Silver, like gold, is a popular metal for making ornaments. It is a beautifully shiny metal, but it has often had to play second fiddle to gold.
Silver was known to prehistoric humans. People of ancient civilizations as early as 3000 BC, knew how to separate silver from lead. In the past, silver was extracted from other minerals through an interesting method.
The metal was placed in a shallow cup called a cupel and heated under a strong gust of air. This process removed the other metals, leaving small round drops of liquid silver.
Silver has been the most favourite metal for making coins and jewellery from the beginning of civilizations. It is used in the production of adornments, mirrors and photo-optics, musical instruments, dentistry and medications, photography, and many more. Nowadays the element has been used in wound-dressings as it has the ability to destroy many bacteria and viruses.
Silver is generally found in copper or lead ores and the element is extracted from these minerals. Since the 1500s, several countries have been mining silver. Mexico is the world leader in silver mining and is followed by Peru.
Silver is sensitive to light, so silver compounds are coated onto the film of x-rays and photographic prints to make the images. Silver has the atomic number of 47, and it is represented as Ag which stands for ‘Argentum’ which is the Latin word for the metal.
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