The Same Blow: One Solid Shatters, One Just Dents

Swing a hammer at a salt crystal and it splits. Swing the same hammer at a copper bar and it flattens. Both are held together by strong electrostatic attraction — and the difference is not that copper’s bonding is weaker. It is that copper’s bonding has no direction. A sea of delocalized electrons flows wherever the cations go, and the bonding never lets go.

8 STEPS · 6 QUICK CHECKS · IRON · STEEL · BRASS · v1