Think solar energy and electric cars are the future? Or maybe not? Maybe coal, oil, and traditional infrastructure are the future and the renewable energy push is just hype? Either way… We’re gonna need a LOT of copper. Copper is historic, copper is adaptive, and copper is essential to the growth of civilization. Basically, copper is super cool.
Check out this giant list for all sorts of interesting facts about copper!
The Big List of Things You Might Not Know About Copper
- In order to better understand copper’s various applications, the Copper Development Association (CDA) has categorized them into four end-use sectors: electrical, construction, transport, and other.
- Copper and gold are the oldest metals known to man and were found in ancient times in their native form.
- An estimated 80% of all copper ever mined is still in use today.
- The earliest known copper article is a pendant dating from about 9000 BC in Asia Minor.
- Copper is believed to have been used first by Neolithic man as a substitute for stone around 8000 BC.
- The history of copper metallurgy is thought to follow this sequence: 1) cold working of native copper, 2) annealing, 3) smelting, and 4) lost-wax casting. In southeastern Anatolia, all four of these techniques appear more or less simultaneously at the beginning of the Neolithic c. 7500 BC
- Just as agriculture was independently invented in several parts of the world, copper smelting was independently invented in different places.
- The science of metallurgy emerged when copper was heated and mold-casted into shapes in Egypt around 4000 BC.
- The discovery of alloying copper and tin to make bronze (the first ever alloy was a major step forward because bronze is harder, tougher and stronger than copper.
- In 3500 BC, fire and charcoal were used to smelt ores, and copper was alloyed with tin to create bronze, giving rise to the Bronze Age.
- Ötzi the Iceman, a male dated from 3300–3200 BC, was found with an axe with a copper head 99.7% pure; high levels of arsenic in his hair suggest his involvement in copper smelting.
- The first copper objects were decorative – because copper is attractive and easy to shape. For example, earrings, rings, broaches, bracelets, combs and mirrors have been discovered from the ancient civilizations of China, India, Peru and Rome.
- Copper smelting led to the discovery of iron smelting.
- Copper and zinc are alloyed to make brass.
- Most copper ore that is mined only contains about 1% of the metal.
- The compound copper sulfide is used to kill fungi and algae in rivers and ponds.
- Copper smelting was probably discovered in China before 2800 BC, in Central America perhaps around 600 AD, and in West Africa about the 9th or 10th century AD.
- As copper is recycled, again and again, without any loss of performance, it is rarely lost from the world’s resources.
- Copper pipes are so well-suited for plumbing that more than one billion feet of it is installed every year in the United States.
- Archaeological evidence suggests that it was the early Mesopotamians who, around 5000 to 6000 years ago, were the first to fully harness the ability to extract and work with copper.
- The Romans obtained their copper from Cyprus. It was called aes Cyprium, which means “metal of Cyprus.” This was shortened to cyprium. Later, cyprium was changed to coprum, and eventually became known in English as copper.
- More than 95% of all copper ever mined and smelted has been extracted since 1900.
- More than 50% of all copper ever mined and smelted was extracted in the last 24 years.
- Copper is also known to stimulate the immune system, help repair injured tissues and promote healing.
- In ancient India, copper was used in the holistic medical science Ayurveda for surgical instruments and other medical equipment.
- Ancient Egyptians (c. 2400 BC) used copper for sterilizing wounds and drinking water & to treat headaches, burns, and itching.
- In our bodies, copper enhances bone strength, red and white blood cell maturation, iron transport, cholesterol and glucose metabolism, heart muscle contraction and brain development.
- The Egyptians used the ankh symbol to denote copper in their system of hieroglyphs. It also represented eternal life.
- The ahead-of-their-times Egyptians performed complex medical operations with copper-alloy instruments, and copper in various forms was a mainstay in their medicine chests.
- Copper metallurgy flourished in South America, particularly in Peru, around the beginning of the first millennium AD.
- Copper was most commonly alloyed with gold and silver during the time when the Mayans, Incans and Aztecs reigned in Central and South America.
- Over 400 copper alloys are in use today.
- The early decades of the 19th Century saw the foundation of the Electrical Age and thereafter the demand for copper increased tremendously.
- The most common binary compounds of copper are sulfides, oxides, and halides.
