Abstract
Copper is a commonly-encountered metal and most people would easily recognize a piece. So the perception may be that it is common metal, but it is not. It comprises only 0.0068% of the Earth’s crust. By comparison, iron and aluminum are 6.3% and 8.1% of the Earth’s crust, respectively. The name copper comes from the Latin name aes cyprium or the “Cypriot metal”, which later became cuprum – Cyprus being a major source of copper in Roman times. Elemental copper, which is a reddish-orange color face-centered cubic metal (like aluminum), is one of only four colored metals – the others are the bluish element osmium, and the yellow-colored gold and cesium.
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Landmarks Preservation Commission, September 14, 1976, number 1, LP-0931.
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The Economist, August 5th, 2017.
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Baker, I. (2018). Copper. In: Fifty Materials That Make the World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78766-4_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78766-4_9
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