Vastly.
It’s in the same column of the periodic table as silver and gold, and while less rare than the other two, still isn’t exactly common. Bronze, like a bronze medal, is just copper with a little bit of something added for strength. On the other hand, iron is one of the typical things rocks are made of. (Edit: Oh look somebody already linked Wikipedia)
I’m surprised you haven’t heard of copper theft. Cutting wires out of things is kind of an infamous way to pay for your next fix of drugs. The power lines near me all have signs warning that they’re just copper-coated.
It was the bronze age where cities just burned sometimes, so that says less than you’d think.
That much hate mail arriving in a short period or Ea Nasir just having a devoted hate mail meditation room are both memeable.
Yeah, but you can cast bronze fairly easily, while casting iron is more of an AD technology. Early modern, if you’re European. Traditionally you don’t even let it melt while smelting.
Blacksmithing with wrought iron is way harder than working with something like bronze. There’s slag in it either just from oxidising or from the solid smelting (bloomery) process, and so it has a kind of “grain” that builds up over time. If you don’t account for that your sword or plough will be trash.
It also rusts, is softer than bronze (even as most steels) and not necessarily stronger. The only real advantage is that it’s common and doesn’t require a trade network for rare elements, which is why it didn’t fully catch on in the Near Eastern world until after the bronze age collapse.
You can work steel with bronze or copper tools just fine. Wood and stone tools will do, even.
Getting it hot enough to work might be harder, although it’s surmountable and many stone age peoples managed (and manage!) it. Making tools that are as good as bronze ones isn’t as easy for a number of reasons, including that bronze is actually just a good material.
Per the other commenter, it’s about 10x what steel costs. That’s closer than I was expecting, TBH. Maybe that it comes in easily-cut wire form is a big part of what makes it desirable for thieves.
Margin is a funny way to put it, though, since there aren’t really any fixed expenses. Like a lot of criminal goods, supply is restricted more by risk of getting arrested than anything else.
Copper has chemical properties such that you can dissolve it, and then electrolyise it back out of solution ridiculously pure. More reactive metals stay in the solution, less reactive metals like gold, silver, cadmium and platinum form a nice little lump of sludge beneath your anode that’s absolutely worth collecting.
It’s valued per weight, like anything else. Wire will cost around as much as the copper inside does, plus a little for the cost of extruding and coating it.
TL;DR no, in the 21st century pure copper is just pure copper. If you make bronze then sure, there’s many different kinds.
Iron is in rocks, potatoes have to be lovingly nurtured over a few months. That still doesn’t seem like enough to make up the difference, though. Preparing chips must cost more than smelting. I guess shipping is also a factor unless you’re near a chip factory.
Good reply, but one nitpick:
It’s also reasonably safe and easy to extract in a moderately pure form with modern techniques unlike other super abundant elements like silicon.
Silicon smelting is arguably easier. If you have excess quartzite in your furnace it won’t form silicon carbide, while steelmaking involves being really careful to not get too much or too little carbon in the melt. Silicon becomes expensive for electronics because the industry wants 99.9999% purity absolute minimum. What comes out of the arc furnace isn’t read except for use in other metallurgy.
I’d also like to point out other elements can do the same basic all-around-skookum-alloy job as iron, like nickel or titanium. It’s just that none of them are everywhere.
the aforementioned potato cabal (it really exists. Theres a fun Half-as-interesting video on how it affects the price of fries)
Farmers do love a good cabal. Here in Canada there’s literally a state agency that does all the buying and selling of dairy products. Drives the Americans crazy.
Insane chip profit margins, because of the consumers’ willingness to pay. Consider a meal containing meat. Sure the manufacturer is making a profit, but can you imagine how much more profit they would be making by selling you a meal with the same amount of calories, but made of potatoes or corn? The consumer is willing to pay, say, $10 for a simple meal containing some meat, but what about half a meal? Maybe $3-5? Well, here come potato chips. They act like they’re half a meal, but they’re actually just cheap oil and a spud. The consumer will still pay more for it, so the companies can charge that much and make a huge profit from the willingness to pay of their dupes.
I mean, you can go and look at how much money they (Utz for example) end up making. It’s not different from the next publicly traded corporation, so there’s got to be expenses somewhere in there.
I mean, a rock works alright for that too.
Well, there’s a lot more to foundries than that. Safety with a liquid that explodes anything moist including people on contact and can start a fire remotely is a big one. Liners and molds are usually disposable too, and you generate several tons of spent material for every ton of product. But yes, heat, reducing agent (usually coal, increasingly hydrogen) and common minerals are the basic things involved.
Then again, nothing about the process is delicate, and you don’t have to worry about sanitation or spoilage.
No, it’s not. Although honestly we’re reaching the end of my knowledge about potato chip factories. And orange juice. Obviously the inputs to the process have to cost less than the outputs, but it does get pretty cheap.
Yup.
I should probably mention silicon is a terrible metal for anything structural, as well, so that was never an option. It’s below carbon on the periodic table and brittle like it.
One thing that would have been really tough would be high-temperature pressure vessels, like for heat engines. Other materials with good tensile strength exist (as do wood skyscrapers!), and so do refractory materials, but if you need both at the same time you’re looking at either high-tech ceramic composites or metal.
Does silicon even form metallic bonds?
Uhh, not sure. The band structure of the crystal lattice supports conduction like a metal, but not without an impurity to introduce the initial carrier, which is the whole thing behind why it’s useful for electronics.
IIRC bond type is kind of a continuum.
