A metal is a type of material that is typically shiny and is a good conductor of both heat and electricity. Metals are good conductors because the electrons in their atoms are easily shared with neighboring atoms. Chemists call this special kind of bonding between metal atoms "metallic bonding."
The metal elements make up about 95 of the known 118 elements. On the periodic table, they are located mostly on the left and in the middle. A few metal elements include iron (Fe), calcium (Ca), copper (Cu), nickel (N), gold (Au), and sodium (Na).
The metal element tungsten (W) melts at about 3,422°C (6,191°F). Iron, in comparison, has a melting point of only 1,538°C (2,800°F).
This high melting point is part of the reason why tungsten is used in light bulbs. Thomas Edison discovered that, rather than melting from the high temperatures of the electricity passing through it, tungsten instead glows white hot.
Gold (Au) is the most malleable of all metals, meaning it can be beaten into thinner sheets than any other metal. Gold can be hammered relatively easily to a thickness of 100 nm (nanometers, or billionths of a meter).
In 2019, researchers published a paper in the scientific journal Advanced Science where they described their success at creating a sheet of gold just 2 atoms thick!
