The Autobiography of Nickel

Hello. My name is Nickel. And don’t worry, all you speakers of German, I’m the element, and I have nothing to do with the devil, which is for some reason my namesake. I was singled out by humans in 1751 by a Swedish man named Axel Fredrik Cronstedt. He discovered me by reducing dissolved iron with charcoal. He actually named me after the dirty, useless substance that contained me that was released during iron production. My atomic number is 28. I have a white-metallic color, and have a consistency similar to iron. I melt at about 2,651° F (1,455° C) and boil at about 5,275°F (2,913°C). I am quite un-corrosive, and so one of my chief uses is to be bonded with other metals to protect them. I can make stainless-steel, armored steel plates, and I can be electroplated (coat on a molecular level) to metals to make coins that keep their shine and printing for decades.