Silver

Refined silver is a lustrous white metal with the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of any element. Once, in the distant past, it was the second cog in the great commercial machinery of Earth: from Silver Skalitz to Cerro Rico, vast amounts of silver would be extracted from the ground, then used to pay for salaries and goods, especially Chinese goods. In the modern age its primary uses are photographic film emulsions (a massive and growing market), electrical contacts, jewellery, and silverware. It is recovered both from dedicated silver ores and as a byproduct of lead and copper smelting, where it is present in the ore at commercially recoverable concentrations. Silver is separated from lead by the Parkes process, in which zinc is added to molten lead to selectively dissolve silver, which is then recovered by distillation.