Copper Properties for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCII

copper is ductile

Those of us who are interested in the so-called S.T.E.M. fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) long ago noticed that many journalists are rather weak when it comes to those fields. This seems to be true of both true professionals and self-proclaimed "professional writers." Oh, sure, some people have made a career of understanding science and interpreting it for the masses (the name of Joe Palka comes to mind), but even the recent hires at the newspaper in ANHQ's home city seem bewildered by the most basic science. The worst science writing, however, is to be had at content farms where "editors" who took one elective science course on their way to a BA in English Lit "correct" work by writers with the same level of training... a case in point is the InfoBloom.com post by Jason C. Chavis, "What are the Properties of Copper?" (FYI, InfoBloom is a niche created by the people at WiseGEEK).

We complain long and loud here that the scientifically illiterate often misunderstand and misconstrue the factoids they strew about their content. Chavis is no exception to the rule, having littered his post with half-understood terminology and partially-founded factoids, all veneered with flowery language. We'll try to be brief... so here are a few examples:

• "Copper is a metallic element with... the scientific designation of Cu." – It's not a "scientific designation," it's a chemical symbol.
• "The properties of copper make it highly ductile ..." – Ductility is, to be sure, one of the properties of copper; but not a feature those properties "make" possible. It would also be instructive if Chavis had defined "ductile"... but the didn't.
• "It is also malleable and soft, while maintaining an orange-like coloring. " – He probably meant "ductile" instead of soft, and we're confused by the choice of "maintaining." 
• "Uses for copper primarily include its addition in alloys for building materials and electrical wiring." – We know of no alloys of copper used for "building materials": bronze for plumbing fixtures, maybe? And either Jason was confused of "its addition in alloys for... electrical wiring" is a textbook example of non-parallel construction.

• "The physical properties of copper make it react very profoundly with the air, most notably oxygen." – No, phosphorous reacts "very profoundly" with air. Copper tarnishes over time.
• "Pure copper with no exposure to the air maintains a pinkish color." – Apparently, Chavis is envisioning copper in a vacuum... and there's that "maintains" crap again.
• "Copper has the tendency to reflect light without the blue/violet spectrum, causing it to fall into the red scope of colors." – A truly weird way to say, "Copper is reddish." TRULY weird.
• "The properties of liquified copper make it appear green with no ambient light..." – No, without ambient light copper appears black... like everything else.
• "When burnt into a gaseous state..." – That's not how copper, or anything, enters a gaseous state, Jason!
• "The chemical properties of copper include the tendency to cause galvanic corrosion. When copper is put in direct contact with certain metals such as iron, corrosion from water can occur to the other metal." – Copper doesn't cause "galvanic corrosion," contact of two dissimilar metals causes a galvanic reaction. It could be iron and zinc, for instance...

We're sure there are other properties Chavis (and his editor, Bronwyn Harris) forgot to mention, such as its melting point, density, atomic number, ionic radius, number of and most common of isotopes, among others. But Jason wasn't going there, presumably because he either didn't know that those are the definitive properties (as opposed to "maintaining an orange-like coloring"), or didn't understand all that "jargon." Instead, our Dumbass of the Day had to pound out a bunch of half-baked factoids wrapped up in pseudoscientific babble. Sadly, no surprise.

SI - CHEMISTRY