[music playing] NARRATOR: It transports
electricity, water, and heat. Our bodies can't
survive without it, yet it can kill
microbes in minutes. It brings music to our ears. [bell ringing] And beauty to our eyes. It ended the Stone Age and
ushered in the Information Age. This versatile
red metal has been indispensable to our
technological success. Now, copper on "Modern Marvels." [whistle blowing] San Diego, California-- NASSCO, the National Steel
and Shipbuilding Company, has delivered over 110 ships
to the world's fleets during the last four decades . It's here where all
manner of huge ships take shape, from oil
tankers to container ships, and they all require copper-- hundreds of tons of copper. Here, close to 1,200
workers are busy assembling one of 11 identical cargo
ships for the US Navy. The first of the ships,
the USNS Lewis & Clark, is already in service. CAPTAIN RANDALL ROCKWOOD: This
ship is the newest and largest auxiliary ship in the US Navy. Our length is 688 feet
and our width is 106 feet. NARRATOR: Each of these
electrically-powered ships requires an extraordinary
amount of wiring to operate. ROBERT MCMANUS: There's
approximately 500 moles of copper cable onboard this
ship that is used to distribute electricity for the
low voltage systems, and then our high voltage
systems that run at 6,600 volts, which is used for
the propulsion system to drive the ship
through the water. NARRATOR: But copper is used for
much more than just the wiring of these vessels. ROBERT MCMANUS:
We utilize copper in the paint on the
bottom of the ship to prevent marine fouling. We use copper inside the ship in
alloys to pipe seawater systems and prevent corrosion on
those seawater systems. And we use copper also in
the propeller as an alloy to ensure a long service
life for the propeller. NARRATOR: Copper is the metal of
choice for any part of the ship that comes in contact with the
sea because of one of copper's most valuable properties-- its resistance to
saltwater corrosion. Immediately upon
contact with water, the metal develops a
protective oxide coating. Merchant vessels and
warships demand durability, and copper stands
the test of time in one of the most corrosive
environments on Earth. To make pumps, valves, and
onboard desalination systems, the ship builders use a special
copper and nickel alloy called Cooper nickel. ROBERT MCMANUS: In order to
prevent the seawater systems from corroding, we have
constructed them out of copper nickel,
and that copper is very resistant to corrosion. When seawater is piped
through a copper nickel pipe, you actually get
a-- a layer forms on the inside of the pipe
of oxides that then stop the corrosion process. NARRATOR: The alloy is generally
70% copper and 30% nickel. The addition of nickel
increases both copper's strength and corrosion resistance. Copper is also alloyed
with harder metals to make one of the strongest
and largest parts of each ship-- a 22-foot wide, 40-ton,
corrosion-resistant propeller. The Naval architects
who fabricate such massive propellers use a
centuries-old casting technique combined with some new
manufacturing technologies. JAMES KING: Propellers are
cast in one pour, generally, and then when the
casting is completed, the mold is taken off, and
then the cast propeller would be cleaned,
sanded, and then shaped. Rather than having to
build a model of a ship, they can do that with a
3D model now and generally get a fair idea as to how
the impact of the design is going to work
against the hull. ROBERT MCMANUS: Once the
propeller is shaped and cast, then it's machined to
a very fine tolerance. They have to build the shape
the propeller blade profiles to an exact shape to
ensure long service life, prevent vibration, and also
prevent noise, which can create problems for the vessel. NARRATOR: Although copper alloy
propellers can withstand years of seawater exposure,
they can still be damaged by ocean debris. Engineers routinely
inspect used propellers with staining chemicals
and magnifying glasses to find even the tiniest flaws. JAMES KING: A small
crack can promulgate out, and you can have a catastrophic
loss of blade section based on the small crack being allowed
to not be repaired and grow. We do a visual
inspection, and then based on that visual
inspection, we will determine what the
customer needs for the repair. Generally, it'll be
welding, grinding, balancing the propeller. NARRATOR: Copper also protects
vessels from tiny but dangerous sea creatures that, given enough
time, could even sink a ship. Copper is anti-microbial,
meaning microorganisms can't survive on it. Scientists theorize that
copper kills microbes by damaging their DNA. It's been used to protect
ships from marine organisms since the 18th century, when the
British Royal Navy first clad the holes of their wooden
warships with copper sheet. Copper protects
timbers from sea worms that can bore through holes. It also repels barnacles,
which create drag. ROBERT MCMANUS: Nowadays,
