The English word plumbing comes from plumbum, Latin for lead. Rome ran drinking water from its aqueducts through soldered lead pipes, cast on a flat table and rolled into a shape more oval than round. Vitruvius, in De Architectura around 15 BCE, said water from earthenware pipes tasted better and warned that men who worked lead were pale. Excavations across the empire keep turning up the pipes anyway, often stamped with the name of the plumber, the estate or the emperor who paid for the run.
Research Elements Pb · atomic number 82 Post-transition metal · period 6, group 14 [Xe] 4f14 5d10 6s2 6p2 Shells: 2, 8, 18, 32, 18, 4 Valence electrons: 4 in the outer shell (6s2 6p2) Green dots are the outer shell's s and p electrons. Softer green dots are the d electrons of transition metals, and the d and f electrons of lanthanides and actinides: they often take part in bonding, but not always. Grey dots are the core. Ground-state configuration from the NIST Atomic Spectra Database (A. Kramida, Yu. Ralchenko, J. Reader and the NIST ASD Team). Sinter-roasting of galena drives off SO2 and gives PbO, which is reduced with coke in a blast furnace to lead bullion; the bullion is decopperized, desilverized by the Parkes zinc process, and cast. Most metallic Pb today is secondary, from battery scrap. See galena. Abundance is the mole fraction of the element found as that isotope on Earth; digits in parentheses are the uncertainty in the last digits. Masses and abundances from NIST, Atomic Weights and Isotopic Compositions (J. S. Coursey, D. J. Schwab, J. J. Tsai and R. A. Dragoset, National Institute of Standards and Technology).Lead
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Electrons
How it's obtained
Natural isotopes
Isotope Relative atomic mass Abundance 204Pb 203.9730440(13) 0.014(1) 206Pb 205.9744657(13) 0.241(1) 207Pb 206.9758973(13) 0.221(1) 208Pb 207.9766525(13) 0.524(1) Compounds