Final Matt Print- Indium

Hello! My name is Asnain Khan and I am currently a freshman at Science Leadership Academy. In my Art class we did a 4 weeks long project, called “Element Prints.” To complete this project, everyone was assigned a element. Then, we did some research and sketched some pictures that relate to our element. After that, we finalized our sketches and picked a final sketch. Following this, we traced and transferred our sketch. Then, we printed it and matt printed.

The element I was assigned is indium. Indium is a chemical element with symbol In and atomic number 49. Indium was discovered by the German chemists Ferdinand Reich and Hieronymus Theodor Richter in 1863. Reich and Richter had been looking for traces of the element thallium in samples of zinc ores. A brilliant indigo line in the sample's spectrum revealed the existence of indium. Indium is about as abundant as silver but is much easier to recover since it typically occurs along with zinc, iron, lead and copper ores.

Indium is used to coat the bearings of high speed motors since it allows for the even distribution of lubricating oil. Indium is used to dope germanium to make transistors. It is also used to make other electrical components such as rectifiers, thermistors and photoconductors. Indium can be used to make mirrors that are as reflective as silver mirrors but do not tarnish as quickly. Indium is also used to make low melting alloys.

I chose an image of a TV because indium is found in the screen of TV’s. I didn’t know this, so I thought it would be interesting to do a TV. I explained the process I had to go through to make this print, in the first paragraph. If I had to do this all over again, I would probably change my image to a tool. That’s because indium is mostly used to make tools.

I really enjoyed working on this project. My most favorite part was when we actually printed our image. That part was really enjoyable. It was a great project!