with the steel hulls, we still need something to
prevent sea life from adhering to the hull. And they use a copper paint
or a paint with copper in it. And the copper basically
prevents any sea life from wanting to grow on
the side of the ship. NARRATOR: Through the centuries,
shipbuilders have continually taken advantage of
copper's benefits at sea. One of America's most notable
ships, the USS Constitution, often referred to
as Old Ironsides, was actually clad
in copper, not iron. TIMOTHY PATRICK: When the ship
was built in Edmund Hartt's shipyard in 1794 to 1798, they
sheathed the bottom of the hull of the ship with copper. This original copper
when she was built was supplied by Great Britain. We actually imported it. Paul Revere actually supplied
the original copper bolts and fasteners onboard the
ship during construction. NARRATOR: In 1803, when the
sea-worn vessel came to port for repairs, Paul Revere decided
it was time to make copper sheeting in America. When the Constitution
was refurbished in 1803, Paul Revere, thanks to
help from the government plus his own money,
developed a rolling process in Canton, Massachusetts,
and rolled the copper. So the second sheathing
of the Constitution was done by Revere Metal
with Revere metal made in this country. NARRATOR: The hull isn't
the only place on the ship where copper sheeting
was put to use. Another small but critical
area was completely lined with copper. This is where young boys-- where the ship would
come down during battle to retrieve about six
pounds of gunpowder, which would be in this
powder magazine, which is lined with copper. Copper is a non-ferrous metal. It wouldn't spark as
easily, you can imagine, with all the gunpowder. Down below, if
there was a spark, it could ignite the whole
ship, and you could actually lose your ship. NARRATOR: Though
copper's merits at sea have been known for
centuries, we've been taking advantage of the
red metal's array of attributes for close to 10,000 years. In that time, copper has helped
revolutionize our technology. Today, copper is all around us. ANDREW KIRETA: Everything that
you touch during the course of the day will
have copper in it or have some
connection to copper. We have copper in our phones,
copper in our computers. We have copper in our bodies. TIM SWENDSEID: Copper is vital
to our modern way of life. It's used in electric motors. It's used in copper tubing. It's used in copper wiring. Without all of these
things, society would not be at the level that it's at. It's one of the building
blocks of making our world as industrialized as it is. NARRATOR: Beyond
copper's ability to resist corrosion, kill
bacteria, and conduct both electricity and
heat, it's also beautiful. In some applications, its
veneer is the focal point, such as in sculptures
and roofing. ANDREW KIRETA: We're
drawn to copper alloys because of its soft color, its
warmth, the ability to change its color, change its shape. That's probably one of the few
applications of the product of metals that's exposed
and gives you that warmth. NARRATOR: In fact, it was
copper's distinct red color that first got it noticed. Copper was one of the first
metals that was discovered by man nearly 10,000 years ago. And the reason why
that is is that copper is one of the few metals
that actually exists in the metallic form in nature. So ancient man might
have been walking along and seen some small
glint of metal, and been able to pick up
and find that they have a piece of a metal that is
easy to form, it's soft, and its material would
have been easy to form into a variety of shapes. NARRATOR: By about 3600
BC, the demand for copper increased for use in
items as disparate as jewelry and arrowheads. The naturally occurring deposits
on the ground became scarcer, but the ancient Egyptians
discovered a process called smelting which separated
the metal from the mineral ore in which it was embedded. MARK AINDOW: The very
earliest forms of smelting would simply have
been taking the metal and heating it up over a
fire that was sufficiently hot for the metal to
melt, and the smelting would occur naturally
by the burn off of some of the impurities. By trial and error,
the civilizations later realized that you could add
certain things to that molten metal which would cause the
impurities to be removed preferentially. If you add an addition like
charcoal, which is basically carbon, then what
might happen is that the carbon would combine
with the oxygen in some of these impurities,
and that would burn off as carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide, leaving the unoxidized
metal behind. NARRATOR: At about 3000
BC, the ancient Egyptians inadvertently created
a completely new metal when some tin was mixed
in with the copper. MARK AINDOW: Copper
and tin makes bronze. And that's the root of the
expression the Bronze Age-- the period in which
people were starting to work with these materials
and to make an ever more complex range of artifacts
