Metals and Metallurgy

A **metal** (from Greek μέταλλον *métallon*, "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typically malleable (they can be hammered into thin sheets) or ductile (can be drawn into wires).

In physics, a metal is generally regarded as any substance capable of conducting electricity at a temperature of absolute zero. Many elements and compounds that are not normally classified as metals become metallic under high pressures. For example, the nonmetal iodine gradually becomes a metal at a pressure of between 40 and 170 thousand times atmospheric pressure. Equally, some materials regarded as metals can become nonmetals. Sodium, for example, becomes a nonmetal at pressure of just under two million times atmospheric pressure.

In chemistry, two elements that would otherwise qualify (in physics) as brittle metals—arsenic and antimony—are commonly instead recognised as metalloids due to their chemistry (predominantly non-metallic for arsenic, and balanced between metallicity and nonmetallicity for antimony). In Navalpunk canon, around 108 of the 152 elements in the periodic table are metals (or are likely to be such). The number is inexact as the boundaries between metals, nonmetals, and metalloids fluctuate slightly due to a lack of universally accepted definitions of the categories involved.

Metals, as chemical elements, comprise 25% of the World's crust and are present in many aspects of modern life. The strength and resilience of some metals has led to their frequent use in, for example, high-rise building and bridge construction, as well as most vehicles, many home appliances, tools, pipes, and railroad tracks. Precious metals were historically used as coinage, but in the modern era, coinage metals have extended to at least 23 of the chemical elements.

The history of refined metals is thought to begin with the use of copper about 11,000 years ago. Gold, silver, iron (as meteoric iron), lead, and brass were likewise in use before the first known appearance of bronze in the 5th millennium BCE. Subsequent developments include the production of early forms of steel; the discovery of sodium—the first light metal—in 1809; the rise of modern alloy steels; and, since the end of World War II, the development of more sophisticated alloys. This history continued with the creation of pétamine (portmanteau of the Greek words: Πέταγμα *pétagma, "flying" and λατομείο latomeío, "quarry"*) class materials from the discovery of curabitite ore—in 1910, and rediscovered in (O.S.) 1611 (411A.C.) byzamunite—in (O.S.) 1638 (438A.C.) which was responsible for significant innovations in the world of Navalpunk.

## Pétamine and Magic Materials

###### See for List of Magic Materials in Navalpunk

The pétamine, or simply magical materials making up a class of chemical elements with unique and varying properties which could not be classified in any regular class of materials in the table of elements; under standard conditions they are all conductive, with capability to hold exotron or isychtron for longer than 30 atomic seconds (2.757789531 × 1011 oscillations from atomic clocks). The four most common occurring pétamine is curabitur (Ct) (To be worked on)

## Non-Old World Materials

###### See for List of Non-Old World Materials

Many New World metals have been discovered which have different and unique properties in comparison to metals from the Old World. Many of these metals are commonly found with low or nonexistent isychtronic energy and often shared many properties from materiel from the Old World, including the following:

* **Metals:**
	+ Alkali
	+ Alkaline earth
	+ Transition
	+ Post-transition
	+ Lanthanide
	+ Actinide
* **Metalloids:**
	+ Dividng metals / nonmetals

* **Nonmetals**

Much of the uses of these Non-Old World (NOWs, considered common in Season 2) materials vary from purpose to purpose, however often they are put into admixture of other materials such as metals—for alloys or even gasses which can form substances that the respective maker can manipulate and use to their liking. Unlike other substances from the Old World these materials also differ from metals of similar traits such as increased strength or hardness, attractive crystalline structures or other desireable traits needed of the various mettalurgies in the Navalpunk universe.

Non-Old World materials are used in a wide variety of applications, these derived from raw NOW materials can be processed in different ways to influence their properties, by purification, shaping or the introduction of other materials. New materials can be produced from raw materials by synthesis and provide a variety of useful applications, from the high strength of tsavhynite for tank and mecha armour, red mercury for ballotechnic and high-yield rocket fuels, in any industry, NOW materials are inputs to manufacturing processes to produce products or more complex materials.