Tin

Tin is a soft, silvery-white post-transition metal that is easy to bend and shape at room temperature. Many familiar tin cans are actually steel with a thin coating of tin to help prevent corrosion. Tin is also a key ingredient in solder, the low-melting metal alloys used to join electronic components. In nature, its main ore is cassiterite, a mineral made of tin dioxide. Cassiterite occurs in rocks associated with granite and in deposits of grains washed out of rocks by water. Industrial furnaces heat the concentrated ore with carbon, removing oxygen from the oxide to release the metal. Recycling tin-containing scrap provides another important source.