out of these metals. NARRATOR: Development of
bronze was a milestone in human history, because pure
copper is relatively soft, but bronze is
harder and stronger. Farmers could now make a
wide array of sturdy tools and warriors could craft weapons
with lethally sharp edges. Without a doubt, the army
with the most bronze swords and armor held a
distinct advantage. For many centuries,
bronze reigned supreme. Then, from Rome onwards,
iron became the basic metal for every Western civilization. But copper would make
a spectacular comeback. Copper mined from
vast ore deposits was destined to connect
and energize the world. At Arizona's Phelps Dodge
Sierrita copper mine, trucks are hard at
work hauling ore. These mining trucks are some
of the largest dump trucks in the world. They can haul as much as 260
tons of ore in a single load. Yet these house-sized haulers
couldn't budge a pound of copper without copper. TIM SWENDSEID: In one
of these haul trucks, there is a lot of copper. You'll find it in copper wiring
that runs throughout the truck to run the lights. We also use it in
the alternators. We also use it in any motors
that are on board of the haul trucks. Of course, there's a lot of
copper in the radiator, which is a vital component to
keep the engine cool. NARRATOR: The radiators of
the largest mining trucks use 2,500 pounds of copper
for tubing and fins. It's here where copper
demonstrates another of its unique properties. It conveys heat better than
almost any other metal. Copper is used
because it has such a high thermal conductivity. The heat in the water,
which comes from the engine, is transmitted to
the copper, which sets up lattice
vibrations, which move through from the water
side of the copper radiator to the air side and
is transmitted out. NARRATOR: Phelps
Dodge runs a total of five mines in the
Southwestern United States. Together, they produce more than
two billion pounds of copper annually and account
for about 60% of total US copper production. Their mining and refining
process has many steps. The mining process begins with
the discovery of an ore body through exploration drill holes. We determine where we need
to go to extract the ore. We use large blast hole drills
to drill 65-foot-deep holes. NARRATOR: After the blast
holes are completed, the explosives crew gets busy. Laying charges is both
a high tech science and a choreographed art. JIMMY KIRKER: At the end of
this electronic detonator, there is a computer chip. You are actually
programming that firing time into the detonator. And you could fire it
in a sequential time. CONSTRUCTION WORKER (ON
RADIO): 181 to all unit. This is your one
minute blast warning. Fire in the hole for one shot. [explosion] NARRATOR: After the
ore has been loosened, the shovels can dig in. TIM SWENDSEID: Each one
of the buckets of material in that shovel weighs
approximately 65 tons. So in about four
scoops, that shovel can load one of our
260-ton haul trucks. NARRATOR: If the ore is
mined closer to the surface, the copper within
the ore has been exposed to oxygen. Oxidation
converts the copper to copper oxide. The copper oxide atoms
are not bound as tightly to the ore as copper, so they
can be leached out of the ore. TIM SWENDSEID: What
we're doing behind me is sprinkling a weak acidic
solution onto some material that contains copper oxide. And the solution
contains sulfuric acid. This comes in
contact with our ore, and it converts it into a
solution of copper sulfate. The copper sulfate then travels
down to one of our processing facilities where we
ultimately extract the copper. NARRATOR: Ore that's not a
candidate for leaching takes a different processing path. The rock that's deeper down
in the ore body is a sulfide, and it is not leachable by acid. So we have to separate
it by flotation. NARRATOR: The first step
of the flotation process is to get the rock down
to a manageable size. The gyratory crusher is a
large cone that fits inside of a cone-shaped cylinder. And it literally wobbles around. And when a rock gets
in between the walls of the mantle and the liner, it
crushes it by wobbling around. NARRATOR: Before the
ore can be refined, it must be ground down to
the consistency of sand in massive drums
called ball mills. Each 16-foot-high, 19-foot-long
mill is filled with softball sized steel balls that
pulverize the ore. At the same time, water
and chemical agents are added to the
mix, creating slurry. THOMAS COMI: We then
put it through a machine where we agitate the slurry
with bubbles and reagent. And the copper mineral sticks to
the bubble, floats to the top, we scoop it off, and
then filter off the water and send it to the smelter. At the smelter, the
concentrate is heated. It's melted, and the copper
material separates further. NARRATOR: The metal leaving
the smelter is 99.6% copper, but not pure enough for most
electrical applications. This impure copper is cast
into slabs called anodes. The anodes a further
