“Heavy metal”: we all know it, it might not be everybody’s favorite music but we all know about it. How much do we know about metals, though? One thing is for sure, we like them a lot as we use them a lot.
Metals, though, are not so heavy anymore as through the history we have managed to learn how to bend them and shape them into useful tools or nice looking items. It is been a while since human beings have learnt the skills of moulding iron and all other kind of metals. This is what God has been described as in several metaphors: the one that gives shape to the shapeless and through that act brings life upon the not living. Some kind of smith as far as it concerns the act of giving shape. We can find deities whose power is connected to the skill of being a metal bender among a variety of cultural tradition of the past. Hephaestus, a Greek God whose Roman equivalent is Volcano, served as the blacksmith of the gods as if to say, that everybody, even divine beings, needs to do metal bending. His craft was of course metallurgy, the science that deals with extracting metals from their ores. The reason why this science exists is that metals are very rarely found pure in nature as they are very often mixed with other non metallic materials within a rock. Once isolated the ore is placed in a hot furnace where it is exposed to extreme heat which causes the ore to melt. Once the ore melts, it is used to form anything we need, from earrings to tubes.
“Not all that glitters is gold” is a well known saying that we may alternatively formulate as not all that looks like metal is metal. Whales are not fish even though some always forget this elementary school’s notion. As much the same is for steel, it looks like one of the metal fellowship but it does not belong to it. Indeed, Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron plus a carbon content. It is a very hard material, don’t you know that superman was also called the man of steel? As every real hero knows, being beyond reproach is the best condition for external approval, so is for steel, the best one is the stainless. Stainless steel does not stain, corrode, or rust as easily as ordinary steel. It’s definition itself is a good commercial.
Metals are all around us and as humankind we not only learnt how to bend them and mould them into shapes but also have managed to mix them with other elements which allow them to acquire better qualities. Not only gods can shape and mix elements.
