Antimony

chemistry · metals · ancient history

Shiny grey metal. Antimony is a lustrous element, which means it has a beautiful shine. It's a metal or metalloid (something between a metal and a non-metal) that you might recognize by its grey color.

Found in stibnite. In nature, antimony mostly appears as stibnite, a mineral made of antimony and sulfur mixed together. People mine stibnite to extract the antimony inside.

Ancient makeup. Thousands of years ago, people ground antimony into powder and used it as makeup to darken their eyes and eyebrows. It was a beauty product in ancient Egypt and other old civilizations.

Medicine in history. Besides cosmetics, ancient people believed antimony had healing powers and used it as medicine, though we now know many of those uses weren't actually helpful.

Chemical symbol Sb. Antimony's chemical symbol is Sb and its atomic number is 51, which means it has 51 protons in its nucleus.