Are metals a natural or man made substance?

Question

If man made what are they made of???

Answer 1

As was stated in other answers, they are both naturally occurring and man-made. Many elements are technically a metal but none occur in nature in ready-to-use condition.

The most common metal, steel, is an alloy consisting mostly of Iron and Carbon. The iron is reduced from iron ore which was mined from the ground.

Copper is a very pure metal. Plain old electrical wire is very pure copper, but, again, it needs processed since it does not come out of the ground in a very useful form.

Aluminum is mostly aluminum, but all practical uses have aluminum alloyed (mixed) with another metal for superior physical properties. (actually aluminum is water soluble, but thanks to its naturally occuring oxide coating, it is useful to us)

All metals occur naturally but in most cases, at least some other metal must be mixed in to make the product useful to us.

You can find out anything you want with web searches for things like:

steel alloys
titanium alloys
copper alloys
[insert metal here] alloys

Sometimes certain alloys get their own name. Brass for example is an alloy of copper and zinc.

Answer 2

Is Metal Man Made

Answer 3

Elemental metals are pure elements and are created by nature. However they are rarely ever found in their pure elemental form in nature.
Instead they are usually found in nature combined with other metals or elements in alloys or oxidized or in salt forms as ores.
Iron oxide and aluminum oxide are the most common forms of iron and aluminum for instance, where the iron and aluminum are combined with oxygen. These ores are refined by man to produce the pure metals iron and aluminum. Same for copper, tin, zinc and a host of other elemental metals.

And of course man takes refined metals and combines them so that, besides the pure refined forms, there are also amalgams, alloys, and mixtures of metals.

A magnet might be made from cobalt, aluminum, and nickle mixed under high temperature and cooled to form an alloy.
Steel is produced from iron with some carbon thrown in. Lost of cheap products are made from what is called "pot metal" where scraps of different metals are melted together to form a cheap alloy.
Gold and silver are recovered from ores and fashioned into jewelry.

So the answer is that naturally occuring metals are often combined with refined metals to make additional kinds of man-made metals or else used alone as purified metals.

OK?

Answer 4

Both.

Metals can be found on the periodic table of elements. These are naturally occurring.

Alloys are man made and formed by mixing two or more natural metals.

Answer 5

Both, some are naturally occuring, like gold and silver but an alloy is a man made combination of two or more metals.

Answer 6

They can be both:

Naturally occurring metals - gold, silver, platinum
Metals that need extraction from ores - copper, iron, aluminum
Synthetic metals (alloys) - brass, bronze, solder
Synthetic metals (true manmade) - neptunium, plutonium

So true elemental metals (ones on the top part) are natural, but some might need man's help to be separated, or form alloys with eachother. Truly manmade metals such as plutonium need to be manufactured as they don't exist in nature in large quantities.

Plutonium is manufactured by bombarding uranium with neutrons.