purified using a process called electrorefining. In electrorefining,
racks of anodes are suspended in an electrified
acid solution for 10 days. During this period, the copper
dissolves and is attracted to a negatively-charged cathode,
leaving any impurities behind. The resulting cathode
is 99.99% pure copper. A similar process
called electrowinning is used to extract copper from
liquid copper sulfate that comes from the leaching process. In the electrowinning
process, we use electricity that charges
the ions in the solution, and that causes the copper
to plate out as a solid. If you could see inside
the electrowinning cell, you would see the little
electrons and protons on the copper-- you'd see
the copper moving towards the starter sheet and
actually plating them-- actually attaching
and becoming a solid. Over a period of
five to seven days, the copper gets thicker
on the starter sheet until it's heavy enough for us
to actually pull out and remove the copper. NARRATOR: These
200-pound cathodes are also 99.99% copper. The mining and refining
operations run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Like most copper mines, the
ore that's mine from Sierrita has a low percentage
of copper in it. Each ton of ore yields
just six pounds of copper. But many copper products
don't rely on a supply of virgin metal from the mine. About 1.5 million tons of scrap
copper are recycled every year. ANDREW KIRETA: Copper is
one of the metals that is 100% recyclable. Most of the copper and copper
alloys that you have around you today are recycled from
previous copper applications. You could be using copper
tube in your house today that has recycled
material from the jewelry that Cleopatra wore years ago. NARRATOR: Recycled copper can
be used for almost anything except for electrical wire,
because refining the metal back to near 100% purity
isn't cost effective. One of the big consumers
of recycled copper is the plumbing industry. Plumbers frequently choose
to install copper pipe because it's naturally
corrosion resistant. It frequently
outlasts the building in which it's installed. Forming the copper
pipe or tube, as it's referred to in the industry,
is a fairly straightforward process. ANDREW KIRETA: Everyone
picks up a tube of toothpaste in the morning, squeezes
that tube of toothpaste, and it comes out the tube. Making copper tube
is the same thing. We take a billet of copper
or a slug of copper. We put it through an extrusion
press, which is the toothpaste tube. We squeeze it under
very high pressure, and copper tube
comes out the end. But the only difference is that
we use a mandrel or some method to make sure that there is an
opening or a hole in the center of the copper tube. NARRATOR: Modern plumbers
weren't the first to notice copper's plumbing potential. MARK AINDOW: The Egyptians
produced some of the earliest copper plumbing. What they probably
didn't realize is that in addition to having
a material that they could form into plumbing pipes, they were
actually purifying their water at the same time, and that
the anti-microbial properties of the copper were killing
bacteria and contaminants within the water. NARRATOR: Today, copper's
anti-microbial properties have compelled medical experts
to study the metal's potential. We understand that through
research, ongoing research, that it has the ability
to kill certain pathogens. In a situation where
it was with copper, you would see over a
very short period of time that the copper would not allow
the bioload over that product to grow. It would actually
bring it to an end. NARRATOR: In the
near future, copper may be showing up in hospitals
on doorknobs and handrails to stop the spread of bacteria
such as staphylococcus and E coli. Copper isn't just used
to build practical items. It's also used to create
everything from the biggest bells to national icons. This is the World Peace Bell. 12 feet high and 66,000 pounds,
it's the largest swinging bell in the world. Located in Newport, Kentucky,
it was built to commemorate the turn of the Millennium. Like most bells, it's made of
a copper alloy often referred to as bell bronze. JIM VERDIN: The
World's Peace Bell is made of 80%
copper and 20% tin. The reason bells are
made of 80% copper and 20% tin is the
quality of sound. Up until around 1600,
they experimented a lot with different
copper, zinc, tin, and it was determined that
the combination of 80% copper and 20% tin produced
the best sound. NARRATOR: The bell was made the
same way bells have been made since the Middle Ages. Molten bronze was
poured into a mold. But pouring metal
for a bell this large presented a daunting
new challenge. JIM VERDIN: We had
about 80,000 pounds of metal ready to be poured. We calculated that it had to
be done in four minutes and 54 seconds. If it was too slow, we'd
end up like the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. If it didn't cool
uniformly, the danger would be that the bell would
crack the first time it would hit, because the metal
