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History.
Metals have been used by people for many thousands of years.
Gold and silver, found as
native
metal,
were used both as jewellery and as a
status symbol - nothing new there.
These metals were known in the
Stone Age
but gold and silver are too soft
to be used as tools.
The first really useful
metal to be discovered was bronze - the Bronze
Age.
Bronze was used
extensively for tools and
weapons
in Asia and Africa from 4,500
B.C. (6,500 years ago)
and in Britain from 2,000 B.C.
(4,000 years ago).
News of the new material traveled
slowly in those days (no internet)
and it took the Brits 2,500 years to get the message.
Bronze is not an
element (like
gold and silver)
but an alloy
(metal mixture) of copper
and tin.
Ores of both
copper and tin are easily reduced by heating with carbon.
This would have occurred accidentally
as people lit wood fires
in places where mixtures of tin
ore and copper ore
existed.
The hot burnt
wood (carbon) would have
reduced the ores
to a mixture of copper and tin metal,
which is bronze
(continued on the next
page).
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