Calamine (mineral) Calamine (mineral) Calamine is a historic name for an ore of zinc. The name "calamine" was derived from "lapis calaminaris", a Latin corruption of Greek "cadmia (καδμία)", the old name for zinc ores in general. The name of the Belgian town of Kelmis, "La Calamine" in French, which was home to a zinc mine, comes from that. In the 18th and 19th centuries large ore mines could be found near the German village of Breinigerberg. During the early 19th century it was discovered that what had been thought to be one ore was actually two distinct minerals: Although chemically and
Period 5 element Klaproth named the new element in 1798 after the Latin word for "earth", "tellus". Gold telluride minerals (responsible for the name of Telluride, Colorado) are the most notable natural gold compounds. However, they are not a commercially significant source of tellurium itself, which is normally extracted as by-product of copper and lead production. Tellurium is commercially primarily used in alloys, foremost in steel and copper to improve machinability. Applications in solar panels and as a semiconductor material also consume a considerable fraction of tellurium production. Iodine is a chemical element with the symbol I and atomic number 53. The name