Perhaps because it was once the stuff of pennies and spittoons, copper doesn't boast much of a wow factor. But the reddish-brown workhorse of the Bronze Age is exceptionally deft with electricity. "Copper takes the least amount of work to move a charge from point A to point B," explains Nikhil Koratkar, a materials science professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. That's because copper atoms are arrayed in such a way that lots of their electrons are free to move to neighboring particles. On top of that, copper dissipates heat very well, a trait that comes in handy when electrons get all aflutter.
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