- Copper is found in the Earth’s crust at about fifty parts per million.
- The U.S. nickel is actually 75% copper. The dime, quarter, and half dollar coins contain 91.67% copper.
- Copper is vital to the health of humans, animals and plants and an essential part of the human diet.
- 60 Centuries of Copper – A great, must read, resource.
- In the Second World War the demand for copper most certainly could not have been satisfied, but for an invention in 1921, when Perkins patented his process of chemical flotation.
- According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, using recycled copper results in a saving of 85-90% of the energy that would have been needed to make new copper from virgin ores.
- Copper has been shown to help neutralize “free radicals,” which can cause severe damage to cells.
- One of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls found in Israel is made of copper instead of more fragile animal skins. The scroll contains no biblical passages or religious writings – only clues to a still undiscovered treasure.
- The largest single piece of natural copper weighed 420 tons, and was discovered in the US in 1857.
- Each year in the USA., nearly 45% as much copper is recovered from recycled material as is derived from newly mined ore.
- The story of copper and its principal alloys, bronze and brass, is virtually a chronicle of human endeavor since man emerged from the Stone Age.
- The ubiquity of the copper metals and their contribution to every civilization since Sumeria and Pre-Dynastic Egypt gives them a unique position in the history of technology.
- Copper is used to enhance new radio frequency identification (RFID) technology used for security, tracking and purchasing systems in retail, manufacturing, transportation and distribution.
- Copper is a major industrial metal because of its high ductility, malleability, thermal and electrical conductivity and resistance to corrosion.
- Copper is element number 29 on the Periodic Table of Elements.
- For the last 75 years, most of the water we drink has traveled through a copper pipe.
- The first copper deposit worked extensively in America (by non-native Americans) is located in Granby, Connecticut. It was operated from 1705 until 1770.
- Copper is considered a semi-precious metal with many hundreds of applications in the areas of electricity and electronics, plumbing, building construction and architecture, industry, transportation, and consumer and health products.
- Copper’s most important properties include superior heat transfer, electrical conductivity and corrosion resistance.
- Some 168 miniature copper farming implements, buried with King Tut to serve him in the afterlife, were recovered from his tomb.
- Water was – and still is – stored in copper and brass vessels to prevent growth of pathogens.
- The Statue of Liberty is made from 179,000 pounds of copper.
- Copper atoms have 29 electrons and 29 protons with 34 neutrons in the most abundant isotope.
- Copper ranks as third-most-consumed industrial metal in the world, after iron and aluminum, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
- Copper provides the matrix in the superconductors used in the CERN Large Hadron Collider, the largest in the world, in Switzerland.
- Throughout history, most coins, jewelry, ornaments, works of art, and pots & pans have been made from copper.
- The penny contains only 2.6% copper. In 1982, the U.S. Mint converted production of the 95% copper penny to a predominantly zinc alloy, but coated it with copper to preserve its appearance.
- Aside from gold, copper is the only metal on the periodic table whose coloring isn’t naturally silver or grey.
- Atomic symbol (on the periodic table of elements): Cu
- The risk of disruption to the global copper supply is considered to be low because copper production is globally dispersed and is not limited to a single country or region.
- Virtually all copper produced in the United States comes from, in decreasing order of production, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, or Montana.
- Copper easily alloys with other metals – there are more than 570 copper alloys in existence.
- In February 2008, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the registration of 275 antimicrobial copper alloys. By April 2011, that number expanded to 355. Copper is the first solid surface material to receive this type of EPA registration, which is supported by extensive antimicrobial efficacy testing.
- Copper is the standard benchmark for electrical conductivity. It conducts electrical current better than any other metal except silver.
- Copper plays a crucial role in the delivery of wind energy, based on its high-conductivity, low electrical resistance and resistance to corrosion.
- Because bacteria will not grow on it, copper has been used for centuries to line parts of ships so that barnacles and mussels do not stick to the boats.
- A mine in Sweden called “The Great Copper Mountain” operated from the 10th century to 1992. It produced two thirds of Europe’s copper requirements in the 17th century.