would be inconsistent. The final cooling stage
would be inconsistent. NARRATOR: The bell's
designers from Verdin Bells in Cincinnati, Ohio, held
their breath the first time the switch was thrown to
release the striking hammer. JIM VERDIN: Of course,
we were all worried about what would happen. We hoped we didn't have another
Liberty Bell on our hands. 18 seconds before midnight,
the switch was turned on, and it struck right on it. With the first strike,
we knew it was good. NARRATOR: Verdin Bells has
been making bells since 1842. Today, it operates the oldest
bell foundry in the United States. It makes about 250
large bells each year, used mostly by churches
and universities. It casts bells using a
method it developed which uses sand instead of
clay to make each mold. Sand is more efficient. As it dries, it
hardens much faster. The sand is formed
into a bell shape using an aluminum pattern. What we're doing is we're
packing the sand nice and tight so that it'll create that
perfect cavity that the bell is sitting in. The sand will get really
hard like concrete. Then, we'll roll
this thing back over, and you'll see the inside
profile of the bell. That's when we'll put that
piece of the flask on, and we'll put more sand and
do the exact same thing. Then when we break
the flask apart, we'll pull the pattern out. That way, we can re-stack
the two pieces of flask together and create a hollow
cavity that's the exact replica of the inside of the bell
and the exact replica of the outside of the bell. DAVE VERDIN: We then
melt bronze, bring it up to 2,200 degrees, pour it in the
sand mold, wait for it to cool, break it out, and then the
arduous task of cleaning it up starts. As it comes out of the cores,
when we break it loose, it's not very good looking. NARRATOR: Verdin also uses
bronze to make statues. For centuries, artists have
valued bronze for its beauty and durability. Some statues are cast using a
process similar to the one used to make bells. But other statues, including
America's most revered of all, the Statue of Liberty,
are made with pure copper. LARRY STEARNS: It looks like
it could be a solid piece of copper, but it's not. Inside is an iron tower
that was designed by Eiffel, and that is what is
referred to as an armature. It's a fairly complex
support structure that holds the skin of
the Statue of Liberty. NARRATOR: Lady Liberty's skin
was sculpted from over 160,000 pounds of pure copper sheet. Before the skin could be
riveted onto the iron armature, each of the 300 plates were
hammered into shape using an ancient metal smithing
technique called repoussé. This process is still used
to form intricate details. Copper smith Larry Stearns is
using it to fashion a rooftop ornament called a finial. LARRY STEARNS: Repoussé is
a process of hammering sheet into a negative form. To perform the
repoussé technique, you start with a blank of
generally soft copper and start hammering it into that form. As you hammer it, it becomes
harder and harder to the point where it will become
brittle and split. So typically, you are also doing
a process called annealing. NARRATOR: Annealing is
simply heating up the copper. But the science behind the
process isn't so simple. MARK AINDOW: In
copper, the atoms are arranged in a particular
crystal structure. And there comes a point where
the only way that you can continue to form the material is
if you allow the rearrangements to occur at the boundaries
between the crystals. And in annealing,
you heat the material up to a temperature that's
below its melting point but high enough
for the atoms to be able to rearrange themselves. And then you can deform
the material again. And so that's why
in copper, you need to be able to work and anneal
and work in repeated fashion. LARRY STEARNS: I still
have a long way to go, but you can see that the
shape is starting to develop. NARRATOR: Though copper can be
fashioned into ornate shapes quickly, it can take
10 years or more for the signature copper
green called patina to form. LARRY STEARNS:
Patina is actually a crystalline
structure that builds onto the surface of the copper. After several months
of wet weather, the surface will be a
pretty uniform brown. And it is stable in that color
for up to 10 to 15 years. And then, you will start
seeing a very slight hint of the green building. NARRATOR: For those
who just can't wait, there is a way to
accelerate nature's pace. Copper smiths can apply ammonium
sulfate or other oxidizing chemicals that speed up the
patina process considerably. Bright copper ages
within minutes. But the stately green color
of a weathered copper roof isn't the only reason homeowners
invest in copper roofing. LARRY STEARNS: Properly
installed standing seen copper roof in 16 ounce
copper will last 100 years. You can install a roof
and not think about it for another 100 years, versus
an asphalt shingle, which might go 15. NARRATOR: But you'd
better have a fat wallet. A copper roof for an
average sized house could set you back
