Metals are shiny, solid materials that conduct heat and electricity.
The main metals we use and throw away at home are found in food packaging.
Aluminium is used for drinks cans as it is light and easy to form into shapes.
Steel is used for food tins as it is cheap and durable (lasts a long time).
Where metals come from and how they are made…
Gold was the first metal to be used by humans. It melts easily at a low temperature and is found as pure gold stones or nuggets.
The first tools, ornaments and weapons were forged from copper. This metal is also easily melted and forged at fairly low temperatures.
Silver was used to make jewellery almost as long ago as gold.
It is believed lead was first smelted 9000 years ago. The oldest artifact was found in Ancient Egypt and dated to 3800BC.
Bronze is a hard metal mixture or alloy made of copper and tin. It is harder than other metals so made good weapons and hard edged items like ploughs and axes.
Bronze Age people were mining tin in Devon and Cornwall as long ago as 2100BC, and maybe even for 1000 years before that. It was traded across Europe and ended up 4000 miles away, in the Eastern Mediterranean, where it was used for weapons and ploughs. Radiocarbon dating has confirmed early tin working in devon, from a bracelet found at Whitehorse Hill on Dartmoor.
Milestone Content goes here
Milestone Content goes here
The La Tolita-Tumaco culture discovered they could work with platinum by partnering it with gold in a process known as sintering. They produced hard alloys of gold and platinum in a range of colours.
Milestone Content goes here
Milestone Content goes here
Despite being known and worked with in Ecuador and Colombia by the La Tolita-Tumaco culture since about 500BC, platinum was encountered by Spanish conquistadors in the Sixteenth Century and they were initially not impressed by it. It was too hard and did not melt easily.
Milestone Content goes here
The second most abundant metal on earth was only purified during the 18th Century. Nowadays we use it in many items like coins and batteries.
Although uranium oxide was used to colour glass and ceramics from the 1st Century AD it was only isolated as a metal in the 18th Century. It is now used almost exclusively for nuclear power and weapons.
The Bayer process was developed by Karl Bayer in 1888 and became a cost effective way to extract aluminium from bauxite.
Discover more at