- A single 3MW wind turbine contains 4.7 tons or 9,400 pounds of copper
- In a recent experiment, a chunk of copper became the coldest cubic meter (35.3 cubic feet) on Earth when researchers chilled it to 6 millikelvins, or six-thousandths of a degree above absolute zero (0 Kelvin). This is the closest a substance of this mass and volume has ever come to absolute zero.
- Due to its versatility and durability, copper is referred to as “man’s eternal metal”.
- Numerous sources: 60% of copper is used in electrical wiring, 20% is used in roofing and household plumbing, while 15% is used in the making of industrial machinery.
- In the 1990s, the USGS conducted an assessment of U.S. copper resources and concluded that nearly as much copper remained to be found as had already been discovered.
- Porphyry copper deposits account for about 60 percent of the world’s copper.
- In porphyry copper deposits, copper ore minerals are disseminated in igneous intrusions.
- Sediment-hosted stratabound copper deposits, in which copper is concentrated in layers in sedimentary rocks, account for about 20 percent of the world’s identified copper resources.
- South America has the largest identified and undiscovered copper resources (about 20 percent of the total undiscovered amount).
- The world’s largest porphyry copper deposits are mined in South America.
- Central America and the Caribbean host two undeveloped giant (>2 million ton copper) porphyry copper deposits in Panama.
- North America hosts highly mineralized porphyry copper tracts that include supergiant (>25 million tons copper) porphyry deposits in northern Mexico, the western United States, and Alaska, as well as giant deposits in western Canada.
- North Central Asia has 35 porphyry copper deposits, including a supergiant deposit in Mongolia and a giant deposit in Kazakhstan.
- Four giant porphyry copper deposits have been identified to date in the Tibetan Plateau.
- Southeast Asia Archipelagos host world-class, gold-rich porphyry copper deposits such as a supergiant in Indonesia and about 16 giant deposits in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines.
- Eastern Australia has one giant porphyry copper deposit and several small porphyry deposits.
- Western Europe has the largest sediment-hosted stratabound copper deposit in the world, in Poland.
- Africa and the Middle East have the world’s largest accumulation of sediment-hosted stratabound copper deposits, with 19 giant deposits in the Central African Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia.
- Today copper’s share of the US insulated wire and cable market is about 78%.
- At least 160 copper-bearing minerals have been identified in nature; some of the more familiar minerals are chalcopyrite, malachite, azurite, and turquoise.
- Copper’s use in a wide-range of core industries has resulted in the investment community turning to copper prices as an indicator of overall economic health, spurring the moniker ‘Dr. Copper’.
- Superconductivity could be an important new market for copper, particularly in transmission lines, energy storage devices, and other applications not yet contemplated.
- Automotive applications, copper’s third largest market, is the source of the most serious current copper substitution threat – aluminum in the radiator.
- Copper is vital to the production of: Electronic connectors, Circuitry wiring and contacts, Printed circuit boards, Micro-chips, Semi-conductors, Magnetrons in microwaves, Electromagnets, Vacuum tubes, Commutators, Welding electrodes, Fire sprinkler systems, and Heat sinks.
- In contrast to other metal industries there exists today almost no top-to-bottom integration of the US copper industry.
- In automobiles, copper and brass radiators and oil coolers have been the industry standard since the 1970s.
- Approximately two tons of overburden must be removed along with each ton of copper ore.
- Copper ore averages less than 0.7% copper in US copper mines.
- Most anode copper is electrolytically refined, usually to a purity of at least 99.95 percent.
- The structure of the US copper and copper alloy industry has undergone dramatic changes over the last ten or twenty years.
- US-owned copper mines in Chile began to be nationalized in the late 1960s, and the government of Chile has greatly expanded their output since.
- Chile has over a 23% share of global copper production, nearly all of which is exported, and has the largest copper reserves in the world.
- Of the world’s reserves of copper about one-quarter of the deposits are economically recoverable now or in the near future. Of this reserve base about 16% (198 billion pounds of copper) is in the USA.
- There are wide variations in the energy used to recover metals from the earth’s crust. Copper ranks near the middle for energy required for extraction-higher than iron, zinc or lead, but at considerable advantage to aluminum, titanium and magnesium, which require much larger quantities of energy to break down the ore.
- Today the US copper companies, despite the high cost of the world’s strictest environmental standards, are well positioned to live with low price levels and to profit from improvements in the demand for copper.