Miss Armit: Yeah, because mercury's a great conductor of heat. So, when it gets hot the space between the particles expands and then this rises up the thermometer. In humans, some metals are essential nutrients like iron, cobalt, and zinc. Some metals can be harmless such as ruthenium, silver, and indium. Some metals can be toxic in large amounts. Other metals such as cadmium, mercury, and lead, are very poisonous. Sources of metal poisoning include mining, tailings, industrial wastes, agricultural runoff, occupational exposure, paints and treated timber. A mnemonic for the reactivity series of metals - Penguins sure can make a zoo interesting - though lions catch some golden publicity Podosek F. A. 2011, "Noble gases", in H. D. Holland & K. K. Turekian (eds), Isotope Geochemistry: From the Treatise on Geochemistry, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp.467–492, ISBN 978-0-08-096710-3.

Metals are relatively good conductors of heat. The electrons in a metal's electron cloud are highly mobile and easily able to pass on heat-induced vibrational energy. See also: Abundance of the chemical elements A sample of diaspore, an aluminum oxide hydroxide mineral, α-AlO(OH) This is a simplified explanation; other factors may include atomic radius, nuclear charge, number of bond orbitals, overlap of orbital energies, and crystal form. [6] Miss Armit: Well, we've got copper and it's a really good conductor of electricity, so we use that in our wires. We've also got iron and aluminium and they're great at conducting heat, so we use these metals for our pots and pans. And gold and silver are used in jewellery, because they're shiny, they're malleable and unreactive with oxygen, so they don't rust easily. When a metal ore is an ionic compound of that metal and a non-metal, the ore must usually be smelted—heated with a reducing agent—to extract the pure metal. Many common metals, such as iron, are smelted using carbon as a reducing agent. Some metals, such as aluminum and sodium, have no commercially practical reducing agent, and are extracted using electrolysis instead. [26] [27]In insulators and semiconductors the Fermi level is inside a band gap; however, in semiconductors the bands are near enough to the Fermi level to be thermally populated with electrons or holes.

The high reflectivity of some metals enables their use in mirrors, including precision astronomical instruments, and adds to the aesthetics of metallic jewelry. Published in The Delineator, Sept. 1909. Reprinted as the introduction to Rewards and Fairies in 1910. Metals up to the vicinity of iron (in the periodic table) are largely made via stellar nucleosynthesis. In this process, lighter elements from hydrogen to silicon undergo successive fusion reactions inside stars, releasing light and heat and forming heavier elements with higher atomic numbers. [17]Ironware piece unearthed from Turkey found to be oldest steel". The Hindu. Chennai, India. 2009-03-26. Archived from the original on 2009-03-29 . Retrieved 2009-03-27. Tunay, Olcay; Kabdasli, Isik; Arslan-Alaton, Idil; Olmez-Hanci, Tugba (2010). Chemical Oxidation Applications for Industrial Wastewaters. IWA Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84339-307-8. Choptuik M. W., Lehner L. & Pretorias F. 2015, "Probing strong-field gravity through numerical simulation", in A. Ashtekar, B. K. Berger, J. Isenberg & M. MacCallum (eds), General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 978-1-107-03731-1.