Copper melting point

Historians suggest that primitive peoplefound copper in the form of nuggets, sometimes reaching a significant size. Its name in Latin copper (Cuprum) was received from the island of Cyprus, where it was mined by the ancient Greeks. Due to the fact that the melting point of copper is not too high and is 1083 ° C, nuggets or ore containing copper could be melted at the stake. This ensured the production of copper and allowed it to be used to make weapons and household items.

Despite the fact that copper was widely usedpeople since ancient times, in spreading in the earth's crust, it occupies the 23rd place among other elements. Most often, it occurs naturally in the form of compounds that form part of sulphide ores. The most common of these are copper luster and copper pyrite. There are several technologies for obtaining copper from ore, and for each of them the process takes place in several stages.

As already noted, a low temperaturemelting of copper allowed to successfully process it even at the very beginning of the development of civilization. And we must pay tribute to the ancient metallurgists, they have found options for obtaining and using not only pure copper, but also its alloys. Melting is the transition of a metal from a solid state to a liquid state. For this, heating was used, and the low melting temperature of copper made it possible to successfully carry out such an operation.

Then, tin or tin was added to the liquid coppermade its recovery from cassiterite (ore containing tin) on the surface of copper. As a result, they received bronze, stronger than the Cuprum, and used to make weapons. However, now I would like to dwell in more detail on the operation of melting, which allows obtaining sufficiently pure material from the ore.

The melting point of each metal has its own anddepends on the presence of impurities in the starting material. Thus, copper, whose melting point is 1083 ° C, after the addition of tin forms a bronze, which melts at a temperature of 930-1140 ° C, depending on the content of tin. Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, has a melting point of 900-1050 ° C.

During the heating process, the metal is destroyedcrystal lattice. Initially, as the temperature is heated, the temperature rises, and then, starting from a certain value, remains constant, although the heating continues. At this moment, melting occurs. This continues for the entire time, until all the metal melts, and only then the temperature starts to rise. This is true for all metals, the melting point of copper also does not change.

When cooled, the picture is reversed: at first the temperature decreases until the solidification of the metal begins, then it keeps constant and after full hardening of the metal starts to decrease again. This behavior of the metal, if it is depicted on the graph, is called a phase diagram showing the state in which the substance is at a particular temperature. For scientists, the phase diagram is one of the tools in studying the behavior of metals during melting.

If we continue heating molten metal, thenat a certain temperature a process similar to boiling begins. Thus, the boiling point of copper is 2560 ° C. This process was named for its external resemblance to liquid boiling, when bubbles of gas begin to emerge from it. The same thing happens with the metal, for example, at a sufficiently high temperature, the carbon formed during the oxidation begins to emerge from the liquid iron.

The article considers the process of melting metals,The concept of the melting temperature and its behavior during melting are described. It is explained how low the melting temperature of copper had on the development of civilization and metallurgy.