as much as $30,000. Copper has proven its
durability, because we can look at the cathedrals in Europe from
hundreds and hundreds of years ago where that same copper
on the roof exists today. NARRATOR: The
chemical process that causes copper roofs to
develop a patina coating is the reason they last so long. ANDREW KIRETA: Patina is nothing
more than what we would refer to in iron as a rust. And what it does-- it forms a
barrier between the atmosphere and the base metal to give
us a protective coating. NARRATOR: Roofs
and bells showcase how copper is an ideal
medium for large projects. But copper can go small too. You'll find it in almost
every piece of electronics. Integrated circuits, more
commonly called computer chips, are at the heart of
everything electronic. In the last decade, copper
circuitry has enabled chips, and thus, the multitude of
electronic devices they're in, to become smaller
and more powerful. DR. LISA SU: In the beginning
of the integrated circuits, aluminum was used because it
was really the best material in terms of being compatible
with the rest of the integrated circuit technology. Copper was always
known historically as a very good metal
for interconnection. However, it had some
negative properties. If it comes into contact
with the actual devices, it can change its properties. So it wouldn't behave as the
integrated circuit was designed to behave. NARRATOR: By the mid 1990s,
aluminum circuitry just couldn't get small enough to fit
within shrinking electronics. Aluminum's resistance to
the flow of electricity means more of it,
and more room for it is needed to conduct
ample current. Engineers knew that copper's
lower resistance allowed for much smaller
wires, but they had to find a way to protect
the silicon from the copper. After nearly 15 years of
research, scientists at IBM finally developed a microscopic
barrier that did just that. It's actually
called a barrier layer that would keep the copper
on top of the devices. And so it wouldn't be able to
go down to the actual device layers. NARRATOR: This advance made it
possible to fabricate smaller chips that run up to 40%
faster and use 30% less power. Installing the copper
interconnects onto the silicon chips involves relatively
common metalworking processes, but on a microscopic scale. We use electroplating, just
like they did in the old days to coat the bottom
of a cooking pot with copper, but with
certain chemicals that allow the plating process
to just perfectly fill all of these trenches
with copper metal. And those are our interconnects. It's 1,000th the
size of a human hair. NARRATOR: Chip
assembly takes place in what's called a clean room. DR. DAN EDELSTEIN: We can't
tolerate any speck of dust, because that's larger than the
interconnects we want to make. It would block their fabrication
and cause a defect that would kill the circuit. NARRATOR: It wasn't by accident
that copper connectors ended up in the newest computers. Since the power of
electricity was first harnessed in the late 1800s,
the leading use for copper has been for the
distribution and control of electrical current. A neutral atom of
copper has 29 electrons. It's a good
electrical conductor, because a copper atom gives up
its outermost electron easily. This 29th electron moves freely
from the vicinity of one copper atom to another. MARK AINDOW: If one could
see inside the structure of an atom, then
what you would see is electrons that were drifting
through between the copper atoms, but almost unimpeded. Whereas in other metals
and nonmetallic elements, the transfer of electrons has
to happen more specifically by the electrons hopping
from one atom to the next. NARRATOR: It's very easy
to accelerate electrons in the presence of
an electric field. As a result, copper
wire is extremely sensitive to electrical pulses. Only silver conducts
electricity better than copper, but copper is much less costly. Today's world is criss
crossed with a lattice of electrical wires, bringing
power to homes and businesses. Copper is used almost
exclusively for all wires, except those spanning
long distances. Aluminum works better for
those, since it's lighter and keeps overhead
lines from sagging. Cerrowire in Ogden, Utah
manufactures a variety of wire gauges for use
in homes and businesses. The different sizes are drawn
to a precise and consistent diameter through
a series of dies, each one is smaller
than the last. ANDY PAINE: It's not as
simple as stretching it, because you can't control the
process if all you're doing is like a taffy pull
going from a large size and pulling it down. You have to control
the physical diameter. When you go to the next die,
you're taking another 25% cut, and you have a perfectly
round, perfectly sized diameter when you go to the next die. NARRATOR: Cerro wraps
multiple strands of copper together to create the cables
that will be used to transmit larger electrical currents
in commercial buildings. ANDY PAINE: Because the
