By: Barbara Giesteira

This is the reactivity series going from the least to the most reactive. Not all metals are included in this list.  Rubidium  Potassium  Sodium  Calcium  Magnesium  Aluminium  Zinc  Iron  Tin  Copper  Silver  Gold  The Reactivity Series is a way of organizing metals in a series from the most reactive to the least reactive.

 The connection between how reactive the metal is and when it was discovered is that that the less reactive the metal is, the earlier it was discovered and the more reactive the metal is, the later it was discovered. So if a metal was discovered a long time ago, the metal is not reactive. If the metal was discovered later is because the metal is reactive. 2

 The reactive metals likes making compounds with other things. The less reactive metals are more likely to find it as an element in an uncombined form. The earliest metals to be discovered were generally those that were uncombined in the ground or very easy to separate from the compounds they were found in. So the least reactive metals were first to be discovered. The most reactive metals were not discovered for thousands more years because they are only found in compounds, never as the metals themselves and are very difficult to extract from their ores. 2

Gold was discovered a long time ago, it was discovered around 5000BC. The person who discovered it is unknown because it was a long time ago they discovered gold. gold-update-05-august-2006/ 1

Silver was also discovered around 5000BC. The person who discovered is unknown because silver was discovered a long time ago so they don’t know who discovered it. gold-antimony-whats-antimony/ 1

Copper was discovered around 3500BC. The person who discovered is unknown because the person who discovered made the discovery a long time ago so they don’t know who is it. 1

Tin was discovered around 3000BC. The person who discovered is unknown because it was discovered a long time ago. 1

Iron was discovered around 2000BC. Iron was discovered early because iron is not very reactive. The person who discovered is unknown because it was discovered a long time ago. making-child-eat-iron-weights-Scrape-TV-The-World-on-your-side.html 1

Zinc was discovered around Zinc was discovered by a German scientist named Andreas Margraf. 13

Aluminum was discovered around Aluminium was discovered by a Danish Scientist and physicist named Hans Christian. 14

 Magnesium was discovered in Magnesium was discovered by a British chemist named Sir Humphry Davy. n_page=index&cPath=16_17_69 1 5

Calcium was discovered in 1808 Calcium. It was also discovered by Sir Humphrey Davy html 1 6

Sodium was discovered in It was discovered by Sir Humphry Davy. 17

Potassium was discovered in Potassium was also discovered by the British scientist Sir Humphry Davy. -Metals-Photo-Gallery/Potassium-Metal.-dvh.htm 18

Rubidium was discovered in Rubidium was discovered by the German chemists Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchoff. :Rubidium 19

I think the less reactive metals were find earlier because they are easier to extract because they are not combined with different compounds. I think the more reactive metals took more time to be discovered because they are harder to extract and because they normally are combined with different compounds. So when a metal is higher in the reactivity series it took more time to be discovered because it is harder to extract and when the metal is low in the reactivity series it was discovered a long time ago because they are very easy to extract because they are uncombined in the ground, therefore they were very easy to separate from the compounds they were found in. The more reactive the metals are, they only discovered after years because they didn’t have engineers and technology to be able to separate the compounds, so they weren’t able to find the metal.

 Because more reactive react with lots of different elements. So then when it comes to extracting the metal it gets harder to purify it. Another reason that it was harder to extract is because on the past they didn’t have good technology so they couldn’t purify the metal, nowadays they have better technology, therefore they are able to purify the metal. Another reason is because in the past they didn’t have electricity, so they weren’t able to separate the metal from the compound it combined. Electrolysis has to be used to separate the reactive metals, so they were not discovered until electricity was in use. Electrolysis in science means “a chemical decomposition reaction produced by passing an electric current through a solution containing ions.” hl=en&safe=active&biw=1280&bih=596&q=define%3 +Electrolysis+&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&safe=active

 I think my information is correct because first I went to a bbc website that explained about the reactivity of metal and when it was discovered. From that I tried to find website that would have similar information so from that I knew that information would be correct. For example, I found all of the dates of when the metals was found in the bbc website which for sure is going to be correct because it is a learning website then to find who discovered I first checked if it was the same date I had from the bbc website, and if it was the information was probably correct. I first started with a website I new the information was going to be correct, then from the information I had from that website I tried to find similar facts so if I found similar facts I new that the website had good information. I think my information is good because I did a lot of research before I came to a conclusion. So I looked in a bunch of different websites and from that I had an idea of which ones was wrong and which one was correct.

reactive-metals reactive-metals 3. zinc.html zinc.html 4. aluminum.html aluminum.html 5. magnesium.html magnesium.html 6. lcium.htm lcium.htm potassium.htm potassium.htm