Tin

Tin is the chemical element Sn, atomic number 50, a metallic grey metal soft enough to cut with little force; a bar of it bends easily by hand and gives off a crackling sound as it does, the so-called tin cry. It is won chiefly from the mineral cassiterite, an oxide of tin. Its first large-scale use was in bronze, roughly one part tin to seven of copper, from as early as 3000 BC, and pure metallic tin was produced from about 600 BC; pewter is an alloy that is mostly tin. Cunningham gives tin to Jupiter and air and calls it projective, a metal of divination, luck and money. He recounts an old Cornish spell claiming that tin could be turned into silver by leaving it in a tank of ants on a certain night of the Moon, and remarks that the spell never says which night. His main use is a New Year's Eve divination like the one he gives for lead: a little tin is melted in an iron cup over a flame and thrown into a bucket of icy water, and the future is read from the shape and folds of the nodule. Tin is also carried for good luck.