Swatch

Normally a watch would be worn on the left wrist; the main reason for this was because a watch needed to be wound up every day in order to keep running. For discussion of Stannate compounds (SnO₃^2-) see Stannate. In December 2005, Swatch has launched a new marketing stunt in Switzerland (to be launched in other countries) which is all about wearing the Swatch on the right wrist. 18 additional unstable isotopes are known. They have now become fashionable objects, generating specialised models (the "Flik-Flak" for children, semi-automatic movements, and even diamond-decorated swatches). Tin is the element with the greatest number of stable isotopes (ten). Swatch itself has also diversified its offerings considerably, and the company now sells more than a dozen different types of watches, including metal-bodied watches (the Irony series), diving watches (the Scuba series), thin and flat bodied watches (the Skin family) and even an Internet-connected watch that can download stock quotes, news headlines, weather reports, and other data (the Papparazzi series). Secondary, or scrap, tin is also an important source of the tin.

These brands include: Breguet, Blancpain, Jaquet Droz, Glashütte-Original, Léon Hatot, Omega, Rado, Longines, Tissot, Calvin Klein, Certina, Mido, Pierre Bal-main, Hamilton, Flik Flak and Endura. The only mineral of commercial importance as a source of tin is cassiterite (SnO₂), although small quantities of tin are recovered from complex sulfides such as stannite, cylindrite, frankeite, canfieldite, and teallite. Although sales of Swatch watches are now considerably lower than in previous years, the Swatch Group remains the world's largest watch company, and the Group has accelerated its acquisition of Swiss luxury brands in recent years. Most of the world's tin is produced from placer deposits; at least one-half comes from Southeast Asia. Artist watches gave a new cachet to what had previously been a trendy youth article. This metal is a relatively scarce element with an abundance in the earth's crust of about 2 ppm, compared with 94 ppm for zinc, 63 ppm for copper, and 12 ppm for lead. During this same time, Swatch introduced the idea of partnering with noted artists, including Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and others. Tin is produced by reducing the ore with coal in a reverberatory furnace.

Swatches enjoyed their peak popularity in the United States during the mid-1980s, when a series of "Swatch Stores" were founded for the express purpose of selling Swatches. Nearly every continent has an important tin-mining country. Compared to conventional watches, a Swatch was 80% cheaper to produce by fully automating assembly and reducing the number of parts from the usual 91 or more to only 51 components. About 35 countries mine tin throughout the world. With an aggressive marketing campaign and a very resonable price for a Swiss-made watch, it gained instant popularity in its home market. Likewise, so-called "tin toys" are usually made of steel, and may or may not have a small coating of tin to inhibit rust. Sales targets were set to 1 million timepieces for 1983 and 2.5 million the year after. Most everyday objects that are commonly called tin, such as aluminium foil, beverage cans, and tin cans, are actually made of steel or aluminium, although tin cans do contain a small coating of tin to inhibit rust.

Initially the price ranged from CHF 39.90 to CHF 49.90 but was standardized to CHF 50.00 in autumn of the same year. In modern times, the word "tin" is often (improperly) used as a generic phrase for any silvery metal that comes in thin sheets. The first collection of 12 Swatch models was introduced on March 1, 1983 in Zürich, Switzerland. The alchemical symbol for tin is shown on the left. Hayek, the Chairman of the Swatch Group, affirms that the original contraction was "Second Watch" -- the new watch was introduced with a new concept of watches as casual, fun, and relatively disposable accessories. The American Heritage Dictionary speculates that the word was borrowed from a pre-Indo-European language. The name "Swatch" is often misconstrued as a contraction of the words "Swiss Watch", but Nicholas G. The word "tin" has cognates in many Germanic and Celtic languages.

