The lightest metal and least dense solid in existence
Lithium is an alkaline metal and is the lightest of all the periodic table, having half of the density of water (inferior to 1 grama per cubic meter). It is soft and its substance has a silverish color, but after transformed it becomes a dirty white crystal powder. Very inflammable and reactive, lithium shows brightness, but, when in contact whit air and water, it acquires a grayish blue appearance.
Several applications and uses
There are multiple industrial applications that lithium and its compounds have, including glasses and ceramics of great heat resistance, and metallic alloys with a good relation between resistance and weigh, being used on modern construction airplanes. But, it’s in the production of lithium and ion lithium batteries that today there is a great demand for the element what leads to depletion with its extraction.
Mass production for car batteries
Due to its characteristics as a great conductor of thermic energy and electricity, lithium gained the hegemonic status as the best support of storage for renewable energy. It’s, since the first decade of the XXI century, used a lot in the mass production of batteries for electrical cars, and also for computers and smartphones. The electric devices, otherwise, absorb more than a half of world production nowadays.
Usage as medicine for Bipolar disorder
It’s used, in medicine, since the beginning of the XX century up until today. It’s prescribed in pills under the form of Lithium Carbonate, it’s used in clinical conditions as bipolar disorder and its episodes of acute mania and hypomania, psychomotor hyperactivity and in certain types of hard depressive phases.
It’s extracted in galleries and craters on the ground
Lithium is extracted in underground galleries or craters in open sky, with heavy equipment that withdraw the rock from de ground. The mineral does not exist in nature in its pure state, exploring mineral deposits of petalite, spodumene or lepidolite. It’s from these compounds, with recourse to chemicals, that hydroxide or carbonate of lithium is obtained.