Period 3 element density and for its ability to resist corrosion due to the phenomenon of passivation. Structural components made from aluminium and its alloys are vital to the aerospace industry and are important in other areas of transportation and structural materials. The most useful compounds of aluminium, at least on a weight basis, are the oxides and sulfates. "Silicon" (symbol Si) is a tetravalent metalloid. It is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table. Controversy about silicon's character dates to
Monoisotopic element Monoisotopic element A monoisotopic element is one of 26 chemical elements which have only a single stable isotope (nuclide). A list is given in a following section. Stability is experimentally defined for chemical elements, as there are a number of stable nuclides with atomic numbers over ~ 40 which are theoretically unstable, but apparently have half-lives so long that they have not been observed directly or indirectly (from measurement of products) to decay. Monoisotopic elements are characterized, except in a single case, by odd numbers of protons (odd "Z"), and even numbers of neutrons. Because of the energy gain from