Although they have some incredible properties, metals on their own aren't always suitable materials for us to use. Most of the metals we use in our everyday lives are alloys. Pure copper, gold, iron and aluminum are too soft for many jobs so what can we do to improve their properties? Well, we can mix them with other elements to form alloys. Alloys are normally (but not always) a mixture of two or more metallic elements. A good example of this is the mixing of carbon with iron to make a range of steels. Iron from the blast furnace is a brittle material but when mixed with the right amount of... Show more Although they have some incredible properties, metals on their own aren't always suitable materials for us to use. Most of the metals we use in our everyday lives are alloys. Pure copper, gold, iron and aluminum are too soft for many jobs so what can we do to improve their properties? Well, we can mix them with other elements to form alloys. Alloys are normally (but not always) a mixture of two or more metallic elements. A good example of this is the mixing of carbon with iron to make a range of steels. Iron from the blast furnace is a brittle material but when mixed with the right amount of carbon it becomes extremely malleable and ductile. It can be hammered and bent into shape or drawn out into thin wires. In the stone age (actually there are three stone ages recognized), the only metals that were known were those that occured naturally - gold, maybe some copper and some iron from recently fallen meteorites. That made metals very rare and therefore valuable. Copper and tin are easily smelted but soft, however, early humans discovered that they could mix the two together to produce a harder metal that could be sharpened and used for tools and weapons - the Bronze Age had arrived. Alloys have usually been invented to be harder, lighter and more corrosion resistant than the metals from which they are made, however there are plenty of exceptions, for example, nitinol 'remembers' its original shape when it is heated and is used to make spectacle frames whilst solder is designed to melt and re-solidify quickly to join other metals together. Show less
Although they have some incredible properties, metals on their own aren't always suitable materials for us to use. Most of the metals we use in our everyday lives are alloys. Pure copper, gold, iron and aluminum are too soft for many jobs so what can we do to improve their properties? Well, we can mix them with other elements to form alloys. Alloys are normally (but not always) a mixture of two or more metallic elements. A good example of this is the mixing of carbon with iron to make a range of steels. Iron from the blast furnace is a brittle material but when mixed with the right amount of carbon it becomes extremely malleable and ductile. It can be hammered and bent into shape or drawn out into thin wires.
In the stone age (actually there are three stone ages recognized), the only metals that were known were those that occured naturally - gold, maybe some copper and some iron from recently fallen meteorites. That made metals very rare and therefore valuable. Copper and tin are easily smelted but soft, however, early humans discovered that they could mix the two together to produce a harder metal that could be sharpened and used for tools and weapons - the Bronze Age had arrived.
Alloys have usually been invented to be harder, lighter and more corrosion resistant than the metals from which they are made, however there are plenty of exceptions, for example, nitinol 'remembers' its original shape when it is heated and is used to make spectacle frames whilst solder is designed to melt and re-solidify quickly to join other metals together.
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