During this time, Swiss manufacturers lost most of their market share to Japanese companies like Seiko. However the pure metal was not used until about 600 BC. Swatch was originally intended to re-capture entry level market share lost by Swiss manufacturers during the aggressive growth of Japanese companies in the 1960s and 1970s. Tin mining is believed to have started in Cornwall and Devon ( esp Dartmoor) in Classical times, and a thriving tin trade developed with the civilizations of the Mediterranean. Swatch is a brand of stylish quartz watches (some available in Automatic) produced by The Swatch Group Ltd. Because of its hardening effect on copper, tin was used in bronze implements as early as 3,500 BC. Tin (anglo-Saxon, tin, Latin stannum) is one of the earliest metals known and was used as a component of bronze from antiquity.

A superconducting magnet weighing only a couple of kilograms is capable of producing magnetic fields comparable to a conventional electromagnet weighing tons. The niobium-tin compound Nb₃Sn is commercially used as wires for superconducting magnets, due to the material's high critical temperature (18 K) and critical magnetic field (25 T). In fact, tin was one of the first superconductors to be studied; the Meissner effect, one of the characteristic features of superconductors, was first discovered in superconducting tin crystals. Tin becomes a superconductor below 3.72 K.

Other uses:. The tin whistle is so called because it was first mass-produced in tin-plated steel. One thus-derived use of the slang term "tinnie" or "tinny" means "can of beer". Speakers of British English call them "tins"; Americans call them "cans".

Tin-plated steel containers are widely used for food preservation, and this forms a large part of the market for metallic tin. Tin bonds readily to iron, and has been used for coating lead or zinc and steel to prevent corrosion. However, this transformation is affected by impurities such as aluminium and zinc and can be prevented from occurring through the addition of antimony or bismuth. It slowly changes back to the gray form when cooled, which is called the tin pest or tin disease.

When warmed above 13.2 °C it changes into white or beta tin, which is metallic and has a tetragonal structure. At low temperatures it exists as gray or alpha tin, which has a cubic crystal structure similar to silicon and germanium. Solid tin has two allotropes at normal pressure. Tin is malleable at ordinary temperatures but is brittle when it is heated.

This metal combines directly with chlorine and oxygen and displaces hydrogen from dilute acids. Tin can be highly polished and is used as a protective coat for other metals in order to prevent corrosion or other chemical action. SnO₂, in turn, is feebly acidic and forms stannate (SnO₃^-2) salts with basic oxides. Tin forms the dioxide SnO₂ when it is heated in the presence of air.

Tin acts as a catalyst when oxygen is in solution and helps accelerate chemical attack. This metal resists corrosion from distilled sea and soft tap water, but can be attacked by strong acids, alkalis, and by acid salts. Tin is a malleable, ductile, highly crystalline, silvery-white metal whose crystal structure causes a strange screeching sound known as the "tin cry" when a bar of tin is bent (caused by crystals breaking). .

Tin is obtained chiefly from the mineral cassiterite where it occurs as an oxide. This silvery, malleable poor metal that is not easily oxidized in air and resists corrosion is found in many alloys and is used to coat other metals to prevent corrosion. Stannum) and atomic number 50. Tin is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Sn (L.

Hence one use of the slang term "tinnie" or "tinny" for a small retail package of a drug such as cannabis or for a can of beer. Tin foil was once a common wrapping material for foods and drugs; now replaced by the use of aluminium foil, which is commonly referred to as tin foil. Although of higher melting point than a lead-tin alloy, the use of pure tin or tin alloyed with other metals in these applications is rapidly supplanting the use of the previously common lead–containing alloys in order to eliminate the problems of toxicity caused by lead. Tin is also used in solders for joining pipes or electric circuits, in bearing alloys, in glass-making, and in a wide range of tin chemical applications.

Window glass is most often made via floating molten glass on top of molten tin (creating float glass) in order to make a flat surface (this is called the "Pilkington process"). These coatings have been used in panel lighting and in the production of frost-free windshields. Electrically conductive coatings are produced when tin salts are sprayed onto glass. The most important salt formed is tin chloride, which has found use as a reducing agent and as a mordant in the calico printing process.

Some important tin alloys are: bronze, bell metal, Babbitt metal, die casting alloy, pewter, phosphor bronze, soft solder, and White metal.