Ductility: drawn into wires

Where do you see metal wires? Copper and aluminium wires in electrical fittings. Bangles, necklaces and earrings made of wire. The strings of a veena, sitar, violin and guitar. Even the tea strainer in your kitchen is a mesh of thin metal wire.

Being drawn out into wires is called ductility. It is mainly a property of metals.

Gold is so ductile that one gram of it can be drawn into a wire 2 kilometres long.

Have you ever seen a wire made of coal or sulfur? Of course not. Coal and sulfur are not ductile.

Ropes made of steel wire can hold very heavy loads, so they are used in suspension bridges and in cranes. Steel is a mixture of a metal (iron) and a non-metal (carbon).

Iron and India's history. The Harappans used copper and gold for utensils and jewellery, but there is hardly any sign that they used iron. Iron came into everyday use much later. Once it did, it helped civilisation grow: iron ploughs, for example, were far stronger than the tools before them. Why do you think copper was discovered before iron?