• Question: what is the hardest metal in the world

    Asked by harry8 to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 21 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Peter Williams

      Peter Williams answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      it depends what you mean by “hard”. titanium is certainly up there, but usually when things are made to be very hard they are an alloy (mixture) of metals or some compound like tungsten carbide

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      We use a lot of Tungsten at work, cause its really good at blocking x-rays. By the way the guys who have to cut it up and make things out of it talk, its pretty hard 🙂 They break a lot of tools working with it!

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      I’m not sure what the hardest metal is…Tungsten is a hard metal, but also is quite brittle. It all depends on the underlying structure of the material – i.e. how the atoms arrange themselves. For instance, diamond is made of carbon and is one of the hardest substances out there. Coal is also predominantly carbon and isn’t very hard at all. It’s all down to the crystalline structure. Materials science is a fascinating area of science.

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