An Overview Of Copper And Its Use
If I ask you what is copper? What comes to your mind? A penny? A piece of wire? Maybe just a piece of metal all correct but to understand what copper truly is you have to dig deeper. For example Copper is a chemical element with the atomic number twenty-nine so it contains twenty-nine protons and twenty-nine electrons It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. According to livescience.com a freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color and is relatively soft.
The discovery of copper goes back to the prehistoric times approximately 9000 BC promptly in northern Iraq. In those times copper was mostly used as jewelry or to decorate like ornaments because copper in its purest form was ineffective to use for weapons or tools due to it being so soft until about 3500 BC there was a discovery that if tin were to be melted and mixed with copper you would get bronze which has more stability than copper in a pure form but no need to get in to that this essay is about copper so back to the topic. Copper is found in magma that has been cooled over hundreds of years and turns into sedimentary or igneous rocks and to get copper then it must be mined then extract from it ores the same way any other source would be you dig in a area filled with the material you are looking for chisel away and extract the substances you need. Some of the largest copper mines in the United States are located in Utah Arizona, Michigan, New Mexico, and Montana and three of the largest countries that mine copper are chile coming in number one Peru coming in second and third china the majority of the world's copper come from those three areas. The price of copper in December 2018 was $2.76 a pound so not very valuable by itself but the things copper can use it to make adds value to it for example copper is used for electricity and that is one of the most important components of comfortable living, our jobs, our entertainment, and many other things.
Our day-to-day lives depend on electricity and its many applications. Copper is considered the “gold standard” in today's world of wiring. Most homes and electrical appliances rely on copper wire to transfer electricity for two reasons. It is a very good conductor, and is easy to mold and bend as well a lot of gun manufacturers use copper for one of the metals to create a gun barrels and gun bullets copper is used as the gilding metal. A copper-zinc alloy this is a thin jacket around the bullet which is usually mainly made of lead. Its purpose is to protect the barrel from getting stuck or corroding caused by the soft lead bullets are actually slightly smaller than the bore of the barrel in the gun. One fun fact about copper is that it rusts very easily and when it rusts it leaves a green after look. Ever wonder why the Statue of Liberty is green well it wasn't always at one point is was the same color of a ordinary penny but after so many years of water and other weathering hitting it caused it rust and eventually turn that green color we all know and love.
In conclusion copper is one of the world’s most important metals because it is so versatile without it who knows how efficient anything with electricity would run.
