Article Writing Homework Help

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on placing white phosphorus in proper context. For example, phosphorus is used to manufacture phosphates which are again used to manufacture fertilizers. Therefore, white phosphorus is itself used as a source for this important material for industrial and military usage. White phosphorus may occur in nature naturally, but only in very small amounts. So the main sources of this material involve human agency and chemical reactions related to metallurgy. White phosphorus consists of tetrahedral phosphorus molecules. “White phosphorus, P4, is produced by reducing apatites Ca5(PO4)3(OH,F,Cl) with high fluoride contents (fluoroapatites: &gt.30% P2O5 by weight:2.3-4.8% F, traces of Al, F, Mg, lanthanoids, U, carbonates etc.) with charcoal and quartzite in an electric furnace at 1400-1500oC” (Inorganic Chemistry 2001, p. 678). On reaction with quartz sand at high temperatures, the apatites’ calcium oxide part from calcium phosphate gives calcium silicate, while the phosphate part is transformed into P2. With fall of temperature, this P2 dimerises and gives rise to P4. This P4, that is white phosphorus, is extremely reactive in chemical sense and can burn spontaneously even in the presence of normal or below normal level oxygen in the air at room temperatures (Inorganic Chemistry 2001. Felton 1982).