Sewing history: A Neanderthal stone awl Clothes before sewing When people first started to wear clothing, about 60,000 years ago, they didn't sew it at all: they just wrapped leather [...]
Eastern Zhou man fighting a dragon (ca. 300 BC) Central Asian cavalry attacks In 771 BC, skillful fighters from the northwest invaded Zhou Dynasty China; they may have been the [...]
What is rust? A rusty fence railing Oxidation reactions Fire isn't the only kind of combustion reaction. Some kinds of metal, if you leave them in contact with oxygen, will [...]
Copper ore in Iran What is metal? Metals are atoms that attach themselves to other atoms in a particular way. Metal atoms, because of how their electrons are arranged, lose [...]
Bending a nail You can do an experiment to see that metal bends easily. Just take an iron nail and hit it with a hammer and if you don't hit it [...]
Diagram of an iron atom When a red giant star finishes changing all of its helium into carbon and oxygen, it then starts to turn the carbon and oxygen atoms into iron atoms. Iron [...]
Gold jewelry shaped like bees, from Bronze Age Greece Gold is a much heavier atom than iron, with 79 protons and 79 electrons in each atom. Gold is too heavy for [...]
A rusty sign You can easily see that iron rusts and turns red when oxygen touches it. Go look around your backyard or your neighborhood and try to find ten things [...]
Brazier (Picture thanks to VROMA) Braziers and cooking A brazier (BRAYS-yer) is a kind of portable grill, usually made out of clay but sometimes out of bronze or iron, which [...]
West African history - Niger River, West Africa Early West Africa People have been living in West Africa for tens of thousands of years. There are several good-sized rivers - [...]
