Pencil "plumbago" (Latin for "lead ore"). Because the pencil core is still referred to as "lead", or a "lead", many people have the misconception that the graphite in the pencil is lead, and the black core of pencils is still referred to as "lead", even though it never contained the element lead. The words for pencil in German ("bleistift"), Irish ("peann luaidhe"), Arabic (قلم رصاص "qalam raṣāṣ"), and some other languages literally mean "lead pen". The value of graphite would soon be realised to be enormous, mainly because it could be used to line the moulds for cannonballs; the mines were
Lead every alternate layer of oxygen atoms absent. Negative oxidation states can occur as Zintl phases, as either free lead anions, as in BaPb, with lead formally being lead(−IV), or in oxygen-sensitive ring-shaped or polyhedral cluster ions such as the trigonal bipyramidal Pb ion, where two lead atoms are lead(−I) and three are lead(0). In such anions, each atom is at a polyhedral vertex and contributes two electrons to each covalent bond along an edge from their sp hybrid orbitals, the other two being an external lone pair. They may be made in liquid ammonia via the reduction of lead by