![]() Other important nickel ore minerals include pentlandite and a mix of Ni-rich natural silicates known as garnierite. An economically important source of nickel is the iron ore limonite, which is often 1–2% nickel. Nickel minerals were green, like copper ores, and were known as kupfernickel – Nickel's copper – because they produced no copper. The element's name comes from a mischievous sprite of German miner mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick). Nickel was first isolated and classified as an element in 1751 by Axel Fredrik Cronstedt, who initially mistook the ore for a copper mineral, in the cobalt mines of Los, Hälsingland, Sweden. Use of nickel (as natural meteoric nickel–iron alloy) has been traced as far back as 3500 BCE. An iron–nickel mixture is thought to compose Earth's outer and inner cores. ![]() Meteoric nickel is found in combination with iron, a reflection of the origin of those elements as major end products of supernova nucleosynthesis. Even so, pure native nickel is found in Earth's crust only in tiny amounts, usually in ultramafic rocks, and in the interiors of larger nickel–iron meteorites that were not exposed to oxygen when outside Earth's atmosphere. Pure nickel is chemically reactive, but large pieces are slow to react with air under standard conditions because a passivation layer of nickel oxide forms on the surface that prevents further corrosion. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a chemical element it has symbol Ni and atomic number 28.
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