what is copper made of?

Answer 1

Like most elements is was created by stars (the only exceptions to this is hydrogen and helium, which were created by the big bang and more complicated elements which can only be made in the laboratory).

Answer 2

Copper

Answer 3

Copper.

Answer 4

Copper is made of copper! It's an element so it is its natural state. Copper pipes and cables usually have trace amounts of other elements in them as refining copper from copper ore (that's the rock it comes from) is difficult to remove every single impurity.

Answer 5

Copper's an element. It's made of copper

Answer 6

Do you mean 'made of' or 'made from'?

If you mean 'made of'- then, as nearly everyone has said, it is an element so it is one of the basic building blocks, and isn't made of any other element. Like other atoms, it is made up of electrons, protons and neutrons.

The copper used in domestic plumbing is remarkably pure - it is one of the purest metals used in large-scale commerical application. The chief impurity is a tiny amount of silver. So you could say that the thing we most commonly refer to as copper is actually a copper-silver alloy, but with only a very tiny amount of silver in the mix.

If you mean 'made from' - then the most common source is Porphyry copper deposit. Copper is also one the relatively few metals that is sometimes found in 'native deposits' ie metallic copper found as in intrusion in some other rock. (That is why it was known in antiquity before iron).

Answer 7

The atomic number of copper is 29, which means it has 29 protons in the middle and 29 electrons moving around the outside. (The 29 negative charges of the electrons and the 29 positive charges of the protons balance out, so the atom is neutral when all of its electrons are in place.)
Copper has two electrons in the innermost shell, eight in the next shell, eighteen in the third shell, and one in the fourth shell. This means that the first three shells each have as many electrons as they can hold, and the fourth shell has one lonely electron. (The fourth shell can hold up to 32 electrons.) Because this one lonely electron is all by itself in the outer shell, it can easily separate from the rest of the atom and go roaming around, which makes copper a very good conductor.

Solid copper can be described as the arrangement of copper atoms in a face-centered-cubic (fcc) configuration. A copper atom is found at each corner and in the center of each face of a cube. This is the unit cell which is repeated in three dimensional space to make up the crystal structure of the metal.

The atoms are held in place in the structure by the energy of the atomic attractions between them. It is this particular face-centered cubic arrangement of the atoms that gives copper its high ductility and toughness. All metals deform by means of a mechanism called slip. When slip occurs, a force on the metal causes the atoms to slide past one another in groups. In the copper fcc structure this movement occurs preferentially in any or all of three directions along a specific geometric plane of atoms within the lattice.

The copper cell has four such planes. If movement can occur in three directions on all four planes, there are twelve possibilities for the occurrence of slip. It turns out that this is the maximum number of possibilities for slip found in any metal structure. The more likely it is that a metal can experience substantial slip, the more likely it is to deform rather than fracture and fail. Hence, copper has excellent ductility and toughness and is resistant to fatigue and creep. An added benefit is that copper, since it is a face-centered structure, does not suffer from embrittlement at low (sub-zero) temperatures; a phenomenon common to other crystal structures.

Copper's combination of electronic and crystalographic structures imparts its excellent resistance to corrosion. The free electron cloud is readily available to form coherent films on the metal surface that protect the lattice from further corrosion.

The fcc structure which generates the slip planes imparts another characteristic to these very planes. The atoms on the slip planes are packed as closely together as is possible in any metal system. This efficient arrangement of atoms packs the most matter into a given space (as honeybees seem to know when they build honeycombs). It is very difficult for hydrogen ions to find their way through the small spaces between the atoms and cause stress corrosion cracking except in the most aggressive environments.

Answer 8

Copper is an element so it's made of copper. On a smaller scale electrons, protons and Neutrons, and on an even smaller scale electrons and quarks.

Answer 9

Copper is copper. It is a pure element, designated as "Cu" on the periodic table. Any element on the periodic table is "pure" and is not "made of" anything else.

Answer 10

Copper - it's an element

Answer 11

Copper is an element like oxygen or aluminum. It is just made of itself.