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A copper bracelet

A copper bracelet

To understand what bronze is, you need to check out some copper, some tin, and some bronze. You can get copper wire out of any broken electrical cord. Strip off the insulation, and there will be copper wire inside. Check out how soft and easy to bend it is!

Tin is also pretty easy to get. You can buy sheets of tin from Amazon. Bang on it and bend it a little to see how it behaves. Amazon will also sell you a bar of bronze. How does the bronze behave differently from the copper and tin?

By themselves, the copper and tin are both too soft to be very useful for tools (though they’re good for other things, like wire). When you melt them together, though, they become bronze – a harder metal you can use to make knives, arrow points, scissors, razors, cooking pots, armor, and many other useful things. And not so useful things! You can make sculptures, too.

More about bronze
More about copper
More about tin

Bibliography and further reading about bronze:

Iron
Silver
What is metal?
More ancient art
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