Tin is the perfect metal for casting (tin soldiers for example). It melts at a fairly low temperature, so you can use simple molds, even molds made of special rubber. It's non-toxic, unlike lead. And it's shiny and doesn't tarnish. The only real problem is that it's a little bit expensive. Not terrible, but a whole lot more than the price of scrap zinc roof flashing I used to buy all the time. (Zinc is good for casting too, though not as good as tin.) "Tin foil" used to actually be made of tin, but today its exclusively made of aluminum. Detailed Technical Data Compare at other websites: www.webelements.com Los Alamos National Labs Royal Society of Chemistry Toxicology Isotope information Minerals Translations and Etymology Science Fiction (Main Site) Comics Poetry (Main Site) Haiku (Main Site) Collections: Elements in the Human Body Fun/Dangerous Experiments Elements at Walmart Samples with Rotatable Images Samples with Sounds Lead-free fishing weights. Melted down and allowed to cool in the standard graphite crucible used for several metal samples. Environmental concerns have prompted a switch from lead to tin for fishing sinkers.Purchased at Walmart in April 2002. Source originally suggested by Ed Pegg. Source: Walmart Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 24 April, 2002 Price: $14/10 bags of weights Size: 1.25" Purity: >95% Crying bars. The "Tin Cry" is an oft-described, seldom-heard phenomenon. If, it is claimed, you bend a bar of tin, it will "cry" as the crystal structure is disrupted. When NPR's Science Friday program asked to interview me about the Periodic Table Table, I decided it was time for the world to hear the tin cry live on the radio. I had to make these bars in a hurry, before the kids woke up in the morning and needed to be fed, so I just poured out some silica sand and drew a line in it with my finger, then poured the molten tin into the groove, forming these crude bars. Then I bent them by hand and using a pair of pliers while holding them up to a microphone connected to a laptop. Later I was able to make a super-high fidelity recording in the "dead end" studio at WGBH Boston, using the finest high sensitivity microphones available. My host family when I attended the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony, Jane and Miles, are both sound engineers at WGBH, and they kindly set up a recording session to capture this important element sound. That's the sound currently associated with the element: The first one I did wasn't nearly as good. I'll let you be the judge of whether they "cry" or not: Personally I'd call it more of a crackle-crackle-crackle sound. In any case, click the speaker icon to hear it. I would be curious to hear from anyone who has created a better crying sound from tin. Source: Walmart Contributor: Theodore Gray Acquired: 16 July, 2002 Price: $14/10 bags of weights Size: 3" Purity: >95% Sample from the Red Green and Blue Company Element Set. The Red Green and Blue company in England sells a very nice element collection in several versions. Max Whitby, the director of the company, very kindly donated a complete set to the periodic table table. To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description or the company's website which includes many photographs and pricing details. I have two photographs of each sample from the set: One taken by me and one from the company. You can see photographs of all the samples displayed in a periodic table format: my pictures or their pictures. Or you can see both side-by-side with bigger pictures in numerical order. The picture on the left was taken by me. Here is the company's version (there is some variation between sets, so the pictures sometimes show different variations of the samples): Source: Max Whitby of The Red Green & Blue Company Contributor: Max Whitby of The Red Green & Blue Company Acquired: 25 January, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 0.2" Purity: 99.9% Sample from the Everest Element Set. Up until the early 1990's a company in Russia sold a periodic table collection with element samples. At some point their American distributor sold off the remaining stock to a man who is now selling them on eBay. The samples (excepted gasses) weight about 0.25 grams each, and the whole set comes in a very nice wooden box with a printed periodic table in the lid. To learn more about the set you can visit my page about element collecting for a general description and information about how to buy one, or you can see photographs of all the samples from the set displayed on my website in a periodic table layout or with bigger pictures in numerical order. Source: Rob Accurso Contributor: Rob Accurso Acquired: 7 February, 2003 Price: Donated Size: 0.2" Purity: >99%