the.com/metal

the periodic table's heavy hitters, conducting electricity and bad attitudes with equal ease

means A class of solid, usually shiny elements that conduct heat and electricity well, bend rather than shatter, and form the bulk of everything from coins to cathedrals — and the name of a loud, distorted genre of rock.

from From Latin 'metallum' (a metal or a mine), borrowed from Greek 'metallon,' which originally meant a mine or quarry — the hole you dug things out of — before it shifted to mean the stuff you dug out. It reached English through Old French 'metal' in the medieval period. The musical sense is a 20th-century clipping of 'heavy metal,' a phrase that drifted into rock criticism for music as dense and hard as the element.

liquid one
Mercury stays liquid at room temperature
loudest sound
Gallium melts in your warm hand
most abundant
Aluminum is Earth's most common metal in crust
self-healing
Some metals can repair their own cracks
sky origin
Gold formed in colliding neutron stars
for instance

iron — element 26, most abundant metal in earth's crust and core

aluminum — element 13, most abundant metal in earth's crust by mass

copper — element 29, first metal smelted by humans around 9000 bce in anatolia

gold — element 79, densest precious metal, valued since ancient egypt 3000 bce

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