this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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Really Shitty Copper
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A community dedicated to making fun of Ea-Nasir, a Sumerian merchant circa 1750 BC, who sold exceptionally poor quality copper.
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Yup.
I should probably mention silicon is a terrible metal for anything structural, as well, so that was never an option. It's below carbon on the periodic table and brittle like it.
Does silicon even form metallic bonds? Silicate minerals however are structurally useful as are carbonate minerals, they just can't do what structural metals can. It's not like we'd be totally fucked if the only abundant deposits of structurally useful metals in our planet were in the core (without a liquid ferromagnetic core we would be fucked), but we'd be relying pretty heavily on wood and stone for building which would prevent the massive structures that define our current artificial environment
One thing that would have been really tough would be high-temperature pressure vessels, like for heat engines. Other materials with good tensile strength exist (as do wood skyscrapers!), and so do refractory materials, but if you need both at the same time you're looking at either high-tech ceramic composites or metal.
Uhh, not sure. The band structure of the crystal lattice supports conduction like a metal, but not without an impurity to introduce the initial carrier, which is the whole thing behind why it's useful for electronics.
IIRC bond type is kind of a continuum.