commercial products carry so much higher
voltage and amperage, they're composed of
stranded conductors so that we maintain flexibility. NARRATOR: Copper cables deliver
more than electrical power. They also deliver
communications. In 1866, the first
trans-Atlantic cable succeeded in carrying a message
2,500 miles from New York to London. The core of the
trans-Atlantic cable consisted of seven strands of
the best quality copper wire. Although silica glass fibers
have supplanted copper as the signal carrying
medium, there's far more copper than glass in the
latest transoceanic cables. The cables are sheathed in
copper, which carries power to pumps. The pumps power lasers,
which convey the information. The copper also
protects the data by creating an
electromagnetic shield that blocks stray signals. [electrical connecting sound] Like other electrical devices,
the cables require pure copper. But new copper alloys are
expanding copper's reach beyond the world of electronics. Thhas been extended by the
ease with which it combines with other metals. Tin and zinc have long been
principle alloying elements. But now, there are many others,
including aluminum, beryllium, chromium, and manganese. They form alloys with unique
mechanical and physical properties. Over 400 copper alloys
are in use today. In the near future,
one new copper alloy may be showing up in a tag
sewn into your clothing and attached to almost all
of the products you buy. Engineers are working on a
mixture of copper, nickel, and silicon that will maintain
copper's conductivity, but will also be strong enough
to support tiny antennae only 35 microns thick. That's 1/10 the thickness
of a sheet of paper. An antenna embedded in a tag
will transmit information about you or a
product to a computer to inform the retailer about
your consumer preferences or the status of its inventory. Ansonia Copper and Brass
in Waterbury, Connecticut, makes specialty alloys for
customers with very specific requirements. RAY MCGEE: One of those alloys
would be a particular alloy we've made for the
aerospace industry where the customer needed
good electrical conductivity, strength within the wire
so that it could withstand constant use, and also
to grow from ground level to 45,000 feet in the air, where
the material actually grows because of the
change in altitude. NARRATOR: The
custom alloy, which will be used to make
airplane struts, is composed of 90%
copper and 10% aluminum. In this application,
the aluminum adds hardness to the copper. The production process
is monitored every step of the way, because
even a slight variation in the predetermined
formula could result in a catastrophic failure
for one of the airplanes. Before and during the
casting, casting supervisors take samples to ensure
that the mixture is exactly right and free of impurities. RAY MCGEE: We take that
sample, and we pour it off, and we make a slug. And then we send it over to
our analytical laboratory. Then, we take it through
an analysis process to determine are we on
analysis at this time? If we are, we go ahead and pour. If we aren't, then we
make corrections back in the melting furnace. NARRATOR: Chemists in the lab
quickly assess each sample. One instrument they
use, a spectrometer, analyzes the atomic
composition of each sample. After a laser slices some
atoms from the sample, a light is then filtered
through that sliver of atoms. The light projects
a prism of colors. Each color represents
an element. The amount of each color
tells the chemists how much of each metal is in the sample. And this sample
represents 7,600 pounds of metal in the casting shop. We have about 20 minutes
to determine 25 elements and report to the casting shop. After an alloy is
cast and shaped, further tests analyze more
of its physical properties. LOU SOLOMON: The tensile tester
actually pulls the material, and it's measuring
the amount of strength it takes to pull the material
until it actually breaks. That defines the ductility
guilty of the material. All the alloys that are produced
here have a specification, and we have to
produce the material and make it to
that specification. NARRATOR: Just as the ancients
who first combined copper and tin couldn't have predicted
where bronze would take them, 21st century metallurgists can
only guess where the new alloys will lead us. ANDREW KIRETA: It has been
around for such a long time that we have learned
what we think are most of the technologies. But we only think that. We are sure beyond a shadow
of a doubt copper will be an integral, instrumental
metal in everything that we do from
this point forward. The same properties
that we know of and use will continue to allow us to
use it in the new technologies in the future. NARRATOR: Count copper
among the marvels we seldom celebrate,
but have helped advance the march of our technology. This largely unsung
metal and its alloys promise to keep pace
with our ability to mine technological treasure
from nature's resources.
