All practice pages/Interatomic theory/Elements
Element 3, an alkali metal
The lightest metal of all: soft enough to cut with a knife, light enough to float on oil, and the heart of the rechargeable battery in your pocket.
Period 2, group 1. The other alkali metals are tinted, and every cell opens its own article.
One valence electron, which lithium gives up easily to form the Li⁺ ion. Like the other alkali metals, it reacts with water.
Too reactive to occur as a metal. Most comes from salty brines pumped from beneath salt flats in Chile and Argentina and evaporated in huge ponds, and from the mineral spodumene mined in Australia. Seawater holds about 0.2 parts per million.
Johan August Arfwedson found it in 1817 in the mineral petalite, from the Swedish island of Utö. It was named from the Greek lithos, stone, because it turned up in a mineral rather than in plant ash like sodium and potassium. William Thomas Brande and Humphry Davy first isolated the metal by electrolysis.
Lithium-ion batteries for phones, laptops and electric cars now use most of it. It also goes into heat-resistant glass and ceramics, long-lasting grease, and light aluminum alloys for aircraft. Lithium carbonate has treated bipolar disorder for decades.
Reacts with water to release flammable hydrogen, and damaged lithium-ion batteries can overheat and catch fire.