The metal occurs naturally in its pure, free form (native silver), as an alloy with gold and other metals, and in minerals such as argentite and chlorargyrite. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, and zinc refining.
Silver has long been valued as a precious metal, and is used as an investment, to make ornaments, jewelry, high-value tableware, utensils (hence the term silverware), and currency coins. Today, silver metal is also used in electrical contacts and conductors, in mirrors and in catalysis of chemical reactions. Its compounds are used in photographic film, and dilute silver nitrate solutions and other silver compounds are used as disinfectants and microbiocides (oligodynamic effect). While many medical antimicrobial uses of silver have been supplanted by antibiotics, further research into clinical potential continues.
Read more about Silver: Characteristics, Isotopes, Compounds, Applications, History, Occurrence and Extraction, Price, Human Exposure and Consumption
Famous quotes containing the word silver:
“Walked forth to ease my pain
Along the shore of silver streaming Thames,
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,
Was painted all with variable flowers,”
—Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)
“For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,”
—Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935)
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)