Period 2 element two make up all natural occurrence of lithium on Earth, although further isotopes have been synthesized. In ionic compounds, lithium loses an electron to become positively charged, forming the cation Li. Lithium is the first alkali metal in the periodic table, and the first metal of any kind in the periodic table. At standard temperature and pressure, lithium is a soft, silver-white, highly reactive metal. With a density of 0.564 g·cm, lithium is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element. Lithium is one of the few elements synthesized in the Big Bang, making it a primordial element. Lithium
Finite element machine (NASA TM 84514). Based on the Finite Element Machine's success in demonstrating Parallel Computing viability, (alongside ILLIAC IV and Goodyear MPP), commercial parallel computers soon were sold. NASA Langley subsequently purchased a Flex/32 Multicomputer (and later Intel iPSC and Intel Paragon) to continue parallel finite element algorithm R&D. In 1989, the parallel equation solver code, first prototyped on FEM, and tested on FLEX was ported to NASA's first Cray YMP via Force (Fortran for Concurrent Execution) to reduce the structural analysis computation time for the space shuttle Challenger Solid Rocket Booster resdesign with 54,870 equations from 14 hours to 6